Skiing in Utah was fantastic, fresh snow and sore legs. Gotta work on that before my upcoming backcountry ski trip.
The Apres Ski scene was fun too. Our hosts taught us a new card game called “Asshole” which consists mainly of drinking. Before heading on to our next adventure we went to Pete’s condo to relieve him of some of his excess wine. while we were there I couldn’t help but notice a few of his new knick knacks he had laying around.
Oh, did I mention that Pete won the gold in the Reno air races again this year? Pete was flying Cory’s de Havilland Vampire and managed to squeak out victory in-spite of some major problems. Cory acquired this plane when he bought the Ogden jet Center. the plane hadn’t flown for many years so you can imagine how much work went into getting it ready to race in the open jet class in Reno. They worked on this old jet for over 2 years and on the day they had to show up for race inspection they couldn’t get the engine to light off. This was a major problem because if they couldn’t get the plane to Reno from Ogden they would be disqualified. They finally got the jet started on their very last try and pete raced full at throttle to make it to Reno just in time. When Pete flew the first qualifying heat the jet performed poorly and they only placed third. They couldn’t figure it out. The Vampire should have been much faster than that. They were left scratching their heads until on of their friends showed them a picture he’d taken of the Vampire in flight. When they looked closely they noticed that one of the main gear doors was hanging down just a little bit. They fixed the problem and placed first on the next qualifying heat.
Race day came and Pete was doing great. He was in first place with only two laps to go when over his headset he heard a scratchy call “Speed Speed Speed!” Pete didn’t hear anything else over the radio but took the call from his crew chief to mean that he was in danger of breaking the course speed limit. Pete backed off the power a little bit and tried to call his crew chief to confirm but got no response. He did, however, see the number two jet pass him. That was all it took. Pete punched it and with just half a lap left regained the lead and crossed the finish line just half a plane length ahead.
Yes, that is R2D2 in the back of the number five L39
So to the victor belong the spoils. when you win gold at Reno Breitling makes you a brand new watch especially for you.
Now I know what I want for Christmas next year.
He also got this pretty cool coin from the Breitling race team.
