Tuesday/Wednesday 19th/20th Travel days

Well everything went as planned and I am now blogging from my bed in the apartment thanks to the free wireless internet from my temporary landlord! I had a nice dinner with LeAnn in Redmond before catching the 11:45pn flight on Tuesday. I had the option to upgrade to first class for $99 so I jumped at that chance since there was no baggage charges in first class and the booze was free. Some of you may not know this fact but it turns out that Scotland is a nation of hard drinkers where the average person seems to be drinking the equivalent of 40 bottles of vodka a year. So of course I had to keep up the tradition. As it turned out a Double G&T was enough to get me to sleep and 3 hours later I awoke to the sounds of the Captain saying Houston was 100 nautical miles away. Very happy.

Had breakfast at Houston and had to wait 3 hours until the next flight but the time passed pretty quickly as I took free trips on the terminal shuttle train transport to pass the time. The next flight was on a small Brazilian ERJ jet that had only 50 seats with the left hand side only have 1 seat in each row and the right side having 2. It was pretty cozy in there. But the flight was only half full so again no problem and 2 hours later I was in Toluca. 30Min later I was out of the plane and on my way to Valle after having spent $59 on the taxi. The Taxi driver took me on the auto route which only meant that 1hr 10 min later I was in Valle, getting here around 1:00pm. Pretty good.

Now comes the funny part.  Claudia had given me a google map with the location and picture of the apartment so I didn’t think there would be any problem finding it. Wrong!. The taxi driver took me to the Rancho San Bernadino rd which was well marked and at the end was a locked gate to the ranch. 2 ranch hands came over and started speaking to the Taxi driver. Basically they said there was no apartment on the ranch and asked for the location we were trying to find. The look on their faces as they tried to figure out the location of the building from an ariel view on google was pretty funny. Meanwhile in the background the ranch hands dogs (3 of them ) were getting growled and barked at by 3 other dogs in a neighbors back yard and a dog fight soon ensued! After breaking that up I also in the interm period failed to find the pictures of the apartment on my computer so things were looking grim and the taxi driver was getting a little frustrated too. However, to my amazement, a car pulls up and in it is an English woman called Sharma who speaks Spanish, knows Claudia and gets things sorted out pretty quick. I had earlier tried to contact Claudia but to no avail. Turns out her cell phone was stolen 2 weeks earlier so if it wasn't for Sharma I may have still been wandering around Mesa de Jaimes looking for the apartment. Claudia drove up from town to me me and get into the apartment,

 

The apartment is pretty basic but large and for the deal I got it is great. Sorry John! ;-) I dropped off my gear and headed down to town to meet her husband. Turns out Miguel is the owner of Alas des Hombres, one of the local flying schools but by far the longest one around. We went for lunch and I heard some good stories about the earlier days of NW Paragliders like Dixon White and Marc Chirico coming down here to fly. In the early days it was mainly hang gliders but paragliders eventually took over in mass.

After lunch I went back to the apartment, showered , shaved and went to town for dinner and met briefly up with the boys ( Arun, Dave, Frank, Stefan and Greg Baboosh was there for a short time too). Looks like best bet for me tomorrow is just to get a taxi ride up the El Penon and launch rather than go to town and get the shuttle. Will just be as cheap. So tomorrow at 10:00am I plan to be on launch getting ready for first flight this year! Tomorrow I will take the head cam and try and get some HD video footage to post.

Stay Tuned!

Getting ready for Monarca 2010

Here we go again!. Hard to believe a year has passed since  I was there last. Still very vivid in my memory. Seems that happens as you get older..long term memory is much better than short term. That could be to my advantage as I can still visualize the routes I flew last year, but then again with around 160 folks flying this year it’s a case of follow the leader.

I leave on the red eye tomorrow night (Tues 19th) at 11:45pm and get to Toluca around lunchtime Wednesday. There I will pick up a taxi and get dropped off at my apartment. Yes Apartment! This year I had planned on going with John Mann, but he decided that getting married was a better option so dumped me in favor of his new bride. Thanks John!I guess my face isn’t that good looking these days! However the price was right for the apartment and although outside of town is en route to launch. I got the bottom floor which is a little studio.

Downtown Valle is quite quaint, but very very busy and at around 3:00pm all the cars in the surrounding area descend upon Valle like crows. Car after car jam the streets and the smell is pretty bad. So this time I talked to my friend Claudia whom I met at Saint Marcos a couple of year’s back and whose boyfriend lives in Valle. Turns out she moved there last year so she helped me get setup with an apartment. Pretty sweet!

It’s only about 2 miles out of town so a short taxi ride away but is in the country side and I am looking forward to that. However not being able to speak Spanish could be a problem, but then again  do have an Iphone! So I have a number of phrases already on the phone that I can play to the folks I meet, like, where is Valle de Bravo?, can you take me there?, how much for a taxi?, no way dude!, etc. This of course is all due to the Spanish app I downloaded from the app store but it is pretty basic. So thinking ahead, I shot down to  the Duvall Ixtapa restaurant and asked the bar tender to repeat a number of phrases I think would be pertinent when I land out and recorded them on my Iphone. A cheap translator! We shall see how that works out.

I finally managed to fix my pod harness speed bar that I have been having problems with about 6 weeks ago, the last time I flew. Wheelie Bob (Dave Wheeler) told me to just cut off the bottom step. So I did and I think it will work just fine. Just need to remember how to fly now. i also added two lead pulleys to the bottom of the seat plate to act as guides so the speed bar line stopped getting caught at the corner of the seat. I drilled two holes in the wooden seat plate at the corners and attached the pulleys with nylon plastic tie straps. We shall see how that holds out.

Finally a few of the Seattle folks arrived home late last night including Ralph, Paul, Kevin, Stephanie and Matt Cone among others. For first timers they said it was great fun having a lot of the Seattle crew down there and they flew every day bar 2 so not too bad. No real bad stories other than one day where at the top of the lift the air was real trashy and folks were taking collapses left right and center. however they all got back safely.

So now I made a list of all the things to take down and have 95% of it packed. So all in all all set.

Now I just need to be able to do better in the comp than last year. Had a couple of good days flying but didn’t  manage to hit the start cylinders on those days so basically came in almost last in the field at the end of the comp. This year I just plan to fly high, stay high and follow and see how far I get. Has to be better than last year right! :-)

Rat Race – Task 7 Cancelled

Today’s task was eventually cancelled after 25 folks were in the air. Like a couple of days ago it was going to be later in the day before the lift started to appear. However, today’s forecast was for stronger lift and higher altitude than any of the previous days. Consequently it started to get a little rough around launch and eventually it got to the stage where the thermals were ripping though too strongly for anyone to take off. By this time some of the early pilots had already established themselves above at around 9500 ft above launch. Reports are that one person even got to 13500ft!

So everybody left on launch packed up and drove down to Longsword winery where all the other pilots in the air had been asked to go and land. We all ended up having some bubbly and a nice relaxing end to the comp.

Mike and Gail had organized an end of comp party which was great and handed out the prizes. A lot of personal bests were set this week and the Seattle pilots all fared well. Another rat race ended and I was a little sorry to leave.

Thanks to Mike and Gail for organizing a great comp once again this year and to all the volunteers who made it such a great event!

LeAnn and I headed back to the hotel to finally wind down after the party as on Sunday we had decided to go via Crater Lake on the way back and that was a sight not to be missed!  Wow, absolutely amazing. If you ever get that far south be sure and make the journey out to the Crater. You will not be disappointed!

Rat Race Task 6

67.5Km – Woodlz-Grants-Gold Hill – Naval – Cemeta – Dark Hollow

Had a personal best today regards height. Got to over 9600ft, which was enough to let me glide almost to the first waypoint. Didn’t make goal so those famous last words of “…should be relatively easy to make goal tomorrow..” didn’t quite pan out. However, I did catch up and beat CJ for once, so that was pretty cool!. Sorry CJ!

Again today I left later along with a few other pilots including Sam Mulder whom I have met quite a few times now. Sam wanted to stay back and follow the leaders and that was my game plan too. As we started late, a lot of the other pilots were already across at Rabies getting high so we wondered if we had left it too late. However, again off of launch we got up quite quickly and headed out across the valley to Rabies. This time there was enough lift going across to get us there above the ridge line, As normal, the thermals were strong and quite ratty but once in it was non stop all the ay up to 9600 and pretty quick. I didn't top out this thermal as I could see a cloud starting to form above me and headed off.

By this time the lead gaggle were way below me pushing out. I went on glide and followed the ridge line around Rabies and over to Mount Isabella and beyond. I should have tanked up around Bald mountain but looking around me I couldn't see anyone else get high they were just sinking out.

Flying over the ridges into a headwind, my tactic is always to cross the ridge first and then turn into the lift. You always get lift behind the ridge, but turning here into a headwind makes you go further back with little height advantage. 5 other gliders were doing exactly this, and at one point one of the turned back downwind and I had to move out the way to avoid him hitting me as he flew back. I pushed on I watched the 5 of them sink behind the ridge and land out.

My downfall wasn't that much later. Instead of turning in the minimal lift that there was just short of Grants, I pushed forward. I saw Sam hold back and circle not getting much lift however, his tactic was the right one. He circles for around 15 minutes in 100ft per minute which was enough to take him up another 1000ft and let him push on to Naval. Arun and John Mann also did the same and they did very well getting to Gold Hill. Talking to John later, he told me he could see me at Rabies and then just disappear into the horizon as I hit the speed bar. Looking at our Google tracks later it was interesting to see that our glides looked very similar between the 2 and 2/3 but the 2/3 had the speed to make transitions quicker.

As I searched for lift, a bunch of other gliders caught  me up but they were much higher. I eventually realized i would need to land. I headed ip the valley and into the wind. It was pretty poppy coming into land and around 200ft over the lz I had picked out I saw power lines running right across the middle. Yikes. I also then noticed that the fence surrounding the field was electric. By this time I was committed. I kept getting popped up and dropping down quickly. In the end I had to do a tight turn downwind low over the ground and cam around and landed. A bit like a death spiral landing. Not quite what I wanted! However, I was down safe and sound. I saw another glider later trying to land in the same field and radioed up to him about the power lines. He obviously heard me and headed off to another field. My good deed for the day!

As it turned out, the house I landed next too belonged to an American who not only knew what a Glaswegian was, but could also understand my accent! This was too good to be true! Yaba Daba Doo I thought to myself. Even better, he had a book called The Patter, which is a phrase book of Glasgow phrases which I also have. After we chatted, he gave me a lift all the way back to HQ. Thank you Dave Lorenzen!

All in all a pretty good day and my best of the week for sure. Still too impatient when I fly and maybe next year I might just windtech instead. We shall see!

Today, I will try and test my patience and see how far I get!

Happy July 4th folks!

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!

Rat Race Task 4

30.5Km – WoodlLz-WoodLn-Burnt-Rabies Peak-Cemeta-Donato

Weather forecasts held high expectations for today’s task with top of usable lift forecast to be around 7500-8500ft. The inversion layer was expected to lift a little later so a long distance task was set initially  of 67.5Km. This later changed to 57.5km as the time ticked by and finally a task was set of 30.5Km as the inversion failed to lift early enough. Launch opened at 2:35 with race start at 3:15 and there was an initial panic of gliders rushing into the air as the launch window opened.

Of course it didn’t really mean a lot as most gliders were only around 500ft over launch. I launched around 2:00pm as the gliders were just starting to spread out a little.

I got up to around 5000ft just as the gate opened and headed out to the start waypoint. Pretty good really as I was probably in the first 20 pilots.  Turned around and headed back to launch. Big difference on a 2-3 making transitions as the sink rate is much better compared to a 2. There were gliders below me as I climbed up and headed out to Burnt. Again I got to Burnt around 500ft-700ft over the peak. I had  seen CJ back at launch so today she was not going to beat me!. :-)

As I got to Burnt I started hitting some big sink. 4 gliders below weren’t making much progress either.

I thought of going along the ridge for a while but was losing height. I didn’t want to land into Poorman’s Creek valley so decided to head back to Launch and get up from there. BAD CHOICE! Another tactical error. I got back to mid launch and then started benching up towards launch. Then it was yo yo’ing up and down between launch and mid launch waiting for something big to kick off. There were times when UII though I may make it and it was fun thermalling with Dave Palmer on his hang glider for a while.

As I scratched over mid launch a beige glider with black leading edge and letters AM it looked like on the center came straight towards me. After a full turn he was still heading towards me and after the second full turn he was now on my left side which was pushing me out the zero lift I was in. I shouted for him to turn left but he blocked me from turning which annoyed me. It looked as if I could see a smile oh his face and this pissed me off big time.

He headed out straight out into the valley so my pararage took over and I followed him out. When we landed he was in for a Glasgow Kiss for sure! Asshole. As I followed him out he got a little /zero lift and we targeted the house at the bottom of rabies ridge below the antennae's. Real low and the valley wind was strong so I was hoping to  just creep over and gt some lift. However the nearer I approached the tip of the ridge the stronger the valley wind got. My ground speed registered 4Kmh. Oh crap.. not good. I turned around and headed back to the slope behind the lz. At this time I was flying downwind at around 65-70kmh.

This was the peak of the day for landing in the Lz and we were warned there were dusties in the LZ and to keep an eye out for thermals kicking off on the ground by looking at the grass. Sure enough there were thermals kicking off. It took me quite a while and a number of approaches to keep up front in case I got blown back as I descended. There some big pops as I got close but eventually came down safe and sound.

I saw CJ had already landed and this I hate to say was the only thing that kept me from going into a deep depression! I looked up and could see all the gliders above Burnt getting high. What a bummer. This was the first time I actually felt bother by not doing so well. Hmm. Need to stick with some folks today I think.

Around 20 gliders got to goal including Matt Cone, Cj Brockway, Rich Hass, Arun, Mer, Chris Amonson. Awesome job by these folks. Very impressed with matt this week who has been flying out his skin and with the consistency of Arun. 3 goals this week! Very impressive. John Mann on his 1-2 Mamboo got further down the course and I think when he gets back he is moving up to a 2 for sure!

Rat Race Task 3

30Km – Woodlz-Woodln-Burnt-Flyari-Cemeta-Donato

Getting better by the day! At last I am off the bottom of the ladder in points, not by much though, but CJ Sturtevant and I now seem to have a personal battle going on to see who will beat each other. Ah, the battle of the old folks is on! I think she got news early in the week that my personal goal was to beat her this year after she beat me last year. Some folks back at Tiger gave me a bit of a ribbing for that, shame on them!. So now each day after race she enquires as to how well I did. Bring it on CJ! :-)

Today I decided to launch after the race had started! Yes, after. The last 2 days folks have been flying low over launch and a flush occurring just before the start. Not the recommended tactic for sure  but after speaking with a few other pilots the day before about that we thought it could be a good option. Turns out only Roger Marsh and I decided to stick to our guns and try it. Roger launched just before start and I saw him sink out. Oh no not again I thought. I waited a little bit longer and launched at 1:35, 5 minutes after the start. Looking above at the gaggle I saw them get higher and all start to move out. Oops. Looks like I may have mistimed this.

It was quite funny and a little spooky being the last one off the hill. No crowds watching you, only LeAnn, and a few of the RatRace staff to see you off. Winds were light and it was a running reverse to get off but all  went well.

As I got into my harness I looked up to see the whole field heading out to the first waypoint which was just the LZ, and some of the leaders were coming back already. Gee Whizz maybe this wasn't the best idea… thoughts of “Yer No thinkin wae yir dipstick Jimmy” came to mind. However, all was about to change.

I got a good thermal just below launch and being a right hand day I was forced to turn to my inefficient right even though I was the only one around. It was completely stress free having no one else around as I climbed in the thermal. Yeah baby..I’m a likin it! I got up to around 5200 and headed off to the start cylinder. The Dodgifly vario has been working well this week and I may have to revert to calling it Digifly again. There was a 800m cylinder around the start waypoint but my Dodgifly seemed to let me get to within 200m before it registered to go to the next waypoint. Maybe I programmed it wrong, anyway I was off!

Got back to launch and head off to Burnt pretty high. Now I could see I was above quite a few folks who were struggling to make ground. John Mann was below me scratching in the gully below Burnt ridge. Turns out poor John’s speed system broke just after launch and he had to fly the task with no speed bar. Kudos to him for how far he got (turns out it was the same as me!)

I got up high on burnt and headed across to Rabies to see the lead gaggle of 5 flying slightly below me. Easy to spot Bill Hughes, Bill Belcourt and Brian Webb’s wings. They were about 5Km ahead of me I guessed as I had about 2.5 Km to Flyair. Most of the gaggle were now also coming back from FlyAir as I headed out and getting up above Rabies.

The wind direction was really weird as I was in the convergence zone. Every direction seemed to be a headwind. As I got over Rabies I should have stopped and tanked up a little more but I thought I could do that on the way back as I would have a tailwind behind me, After tagging Flyair I head back to Rabies ridge. Another headwind. What the frick I said. What’s going on.  A glider to the left of me started sinking like a stone so I moved a little off the ridge and kept going. Now I stared sinking too..850ft/min. Oh crap Got to Rabies ridge but didn’t want to be in the lee here for sure. Looking at the LZ there was a definite valley wind in the valley coming from behind me. I decided to cross to the slope above the LZ and see if I could soar up to mid launch and get a thermal from there. Unfortunately there was too much sink getting across and I landed once again back in the Lz.

However, there were quite a few others in the Lz who got skunked by the winds around Rabies and the convergence zone. I was pretty pumped though as I flew better than the last 2 days and I covered the distance in just 45 minutes from launch. Later I found out Roger Marsh got to goal, one of only 9 pilots, so the tactic we had of launching late was pretty sound I think as Rich Hass told me later he had 2 near mid airs and after taking evasive action had to deal with a cravat. Very stressful up there it seemed.

So what about CJ. Well she also got to FlyAir but had gone onto Burnt and was too tired d to continue so came back to land at the LZ. Thank goodness I have age on my side! Ok CJ..today your butt is mine!

Arun flew well again today as did Mer and Chris but they all missed goal by just a little as lift out near Cemeta wasn’t that good.

Today’s weather is forecast to be much better with ceilings of around 8500-9000k so I expect a linger task to be set. Its also a left hand turn day at the start so I am looking forward  to the challenge today.

All scores can be found at http://flyxc.org/2009_Rat_Race.html