Rat Race Task 5

55.5Km – Woodlz-Burnt-Bald-H-Porma-Donato

What a great day and it all started with a fart! On the way up to launch we were following a plumbers van with the logo of Fast Action Response Team on the back and that made me laugh out loud. Fart jokes seem to be a guy thing and LeAnn couldn't see the humor in it. I’ll let you be the judge!

It was forecast to be a day for flying high but that the start would be delayed. Sure enough the start for today’s task was set at 3:15.

To pass the time we went to our quiet shady spot and John Mann joined us. Here we watched the gliders boat around launch for a while. Then a yellow glider took a little tip collapse, the pilot over corrected, took a surge and then pulled the reserve. We were all wondering why as she had plenty of height to sort things out. She landed on the side of the hill not far from launch in a bush and was quickly out her harness and walking around.  Dave Wheeler hiked down the trail to help her out. I had never seen Dave Wheeler in shorts before but what a pair of spindly legs! Dave thinks he also got a little poisoned oak so we shall see if he is one of the few percentage of folks who are immune!

Around 2:30pm the gliders boating around started to get high and the task was called. It was a great start to the task with everyone that took off getting high to around 6000ft in smooth lift. Today I wanted to tag along with some of the leaders to figure out their race start tactics and picked Bill Hughes glider to follow. With a few minutes to go at the start we had set up about half way between the start cylinder and Burnt on the upwind side. When the race started I was among the first to tag the start and Burnt and head across to Rabies. Got to the ridge to see Brian Webb, Bill Belcourt and Dave Norwood below me sinking out fast. Brian and Dave landed up the gulch and other pilots seeing this made a turn and headed down the ridge a little. Just before this I need to manually set my Garmin to the next waypoint. I had the brake handles in one hand and was just about to press the button on the garmin when I took a huge whack on my left hand side that was violent enough to make me loose the left brake. I  went up to grab the left hand side before it all went away from me and managed to grab it. Wow. My first collapse on the Triton. Not too bad though really so no real worries at this point. At launch I had 2 small knots on my trailing edge which even after the whack they didn’t come loose so today I need to make sure I get them out before launching!

I was sinking too at this point now along with a bunch of other gliders. I saw a couple get up in the valley  and decided to move out there. Once again, I should have stayed with the gaggle but following folks is not that much fun to me, almost like a horse being led to water! Of course that violates all the rules of consistency in a task and I haven’t been doing that well for that very reason but not making goal doesn't bother me, so all is good.

At Rabies it was really pretty violent in some places. I took my first major asymmetrical on the right hand side. Around %50 disappeared. As I looked up to see how it was recovering the glider dived to the right and then the wing re-inflated. Pretty cool I thought. However, I thought this may be a bit tough.

I pushed out along the valley and was getting low behind the fingers. I ended up surfing a couple of them and getting to the south of Wellington Gate before the big hand from above came down and said no further dude! I got pushed down into the strong valley winds and landed a few miles up the valley from Ruch. Looking up I counted 47 gliders in the air getting high! The folks I had left at Rabies got a great thermal that there that took them up to 8000ft. Oh crap I thought..looks like CJ smoked me today. Dave Byrne will be smirking for sure!

I packed up got a lift back to Fiasco winery chatted with Pam and Dave Palmer and Pam’s sister Laura and had a great time. In fact so much so that leAnn and I got invited back to the house to swim in the swimming pool! Awesome. Of course I had no swimming trunks so ended up just going in with my Ex-Officio underwear! All good. :-)

In all, 27 folks made it to goal today including John Mann for the first time! Good job John. 35 miles and a personal height record of 10200 feet. More importantly CJ didn’t do that well either and is now only 16 points ahead so next 2 tasks I need to be boring and follow the leaders to get a few more points! :-)

I had a great start yesterday so today I am going to follow Bill Again but this time do a little pimping and hopefully get further along the course. I expect I will make goal today since the weather is looking good and if I just follow folks which I hate doing, I expect it should be relatively easy. We shall see!