09-11-07 - We made it! Travel was pretty uneventful, the flight from Phoenix to Columbus was interesting in that we bumped into Ryan Flaherty (head of NASA), his wife, and Gene and Merle Anderson in the airport! We were all on the same flights. Also, as we were preparing to land in Columbus the flight attendant mentioned that we might see fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, which is standard procedure when one of the hydraulics systems on the plane isn’t working. Which was the case on our plane—but that we would land just fine. We did!Our rental is a bright racing yellow Chevy Aveo 4 door. Too bad we didn’t bring tape with us to trick it out with stripes right away, but it may be “attacked” while at the track. Actually, I think it’s loud enough as it is. But it does 85 just fine so we’re good.
The Travelodge seems nice and clean, we’re at the intersection of Hwys 71 and 13, and there are many hotels, restaurants, and stores here. There’s a Mexican restaurant right next door that has cheap, good food and good margaritas—according to the Anderson’s, who are also staying here. Jason and I ate our first Ohio meal at a Bob Evans restaurant somewhere along the 71 and it was good. Kinda like a homey-er Denny’s—Jason had a roast turkey breast dinner a la Thanksgiving style, and I had a chicken pot pie. Yum! Looks like the weather should be good until Friday when there’s a 40% chance of thundershowers so we’ll continue with the “wait and see” decision on buying rain tires.
Tomorrow is open practice, and our plan is to have me go out first on the old crappy tires to learn my way around, then once I feel more comfortable switch to the good scrubbed in new tires to see how much better I can do.
And have I mentioned HOW EXCITED I AM?!?!? :-)