21st January – First Flying Day

 

What a great little day it turned out for me. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous on launch today. I haven’t flown in 6 or 7 weeks and arriving at the launch site today to see about 60 Norwegians already there at 9:45am was quite worriesome. By 10:45 there were over 150 folks on launch easily. How will we all get off I wondered? As the morning hours passed away and 11:00am was soon arriving there were only a handful of wings in the air. Oh crap!.In another hour it is going to be nuking through here and it may not be possible to launch. That was what was going though my head.

On the bright side it was great to see a lot of people I have met in the past through paragliding at this site. Dave Prentice we there minus a pigtail! He had to get the left side of his head shaved off during a recent operation. Quite funny to see actually. Then there was Joe Hartley with one arm. Joe learned to fly at Seattle Paragliding and moved to the east coast shortly after. He is one hell of a guy. Flying in Valle with one arm! Holy smoke. However, he has managed to drop the wooden bar he used to use and he now has a prosthetic that at the end has a quicklink that he attaches to the risers. Pretty cool!. That made my day i have to say. He leaves Saturday but today he took a tandem with Brad G. and had a great time. Rock on Joe.

I decided to get off the hill sooner than later and followed Wheelie Bob, Steafan and Mer. Right off of launch I hooked a thermal and it took me to the top of the stack within 7 minutes to about 2000ft over launch. Sweet. The wing was performing great but it was weird to feel pressure in the wing after such a long time. At the top of the stack I decided not to hang about and headed towards the Penon. Only a few others were beyond near the wall but all very low. Hmm I thought. Maybe I should have just gone over the back onto the mesa with the rest of the gaggle. The glide to the Penon was pretty easy and for once I passed it parallel to the top with Mer following behind me. We went to the wall but I sunk pretty quickly and rather than scratch decided to head back to the Penon. I got to the other side and tried to hook a couple of thermals but it wasn’t to be. I headed out towards the Piano and got a few bubbles I tried to stay in but nothing came of it. Eventually I decided to just go land and have a beer.

The landing zone there was pretty thermic to say the least but all turned out well. I got a lift back to Jovan with eagle paragliding had lunch and went back up for glass off. All in all a good first day over here. Tomorrow weather permitting I will try and fly back to the lake which I haven;t done yet so looking forward to that. Mer, Norwood and Wheelie all put in pretty good flights today as will see if you check out Leonardo. But then, they are premier league and I’m fourth division so no surprise there!.