Mexico Adventure Day ???

My landing zone today


Calendar days are starting to become meaningless ....I'm deep in vacation mode now. I'm pretty sure I still have a week left before it's time to go home so that's 7 more days of epic flying.

So a couple of days ago I missed a day due to an upset Mexican stomach. Yesterday I woke up feeling great and the day looked epic, but 30 minutes into my flight I started feeling nauseas & had to fly out. Too bad since I was high & on my way to a great XC (cross country flight). I ended up getting 10 km or so, but the guys who flew where I was heading got 30 km. There may have been some jealousy on my part but I knew I could've done it had I been well so that made up for it.

This morning I felt fantastic - I didn't realize how well until one of the guys from Colorado noted that my stomach must feel better since I was doing handstands on launch! The weather was a bit more stable so we wouldn't be getting too high, but I managed a few low saves and got to try some flat land flying which is new for me. Herminio swooped into the LZ and as we gave him a ride up he said the weather for this week is just supposed to improve. Awesome!

Flight #2 we planned to fly to our hotel about 10 km away. Not a super long flight, but in Mexico they like to plant power lines in the most unlikely places which really limits your landing options. Add a bunch of fields in crop & it makes the flight much more interesting. Since we were ready for a great flight of course we hit sink all the way to the regular landing zone. Well...ALMOST all the way. At 200 meters over the ground I saw a tractor working & made a last-ditch effort to fly over & hope he was kicking off a thermal. There was a tiny beep, but a beep just the same. I worked that little patch of lift to over 1000 meters higher! Nothing feels as good as a low save, I swear. Derek & a few others saw me zoom up & hurried over and soon we all flew towards the hotel.

I landed in a cut corn field 1km out of town with a shady place to pack up that was next to a road. A farmer soon came over & started talking. Between my butchered Spanish & his broken English we talked about flying, his stint living in Oregon & the restaurant his sister-in-law owned in SLC Utah. He soon offered me a ride and as he went to get his truck Derek came walking around the corner! I knew he had landed somewhere nearby but thought he was a lot farther away. Antonio (the farmer) gave us a ride right to our hotel door - talk about spoiled! A chicken fajita (with grilled pineapple in it) with some tequila rounded out another bueno day.




Antonio (my saviour driver) wearing the t-shirt from his family's restaurant in Utah.