Tandem Training

After two days at Woodrat I wonder how I stayed away for a whole year. I love this place more & more each time I come. And it seemed like every few hours today someone else I knew showed up for the Rat Race, and we'd laugh & hug & tell stories about the last time we flew together. It's no wonder that this spot is so popular for flying, there's really a fantastic energy here.

The tandem training was a blast too. Jeff from Superfly (aka Turbo...or was it Viper? heh heh) conducted a fantastic clinic. Locals Paul, Hayden & Scott were in my course, as well as visiting pilot Israel. Day one the weather wasn't conducive to flying, so it was ground school all day & practicing PLFs while attached to each other. A PLF is a Parachute Landing Fall and is used if you know you're going to have a hard landing, like when the wind switches just as you come in and now you're going to land downwind fast. So we put on our harnesses & clipped in to each other & ran and just hucked ourselves at the ground. I was paired up with Paul, and afterwards it looked like we had a grass-stain competition with the Hayden/Scott duo. I think they won, if won means the knees on their jeans were greener :)

Today the weather was fantastic so at 10:30 I took Paul tandem & we thermalled up almost to cloudbase! It was especially sweet as I didn't have my vario on, it's nice to know I can still fly without instruments. Paul took me flying next, then I took Hayden at glass-off for the last flight of the day.

After flying we hit HQ for early registration where we got to see more friends & get our loot bags! I think that's my favourite part of the whole comp. Free stuff rocks.