Terminus!

     One would think that having departed from a town to the north of Mobile one would approach from the north. But no. Not us. We approached from the south, swooping in at a standard angle of bank into Runway 32 at the Mobile airport. Mary and I had a dramatic arrival there.

      We departed Borger, Texas, at sunrise, performed the departure fly by to start the clocks, and then headed to Norman, Oklahoma. Smooth sailing at 5,500 feet. Zero winds to push us. Where are the winds when we want them?  

Parking the plane in Norman. 

       At Norman, the volunteers taped our fuel slip to the plane. Eventually, when he finishes fueling the other aircraft, the lineman comes around with the truck, reads the amount of fuel to put on board, and then calls the office to tell them the amount. At the office, I am usually hovering over the employee, eager to pay so that we can hop back in and fly the next leg. But at this point, Mary has not had much sleep or food. I must take better care of my pilot, so I encourage her to have breakfast at Ozzie's Diner. We had some time to relax a bit, for the weather in El Dorado, our next destination, indicated cloudy skies. 

       "We can wait and leave at ten (o'clock) and we'll be okay," said Mary, and I agreed, especially since she had something to eat. 

At El Dorado, Arkansas, we watched some of the racers performing their fly bys.

Enroute to Mobile we began to see the clouds so we descended to 2,500 feet from our cruising 5,500. 

D'Arbonne Bayou.

Mississippi River at Vicksburg.

I adore the beauty of clouds. 

A line of clouds off the wing.

    Over Mobile down came a rainstorm, lightning, thunder . . . not much wind. Tower diverted us to the east a couple of miles. Mary and I were prepared to divert. Safety first.

     "It's VFR at the airport," said Mary.

   "Lemme give 'em a call over there and find out. Just a sec," replied the tower controller at Mobile International. "Yes, they've got visibility over there. Lemme fly out east and then in to one four. There's a clear area there you can get in."

Rain on the windshield.

      The ocean at left. Airport at right. Clouds. Rain. Mary had the airport in sight. But not the one four runway. 

      "We're not doing the fly by," Mary said. "We're taking three two."

    And Runway 32 was all we could see. Half of it. One half sunny, the other half pounded by rain. Inclement weather can occur suddenly, and Mary and I were prepared to divert. 

The tower at Mobile. The tower controllers everywhere are our friends. 

   Volunteers guided us into a hangar where we would remain dry. I took this image of the hard rain pouring on the ramp and on a helicopter in an attempt to show how pour the visibility seemed, indeed, poor enough that the tower controller had to guide us along the taxiways to reach the ramp, able to see us only by the strobe light on the wing.

    Inside the hangar, we shut down. For the first time this week I sighed deeply. How quickly the race ended, as if in the blink of an eye! We arrived third of forty-six racers at the terminus, having flown 1,228nm in 8.7 hours. There were racers in Great Bend, still, making their way to Mobile for the sunset deadline tomorrow, Friday. I removed my headset and looked outside the cockpit. There, over the wings of parked airplanes stood young girls and their teachers, waiting for us to emerge from the plane. Our Adopt-a-Pilot friends had come to greet us! A delightful surprise! Finally we met Tia, our adopted pilot.  A young girl walked determinedly toward me. 

    "Are you . . . ?" I said.

    "Tia! Which one are you?"

    "Elizabeth," and I gave her a hug.

    "I knew. You look like an Elizabeth!"

    Watching Mary land the plane and being met by Tia in the hangar provided me with a cheery and delightful way to end an air race!