Sunday 7/10/2011

7/10/2011 Sunday
Still much flight planning going on. Breakfast at the hotel. We see a few of our fellow travelers there.
10am we head to the airport to refuel the plain and use the wireless Internet with our iPads. A few more travelers arrived from distant origins, the hanger is getting busy. We had a couple of hot dogs, popcorn and soda before going to museum of flight also located @ Olympia airport.
12:30 The museum is small but it has some interesting exhibits. They have four working planes on display, which with the right amount of donation are available for rides...including a P51 Mustang ($1200/30 min).
13:00 After the museum we drove to downtown Olympia, described as hippyish by a fellow traveler, it felt like a dirty version of Haight/Ashbury, we did not lingere. Closer to the water front there was a farmer's market going on with local entertainment, food, and artists. The water front was picturesque and busy, people were out enjoying the mild Sunday weather. Large cranes used to load and unload ships were sitting idle on this Sunday afternoon, along with massive stacks of timber waiting to become lumber.
1530 headed back to the cave even though we were not required until 1700. The caterers were there setting up for the evening festivities. We were treated to a nice dinner with a slide show/DVD of previous Alaska group trips. As dinner concluded the first briefing/seminar began.
1830 The briefing was an over view of the trip and how we would be flying together. We were not flying in true "formation" but would be flying much closer than most of us are use to. We would be flying as a "flight". A flight of planes (11 in our cases) gets clearances as a group, for example cleared to take off--all planes start taxing on to the runway-- 1st lines up on the left side of the runway, 2nd to the right side, 3rd behind the 1st on left., etc. As the the 1st plane starts to go the 2nd counts to ten and starts to go, then 3rd and so on. This is a very efficient way to get all eleven planes in the air quickly and it looks very cool! Landing is the same way.
Once the briefing/seminar was over we dispersed back to the hotel to tie up a few loose ends with the trip planning over the slow connection, with plans to meet back at the hanger for the the AM weather briefing.