Air Race Registration Day

June 16, 2018

Air Race Registration and Credentials

Our morning started off in a slightly chaotic manner.
Departing SWW
Alyssa and I had noticed a nose-wheel shimmy develop on our flight down to Texas so we wanted to get it inspected before we took off for the race. To do this we needed to fly to ABI, Abilene, to the Cirrus Service Center.

 We made sure to go through final credential verification (for ourselves and the aircraft) as well as the aircraft inspection for the race before we headed to ABI.
ABI on the left

 Soon we were departing and made the short hop over to ABI. 
We met with the maintenance technician and he fixed our plane quickly and sent us on our way.

 We landed back in SWW and we were nose-wheel shimmy free!
It was close to 1700 by the time we parked, so we took the next shuttle to the "snake pit".

The other teams had made it to the grounds where we were served dinner and after we had the chance to hold some western diamondback rattlesnakes!
Mutton Busting
After the rattlesnakes, we moved to the coliseum where we witnessed some "mutton busting" (little kids, as young as 6, bronco riding sheep), bull riding, and bronco riding. When the children and teens rode without helmets it gave me anxiety because they were getting thrown into the air and on the ground around hooves and metal fences. 
It was really cool to see how the sport worked and how the wranglers have to be so quick. 

The event ended and we headed back to the hotel, but our day didn't stop there. 
We received a message from the Chief Inspector to move our nose-wheel onto the grass at the airport. 
Since there are so many planes and not enough ramp space, we all park to the sides of the taxi-ways. We wanted to keep our nose-wheel off the grass, but for safety reasons of aircraft trying to taxi past, we moved the plane back and had to reposition some of our tie down points. 

After we finished moving the plane we headed back to the hotel for the night, with an early morning ahead for racer briefings!

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