Briefings and Serious People

We are in-between briefings at the moment. This morning we covered fly-by procedures, aeronautical decision making, and received an outlook briefing. We still need to attend the first-time racers briefing this afternoon. After watching the zoo unfold this morning, Jann's eyes are twitching and I have ulcers. We're not questioning our skills, but the skills and mentality of the people around us.

People's nasty sides are starting to show as it gets closer to crunch time. When the discussion turned to flight plans in the briefing, Jann asked if we could file an IFR flight plan but fly it visually (i.e. stay out of IMC to follow the race rules). Our thinking is that the airspace down here is very congested and unfamiliar to us and there are going to be 51 planes departing within 30 seconds of each other. So, we would like to be cleared through all airspace and getting traffic alerts all the way to Waycross. We were just about shouted out of the room. Nobody wanted to hear that we were non-competition class and wanting to file for safety. So much for making new people feel welcome! I reviewed the rules in our rulebook, and nowhere does it say that you are unable to file an IFR flight plan. I presented it to the judge, and she told me to "do it but don't tell anyone." Yikes.

After another team asked us if we were non-competition, they told us to just stay out of their way. What friendly folks. Now, not everyone is like that. In fact, most people are very friendly and interesting to talk to. It's just the few crazies that are making us shake our heads.

A plus to being non-competition is that since we have *nothing* to worry about, Jann and I are going kayaking this evening in Sanibel Island. We're going to head out in the evening to where the birds nest and see what we can see. It sounds like a good time. Hopefully we'll be able to get some decent pictures.