Rat Race - Day Three

The TV crew interviewing the organizer of the Rat Race

It was forecast to be the hottest day of the year so far and I'm hoping that the weatherman is right and things will cool down a little. It hit at least 35 C according to one thermometer I saw. For flying here that translates into a high pressure day, which essentially puts a lid over the whole sky squishing the thermals down and compressing all pilots into a zone 1000 feet high over launch. Not a lot of room when there are over 80 of you in the air at once!

The film crew who caught me getting into goal were on launch today and right after the pilots meeting they came over to interview me. They asked some good questions and I think I answered about 80% of them fairly professionally. The other 20% of the time I was a total spazz so hopefully they edit it enough to keep me from looking like a complete dork, ha ha. It was kind of funny, every time I turned around on launch there they were - filming me hanging with the girls, setting up my gear, and then they followed me all the way through the launch line. Just before I took off the camera man ran to the edge to get footage of me taking off and flying over him. Luckily I had a good launch and climbed out pretty quickly.

Only 4 people made goal today and no, I wasn't one of them. It was hard flying - only 31 pilots out of 83 got beyond the 5 km minimum, and only 17 of them got into double digits for distance. It was challenging in a fun way though, I had a great crossing to Burnt, a few low saves & just missed the Rabies turn point. The guy in front of me who dove in to the cylinder ended up with the same points as me so that's a nice validation of my decision to not push in there low and potentially end up in a tree or outlanding on the ridge, which happened to about 5 people today.

Overall I'm doing pretty well, definitely my best results so far. I'm 5th out of 10 women (CJ is beating me by 1 point!) and 27 out of 83 over all. There are still 4 days of flying left, plenty of time to accumulate more knowledge and put it to use.


My view of the first turn point (Burnt Ridge). Lots of gliders below me still at this point!