Paragliding in BC

Paragliding in BC

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Rat Race - Practice Day

Life has continued to be an adventure since coming home from Europe. We got home around 11pm on Sunday night, and then Monday afternoon while I was sipping tea, doing laundry & planning on doing nothing but recovering from jet lag I got a call from Jim saying to come over to Woodside to fly a tandem for him. The passengers ended up bailing, but over the next 2 days I did 3 tandems, including one (see link below) with a new student. You can hear Jim on the sidelines calling at him not to sit down, and the student's wife laughing at him:

https://picasaweb.google.com/flybcpg/June2011#5619187702933851858

As for the flying, the Rat Race is split into 2 groups this year - the "Race" for the big dogs and the "Sprint" for those newer to competition who want a shorter course. We tried a practice task yesterday to see how it would all work - there was rain in the valley but the Race group launched anyway. Shortly after they cancelled the task for the Sprint pilots but some still chose to fly down, and the Race task was stopped soon after as the winds started gusting from the passing showers.

The organizers of this event are continuing with the mentoring program they offer every year and have educational talks scheduled each night. I'm hoping to learn a lot from all the super pilots who are flying here this week.

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