Happy Day!

Not to bemoan the point but the weather really hasn't been as good as say, last year. But today made up for yesterday's showers. (Where else does it sprinkle down in mid-August???)

Anyway...today looked fabulous, cu's popping everywhere by 10 a.m. and of course I didn't finish with my last client til 2:30. I started making phone calls on the way home & had a ride secured for 3:15. Now that's efficient! My friend Monica & I launched in a hurry & made our way along the ridge to try & tag a local turnpoint about 5 km from the take-off.

I turned left, I turned right...blah blah blah. Monica was soaring around above me which made me determined to join her up there, despite all the lame little beeps I was getting. Then the SWEETEST thing happened. I was duking it out with a thermal, finding its edges & trying to stay in the core. All of a sudden I was in it - going up so smoothly and in the zone. It started getting hazy and I realized a cloud was forming around me. Cool! Not a big scary cloud, just a happy misty one.

I flew out and made a dash for the turnpoint but chickened out when I got low, despite watching the guy in front of me tiptoe over the tree tops (yes, he even made it to the next further point). Monica hung in there longer than me, caught some nice lift herself & made the turnpoint.

Someone (not mentioning any names) needs to cultivate more patience & then she too may finally make it. But what a fun lesson to learn. If tomorrow holds out & we get another sunny flying day me & my little sidekick patience will make it for sure.

Windy Days

My flying friend Alex & I came up with a term to describe the weather lately. We settled on rude, as in the air has no manners at all. You'll be flying along and then will be so impolitely grabbed, poked or shaken and then tossed aside and ignored for a few more minutes. Once you think the air is being nice again then it rudely shoves you once more. No amount of pleading or begging will change the air's mind, so it's a choice of dueling it out or conceding to the bully and flying out to land.



Today the weather looks especially moody, all dark & grey and lifting her cloudbase skirt just enough above launch to tease you. "Look," she says. "You can come up and play and ridge soar right next to my happy, puffy, dark & evil, er...I mean... gentle clouds."



No thanks, lady!

Rat Race Rap Up

Wow.

That's the best way to describe the week we spent in Oregon at the Rat Race. Cool people, amazing speakers and a supportive & educational mentorship program rolled into one.

My mentorship group (aka Team Awesome, see picture #1) was Peter Warren, Riss Estes and me. We'd meet each morning before the task was called & discuss the weather, strategies to the first waypoint (which was always one of the same 3) and talk about our goals for the day. We'd have another quick session after the pilots meeting to check our gps was set up properly and to recap the best line to take for the day. Then we'd meet at HQ at the end of the day and chat about how we did on reaching our personal goals. That combined with the nightly speakers about gps set-up, weather, flying skills, etc made this like a one-week paragliding university.

The race itself was tough for the non-competition pilots as we had a high-pressure system most of the week & couldn't get high. My personal goal was to make the first turnpoint at least once, and I sort of did. I made the 2nd turn point before the first (strategy to get high & glide downwind to 1st turnpoint). Sounds confusing but it basically means I made my goal of tagging a turnpoint but didn't get scored for it.

The results...I don't want to talk about that! Ok, realistically I knew I'd be near the bottom since it's my first comp & all, but you always hold a secret desire that you'll be the whiz kid who shows up and makes goal the first day.

That didn't happen.

I think I came in 2nd last out of everyone (like 87 out of 88 or something), appropriately humbled but overall happy since I learned so much. I've already noticed in my 2 or 3 flights I've had since coming home that I'm much more relaxed & confident in the sky. Which really was my goal when I signed up for the race. Well that and fortune & fame, but those will come later, ha ha.

Rat Race Practice Day

I'm down in Oregon at the Rat Race. Yes, it's another competition and I thought I'd try & redeem myself after the disaster in Lumby, ha ha. The Rat Race is a learning comp though, with a mentorship program and lots of sessions taught by really good pilots. Hopefully I'll absorb some good karma from them!

It might be hard to see, but if you squint while looking at the first picture you'll see a few different columns of paragliders. I was in one just moments before (800 metres over the launch!), and then it shaded over and I sunk out behind the ridge(see picture #2). It turned out that most pilots lost it then too, with 3 others landing in the same field as me. I was *really* pouting a few minutes later when hiking out - all those weeds you see behind me are prickly starthistles. Ouch! I'm still picking the burrs out of my boots.

Tomorrow the real competition starts. I'm pretty excited about it - I never realized how much fun it was to fly in a big gaggle of gliders!

Big Daddy Retrieve Vehicle

Yes, you are looking at the new local champion. No, not me - the Unimog! Jim (the local instructor) had enough of beating up his trucks & vans on the 4 wheel drive road up to launch and decided to go all-out-extreme. Oh yeah baby!

It was a windy day of flying, gusts blowing through launch & people looking pretty close to parked in the air. I got out to the hill late (5-ish) & it hadn't calmed down by then. I waited an hour to launch, a little timid as there were still some good gusts blowing through but I finally pulled up my britches & just hucked off. The rest of Jim's crew was heading over the back to a calmer landing zone about 3 kms away, so I flew over with them. Still breezy over there, maybe 9 km/hr ground speed into the wind which of course made for super soft touchdowns.

The coolest part of the whole flight though had to be watching the Unimog in all it's camouflage glory barrelling down the highway on the way to retrieve us. The "air conditioning" is nice too, since you're in pretty close quarters back there. Maybe next time he'll take us through the drive-thru...

Swag!

My Ozone swag came in yesterday! Check it out: a tshirt, long sleeve t, vest, ninja cap (aka balaclava), calendar and kick-ass backpack. Perfect timing too, as I had a disappointing weekend of flying and needed the boost. Now that I can dress like a sponsored/comp pilot maybe I'll fly like one. Ha!

So this last weekend my flying was as ridiculous as I look in this picture. Seriously. I went to the Lumby Air Races, all excited to be signed up for my first comp and put my "improved" skills to use. I had 3 flights over the weekend, and the only good thing I can say about any of them is that I had beautiful launches & landed on my feet. Any time my feet left the ground my brain completely shut off and I flailed my way to the dirt.

Ok, I did have a couple nice low saves, but considering none of my flights were longer than 20 minutes they may not count as actual saves. Just a "there-I-was-100-metres-off-the-deck-and-I-climbed-back-up-200-metres-before-sinking-out-again" kind of story. Sigh.

But then...redemption came in the form of free stuff. I put all my new Ozone stuff on & ran around the house for luck and it paid off! Went for a flight at the local hill and didn't suck or sink out or anything. I was wind dummy & went straight up, flew around for an hour, and only came down to land when the boys did because the winds were forecasted to pick up & the thermals were starting to get blown apart & rough. Yay me!

600

I hit my 600th flight yesterday. I'm kind of a geek and record every one of my flights, even the 7 minute sled rides. So I went up to launch yesterday excited to celebrate #600, but didn't want to jinx myself so didn't tell anyone. The jinx monster found it's way to me anyway, and it was more like my 6th flight than 600th!

First of all I blew 2 launches. That was weird - I may not stay up the longest or get the highest, but launching is where I usually shine. On my second attempt the wing fell around me & I ended up stepping through my lines & had to unclip my risers to unwrap myself. It was completely embarrassing, and 2 of my friends ran over laughing & sorted me out as I was obviously a total moron by this point and couldn't do it myself. I got it right on "take 3" & flew away, only to see that my speed bar line was wrapped around my riser. Sigh. So I spent some time fiddling with that & flew off towards the LZ. At least it was just a morning sled ride & it wasn't like I was missing out on thermals.

Except the student in front of me was going up! I rushed over there only to hit sink, as the student merrily bobbed his way over to the landing. By now I was pretty mad but had to focus on landing, as the student was all over the place setting up his approach. I went to a different end of the field, towards the live webcam Jim has set up so people stuck at home can watch us all fly. At least I'd have a good landing & maybe that would be all anyone would see. HA! A gust blew through & I got shoved around on final & dumped unceremoniously on my butt.

The only thing that kept me from crying & screaming & throwing things when I got up & shuffled off must have been character - you know, that stuff you're supposed to be "building" when you're doing things you don't like? Maybe Mom was right.

But this story does have a happy ending. Flight 601 saved my pride. I launched (perfectly on the first try, thank you very much), climbed out right away & landed on my feet after an hour. #602 at Bridal later was a mellow, boaty, take-a-tour-around-the-valley kind of flight. So maybe #600 was just a reminder from my wing to say, "Hey you! Don't get too cocky just because of a statistic. Remember who's in charge here." Thanks Ms. Rush, I'm listening.