I made it to Panama City Beach without any real problems. I was a little scared checking my bike into the airport in Minneapolis. I got there having already checked in online with NWA, but I still had to check my bike in and they people at the counter were having problems with their baggage label printers. As I waited for them to work that out, I noticed that the TSA people were screening everything that was checked in. I didn’t really like that. I was hoping that they wouldn’t open up my bike case because I just wasn’t confident that they’d do a very careful repacking job. I brought my bike over to the oversized luggage check-in (it won’t fit on the conveyer belt) and wait there for a few minutes. Finally, a TSA rep asks me if I’m there to check the bag in. I nod. He says to just leave the bag there and someone will take care of it. By now, it’s pushing 40 minutes or so to boarding, and I’m a little skeptical that it’s going to be on the flight with me. But I relucantly walk away leaving it out in the open without seeing anyone really take ownership of it. As I walked to the security checkpoint, I kept looking back at it wondering if I’d ever see it again. I told myself that there wasn’t much I could do to ensure that it made it on, so I just went through security and got on the plane. I had window seats, but never saw anyone load or unload it onto any of the flights (and believe me I was looking!) Sorry if I sound pretty cheesy. I just love my bike and didn’t want to see anything bad happen to it. :) Turns out, all my worrying was for nothing and it was there to greet me in PCB when I arrived.

The weather yesterday was wonderful! A perfect mid-70s day. A little windy, but coming from Minnesota I certainly wasn’t going to complain about a little wind. One of my friends that lives in Florida came to pick me up from the airport . She was nice enough to make the six hour drive from Orlando to hang out and plans to cheer me on this weekend. She’s also the one that’ll be driving my girlfriend and I back on Monday to the airport. Can’t beat friends like that!

The directions that we had to the condo weren’t very good. Mapquest told us to take all sorts of roads that didn’t exist and we ended up having to turn around and backtrack where they were doing a lot of road construction. It took us a while to get here, but we finally made it. The condo itself is very nice. It’s a privately owned one bedroom deal not too far from the race start. I’m very happy that I decided to go this route than get a hotel room. This is just way more cozy.

That’s about all for now. It’s breakfast time!