Thursday - July 29, 2004

Nats 2004 - Unlimited class, day 1

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One hundred and one pilots gathered for the pilots meeting early Thursday morning, C.D. Dennis Adamisin was ready to get things rolling.  The only brand new model I have seen is Daryl Perkins' new Sheer Insanity design, it's hard to miss it, it is so large.  The weather wasn't as nice as it was yesterday, it was cool out again, a bit overcast and a bit windy, it was going to be some interesting flying to be sure.

We started out with an 8 minute task again, and went directly to 10 minute tasks in later rounds.  There may have been a 12 minute thrown in there in one round.  In the forth round I happened to be flying with Mike Smith, (it seemed like I flew a lot of rounds with Mike Smith, which was fun) and Daryl was timing for him.  We were standing in the pilot staging area and Daryl has a long slow look at my lime green over magenta ICON lite and says, "Jim, you must be a pretty good pilot."  I looked at him and I knew something was coming but I just listened.  He continued, "I remember when I was surfing a lot, I would go down to the beach and there would be all these dudes hanging out with the fluorescent colored boards, and the fluorescent colored suits... and they couldn't surf at all.  So you must be pretty good to have a model colored like Barney."  We all busted out laughing.  Like I said, it is fun flying with these guys.

I have to say those 10 minute plus rounds after 5pm really get a pilots attention, it reminds me so much of F3J, and I don't think guys tend to practice much at that time of day.  Do I have to mention the scores are tight after the first day?

It was going to be a pizza on the veranda night at the Roberts Hotel, an appropriate choice for the day.  This is an occasion where most of the pilots that are staying there have a stack pizzas delivered and we devour them outside on the veranda.  Just as I started unloading the gear in the parking lot at the hotel, Marty rode up on his new black '04 Electra Glide with a huge smile on his face.  I said, "Marty, nice Hoosier eve for a ride, huh?"  He threw me the keys and I got to take a very pleasant putt around Muncie, what a treat.  Got back to the hotel for pizza, unpacked the truck much later on in the evening.  It was another very long but fun day.