They’re Sky High About Race Ann Easterly, Cheryl Cox In Arizona-Florida Event

When Ann Easterly began flying with her pilot husband, the only thing she wanted to learn was how to land that airplane in an emergency.

Little did she know that 12 years later she’d be a full-fledged pilot gearing up to race across the country in her friend’s Cessna 172 Skyhawk.

Easterly, a 61-year-old Spokane businesswoman, and Cheryl Cox, a 52-year-old Rathdrum, Idaho, teacher, will fly more than 2,300 miles as part of a women’s airplane race.

The duo will be just two of the 100 women competing in the 20th annual All Women’s Air Race Classic.

“I never planned to do it,” Easterly said, putting the blame on her teammate. “Cheryl just kept talking about it and talking about it and I think she just talked me right into it.”

Now the two can hardly contain their excitement.

“We’ve tried to remain very calm but we’re both just going out of our minds,” Easterly said.

“There’s just no race like this,” Cox said. “To be in the company of those types of pilots - it’s incredible. It’s kind of like coming together with the best of the best.”

The airplane race starts in Prescott, Ariz., and ends in Daytona Beach, Fla. Participants fly through nine different states, touching down in six airports.

The Air Race Classic began in 1977 but draws its roots from a women’s airplane race that began in the late 1920s or early 1930s dubbed the “Powder Puff Derby.”

It will be Easterly’s first time flying the race and Cox’s second.

For Cox, flying is something she’s wanted to do since she was young. Fifteen years ago she got her chance when she took lessons from some agriculture pilots during their off-season in the winter.

The Lakeland Junior High English teacher has been flying ever since. She’s even spent time as a flight instructor and plans to teach an aviation program to eighth-graders in the fall.

“Flying kind of helps you find out what’s really important - can you still meet the challenge,” Cox said. “Every now and then you have to do things to help you remember that you’re really alive.”

Cox last flew the Air Race Classic in 1989. Out of the 55 airplanes, she and her partner placed right in the middle.

“Once you’ve flown one you can’t hardly stand it until you fly another one,” she said.

Competing honed Cox’s skills as a pilot, teaching her how to better read the weather, gauge fuel and plot her course. “You just become more sensitive to everything around you,” she said.

Cox and Easterly met through the Intermountain Chapter of the 99’s - an international organization of women pilots.

Easterly and Cox plan to take off from Coeur d’Alene for the starting point in Arizona today. The race will last from June 20-23.

They will share the piloting and navigation duties. And after months of preparing their craft, plotting routes and calculating distances, they hope to place near the top 10 out of the 45 airplanes they will compete against.

But Cox knows, “You can get your plane ready, you can plan your race and you can sharpen your skills, but sometimes the difference between winning and not winning is being lucky enough to get a tail wind or being lucky enough to find where one is.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo