Rat Race Finale

Was I just paragliding all week? Looking out my living room window & seeing nothing but grey clouds & rain it's hard to believe I was just cruising around the sky a few days ago.

Quick version of the Days 6 & 7 - Friday was blown out so the task was cancelled, Saturday was flyable and final results are in. In Sport class I was 53 out of 75, a bit better than last year's 35 out of 44. Yay for me.

I wish I would have written about both days immediately as there were so many good jokes & stories to share. This has probably been the funnest Rat Race yet, I think I laughed until I cried almost every day. We also ended up having really long days, between flights (& relaunches) and mentoring sessions & dinner afterwards I probably didn't get home til 11 most nights, which is why I missed a couple of days blogging.

Lessons learned? Sit at the back of the bus so you don't get prank'd, watch Talladega Nights before the comp so you get more of the jokes, and get high high high. Not the wacky-tabakky kind of high (for shame!) but the altitude kind. My impatience was really a factor in me sinking out early in the tasks each day. I have this fear that once I'm barely high enough I might not ever get that high again & just start flying to the next point. For example, look at the above photo taken when I looked back over my shoulder while gliding across the valley - I'm ahead of the paragliding armada even though I'm lower. With a hundred other pilots in the air it's easy to see that you CAN get higher, and there's no reason I wouldn't be able to get there when they're all a hundred feet above me. So my personal task this year is to milk every thermal for what it's worth, impatience be damned!

I'm gonna go all spider-monkey on those thermals. Because if you're not first, you're last. (Thanks Ricky Bobby)