I have no idea why this is happening, but I am having the worst flights here. Are curses real? I've been skunked every time I've come to Pemberton, and I was hoping that since I would be here a whole week that I would get at least one XC flight in. Tomorrow looks like the last day of the competition and I have yet to fly farther than the bail out field below launch!
This is obviously not how I imagined the Nationals going. I'm pretty sure I'm in last place (!) and absolutely devastated. I know I'm a much better pilot than this, and can't understand why I'm flying so poorly. I can find excuses if I want. There were about a dozen of us who took off at the same time today and we all landed at the same bomb-out field so I could blame bad timing and conditions. I'd wanted to launch earlier but got stuck behind a pilot on a competition wing who was having trouble launching, then switched lines but just like at the supermarket now the pilot in front blew their launch, so "maybe" if I'd launched earlier I could have stuck it. I could blame yesterday on the food poisoning but Matty had been sick too and he won the day!
So I'm back to blaming the Pemberton curse. Seriously though, I'm frustrated and angry and a whole lot of other things right now. Rationally I can see that it's not a big deal, and as one of my new friends explained tonight it doesn't change anything about my abilities as a pilot...I'm still the girl who reached goal in other competitions, and who flew over 100 tandems last summer, and the fact that I'm in some kind of slump doesn't take away the fact that I am a good pilot. It just sucks that my "slump" had to happen here at the Nationals, on my only vacation this year, at an event I was really excited about and where I had so many people supporting and believing in me.
Challenges make you stronger. Sayings like this and more (the kinds that friends post on their Facebook walls about overcoming hard times that you click "like" for) are running around my head tonight. Trying to see the bright side and hoping tomorrow I can fly at least 10 km somewhere. Oh! There is one awesome thing that happened today. One of the pilots I've been coaching did make it 10-15 km (he thinks) which is his personal best! I am so proud of him and stoked that he did it, I'm sure he'll fly even farther tomorrow after tasting the sweetness of an XC flight. Living vicariously through someone you've helped is pretty cool, and I hope he'll let me follow him around the sky now :)
No comments:
Post a Comment