Martinas Everywhere!

(picture taken last week on a cold sledder. little dot in the sky is an airplane way above me, maybe going somewhere warm & wonderful with a full load of gliders...)

Since it's supposedly gusting up to 70km/hr today (and has been all week) I'm obviously not flying. So it's immersing myself in all things paragliding online, and boy did I get tangled in the web today (what time is it? how long have I been in here?). I started snooping around the pages of the world governing body for paragliding and looking up who the top pilots in the world were. Then for fun I went through the list of top women pilots in the world. There were 6 "Martina"s listed, and yes one of them was me! An Italian, 2 Germans, a Czech, a Swiss and a kickass Canadian. Looks like my performance at the Rat Race, no matter how dismal, entered me into the world rankings. And I wasn't even last! Or even the lowest ranked Martina! For more fun I looked at the rankings of my fellow countrymen (& women) and found myself ranked above a local hotshot pilot. Oh, that was almost more fun than an actual flight! (wow...I've really spent far too much time online today...)

So maybe the Martina name will carry me farther in paragliding than it did with tennis. None of the Navratilova (sp?) or Hingus tennis prowess found its way to me, but I was never interested in it anyway. Paragliding is my passion, and I will live my passion to its fullest in 2009. Bring it on!