ARC June 19th

Still the 19th, though the clock is about to turn over to a new day.  This last one was a waste of flying time. We left Norfolk without flying the timing line since we knew that we'd never make the deadline at the finish today - so decided that we're out of the race officially and want now to just make the finish to be there with all the teams.  We never made it to the next stop, Iowa City.  Even Minnetta,  a college professor who lives there and worked hard on that stop didn't make it in to her home airport stop.  Airplanes are parked all over Iowa.  There was a huge line of storms running from the Canadian border down through Oklahoma. Our iPads give us radar shots of the storms and we saw a hole down in Texas we could have gotten through!  Knowing that we can't possibly finish, we finally parked the airplane in a hangar in Council Bluffs (didn't want it to be hailed on), rented a car and headed east.  This is our 8th Air Race Classic and we've never experienced such weaher - first the weather in the western mountains with snow and ice, then the cloud covered high mountains near Bear Lake with icy rain, and today's inpenatrable  wall of weather.  This year's race has gone to the faster airplanes which got out in front of this continuing miserable weather - the luck of the draw. The teams still on the west side of the heavy weather will hope it's flyable tomorrow to make it in for the final banquet.  We're on the road and are seeing the results of the recent tornadoes.  We're also seeing lots of corn which doesn't look like it will be knee high by the 4th of July, despite plenty of rain.  We've been driving in rain tonight and are in a motel for a few hours' sleep.