Mr.Tree Will Always Carry a GPS

Paragliding always seems to bring adventure into my life - even if I end up experiencing it vicariously, as was the case this weekend.

A bunch of us ventured off to K Country where we hoped to fly off Prairie Mtn. Some of the pilots felt the wind was too strong up there, and suggested we save ourselves the hike and drive up to a spot off Moose Mountain.

This spot was apparently used by another pilot who had a flight there in the past. The "launch" involved clearing a guard rail by the road and basically launching in a rotor - pretty tricky. Below the road it looked a bit more promising, so one of the pilots set up there, inflated successfully, and off he went.

A few seconds after he launched, things started to look kinda sketchy - he was hitting some major sink. As he flew out, he made a left turn where we didn't have as good of view of him, but we could all see that he was getting himself into trouble. No lift + all sink = bad!

Sure enough, he radioed us and said he hit a tree! He was ok (a bit of whiplash though), his wing was caught in the tree, but he was fine. Yikes!!!

//From here on, I will refer to this pilot as "Mr.Tree", as he does not wish to be identified by real name. That being said, you'll know who he is based on pictures of his glider in the tree, and hell, give it 3 weeks, and all the PG pilots out at Cochrane will know.

We spent the next while waiting for Mr.Tree to meet us by a road, which he found over an hour later. Then the four of us went with him to retrieve his wing. Mental Note: Start carrying a GPS device! We ended up hiking, and hiking, and fucking hiking, until we found his wing. Looking at our track from a GPS from the car to the wing showed that we just about went the longest way possible!

It was all cool though - Mr.Tree's glider didn't seem to have any major damage, and most importantly, he was unharmed. The thing is though, things couldn't been bad....really bad. I'm glad Mr. Tree walked away, but hopefully it'll be his last encounter with sharp pointy branches for a looooong time.

After that little adventure, we all (except for Mr.Tree), went up to a lower part of what I think was still Moose Mountain and got flights off there. It was maybe 700 ft high or so - I had a nice little ridge soaring flight that lasted about 5 minutes. It was SO nice to be in the air - I just had a blast. I made some nice quick turns and just enjoyed my time out there - I love this sport. My landing was kinda funny again, but enh, my judgement was still semi-decent.

The only really weird thing about my flight was that as I was making turns, things seemed to happen really quickly. I'm not sure if it was fatigue, or a lack of proper nutrition or something, but things happened fast! I don't see how my speedbar could have been on, but maybe there was an issue there??? Who knows, whatever, that flight, despite its shortness, kicked ass!

So officially, I've got basically 3 weeks to wait until my trip. As it's approaching, I get more and more excited, but kinda apprehensive too. I know this trip will be something I will remember for the rest of my life (as is the case with travelling in general), but sometimes when I think about it, it seems kind of intimidating. To date, I've officially had 104 flights, and yet most of these flights are under 5 minutes. My longest was 30 minutes...30 minutes to most pilots is somewhat average, and yet this is my max? Being in the air for 2 hours straight is something I really crave right now, and yet it's so foreign to me. Hopefully Lanzarote will provide me with this opportunity.

Final Thought: Paragliding makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. LOL!

Today's Almost Towing Experience

Yesterday I got a phone call from a pilot who said he was interested in towing today. It's kinda funny because we ended up playing a short game of telephone tag, which included me waking up the household he's staying at at 2:00 am - whoops!

Today we headed out to a place kinda in the middle of nowhere, about 20 minutes east of Strathmore. Some hang glider students were being towed behind ATV's, and then we found the group of pilots who were using tow rigs on trucks. The winds were fairly strong for newbie towers such as myself, at about 15 - 20 k's from the south.

Jens, a PG pilot out from Germany, ended up having 3 tows today, 2 being especially successful. With one he went up 4000 feet! It was really cool to watch, even if I was on the ground.

I sat in the truck a couple times too to look at the winch, pressure controls, guages, etc. Man, I never knew towing was so sophisticated! Even little things like the weak links and drogue chute - how cool are those?!

The hangies had 2 of their own trucks, and got lots of towing in. Very very cool to see a hang glider be towed...it's like one second they're on the back of a truck which seems to be in full accelaration, the next second they're 100 feet up - those guys can climb fast! Going tandem hang gliding on a tow rig looks like a rush - I gotta bug one of the pilots to take me one of these days.

One hang glider pilot did some wingovers, and another screamed into his landing - awesome. There's a small part of me that wants to try hang gliding simply because of the speed involved, but then I look at their expensive, bulky, heavy, gliders which take forever to learn to fly, and I'm happy being a paragliding pilot.

So, despite the fact that I didn't get to fly today, I had a nice day...I learned a heck of a lot, and am looking forward to my first real tow. And hey, only 31 days until my flying trip - yyyyyaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!

Insipidy in the Air...

So I watched the videos from the SIV manoeuvres course I took last month and man, that was sucky sucky shit!

I watched barely any footage of others (so as to minimize the comparisons I always tend to make, and hell, I don't have 10 hours to sit infront of the computer!), and just focused on the flights I did. I saw some of it already at the time of the course in the evenings, but watching it again was a real eye opener.

My opinion: paragliding on video is not nearly exciting as it is in the air. Especially when you're watching yourself!

I know people say that I tend to be hard on myself, but crickey, my "manoeuvres" were not really manoeuvres at all! Maybe my glider was like at a 30 degree angle at most on my wingovers and it took me like 3 fricken times to understand what the hell an asymmetric spiral was. Expletive!!!!!

Ahem, it's all good though. I know you're not supposed to go nuts the first time when doing these things, safety always being a concern and all, but flying with crap in your pants is definitely not cool.

At the SIV course, yes, I was scared! I was scared before the course started, I was scared when I was approaching the water waiting for Chris to tell me what to do, and I was scared when I started feeling those G's. A little bit of fear is healthy, but I think I need to moderate my doses when flying.

So, next manoeuvres course I gotta step it up a bit, and stop wasting time with all this wussiness shit. Last year when I was into downhill biking, I found that once I stepped a bit outside my comfort zone, my progress was immense. It's just too easy to get stuck doing the things you're used to, and not go beyond that.

On a brighter note though, I can say that the manoeuvres course has really improved my flying...my confidence has increased (it's still at a healthy level though), I'm more aware of my posture, and little things like keeping elbows in are something that I've been doing habitually since.

Only 5 more weeks till my little flying trip - not much manoeuvres there, but I'm still really looking forward to putting the things I learned and remembered today into practice.

Listening to: Megadeath, Insomnia. Ha ha, working till 2:30 am and going to bed at 4:00 am is fucking me up.

Prairie Mountain: Mission Complete

After months of wanting to, I've finally flown Prairie Mountain!

A couple nights ago at the Thanksgiving dinner at the Mullers, a few pilots discussed hiking up Prairie the next morning to fly. Sure enough, yesterday morning I got a phone call that said "it was on"!

Hiking up mountains with 50 pounds on your back is annoying, but the prospect of flying always makes things seem better and tends to "lessen the load" (wow, I'm full of bad puns). The hike with my pack was actually better than expected, but I still wouldn't call it easy. I'm developing some nice bruises kind of by my shoulders where the straps of my pack were - lovely!

Anyway, at the top, the winds seemed pretty decent. The wind was slightly switchy with some good cycles. The first guy launched, hunted for some lift, then headed for the LZ. I launched, found a bit of lift right after taking off, and then did some of my own hunting. I tried thermalling a tiny thermal by the spine of Prairie, but I didn't hang out there too much, as I didn't want to get too low.

The air was surprisingly choppy, but in a sense, I think that's what I need to fly in right now. Smooth air is nice, but you don't really learn much sitting in your harness looking around. Don't get me wrong, the views are always spectacular, and you feel peaceful sitting up there in your own little swing...I think when the air is silky, you also tend to appreciate the sport more. On the other hand though, I think active piloting is what develops your skills and confidence.

My landing was alright - too bad I didn't have enough height for wingovers! Oh well, next time.

I especially enjoyed flying with a new bunch of pilots who I haven't really flown with before. All of them had quite a bit more experience than I did, and they were really helpful and a lot of fun. I hope to do some more flying with these guys (and girl!) in the future.

One more time, I FLEW OF PRAIRIE!!!!!!

Pilots are a funny breed

Oh man, I just about pissed myself laughing today.

Cochrane wasn't flyable this weekend to the horror of all, as the winds kept pumping from the Northeast. It's funny how history creates expectations, and then when they're not met, everybody is so surprised.

Anyway, so there were 3 other die-hard pilots out who were attempting to groundhandle (while I lazily sat back and watched) when one mentioned that he had some rope in his car and we could do some "hand towing".

I really didn't think this guy was serious, but off he went to get the rope. He skillfully tied 2 "handles" from the rope on one end, and attached it to the center strap of the harness on one of the guys, and off they went! Two guys ran in front, pulling the one guy in the glider, who ended up getting about 2 feet of air from like 200 feet of running. lol, it was a sight to see!

One more slightly more successful attempt was made with the same pilot, and then another had a turn. He got a little bit more lift, but we're talking like 2 more feet here.

At that point, one of the pilots was like "yeah, you're light Veronica, we'll pull you". I'm not usually one to say no, so naturally I agreed!

I strapped on one of the guy's harnesses, and got ready to forward inflate. As I inflated and the guys pulled me, I got airborne right away - yeeeehaw, 10 whole feet! The whole ordeal lasted maybe 20 seconds, but it was damn funny fun!

I got some some wicked new experiences from my 20 second flight: flying a DHV II wing, having my first towing experience, and seeing how funny it was from the air to see 2 guys running their asses off.

LOL, this was definitly some Thanksgiving flying to remember. And yes, todays 20 seconds of airtime is making it into the logbook.

I work hard for my money, doot doo doot

Working for a living sucks!

I've been putting in some killer shifts at my new place of work, which seems to be eating up all my time. It's kind of hard to have a life when you're working until 2 am, and are exhausted the next day. I actually like my new little job that I have, but jeez, it really doesn't facilitate having a lot of fun outside work.

Besides working, I've been making plans for the winter. I've got my flights booked to a surprise destination, whoaaaa haaa haaaa, which I will reveal later. Let's just say that's it's nice and warm there, very flyable, and pretty exotic. I never thought I'd be heading out there to paraglide - oh it's going to be great!

I've been trying to arrange everything for my trip - getting a vario, maybe a new camera, bookings, etc. over the last few days - man travelling is expensive! Yikes, things add up out of nowhere...for example, some airlines only allow one piece of checked baggage. A paraglider on top of that? Well, you have to pay like 10 bucks for every additional kg on that next piece of luggage - crazy! Sheesh, it seems like everywhere you turn, you're nickeled and dimed. Let's see, my pack weighs about 22 kg x $10 = $220, screw that! Oh, I'll find some creative way around this one baby!

Here's my "less than ideal" costume that I wore last weekend...facepaint is really not my thing, so I instead opted for a more 'au natural' look.

Are you green with envy? ha ha, oh, nevermind, that was just bad...



In other news, in the past, Cochrane has been somewhat consistently flyable on Thanksgiving so I'm hoping that this Sunday will have history repeat itself. It's great seeing gliders in the air - it's even better though when you're one of them.

The flying season IS NOT dead.

Ratty Flying

Boooo, the weekend is over!

Despite the less than ideal flying conditions, the weekend was a blast. The first annual Golden Glass-off (and masquerade party) was great fun, and I'm already looking forward to next year!
I arrived Friday afternoon in Golden, where I managed to squeeze in two flights. On the first flight the wind in the valley was pretty strong, and I wasn't penetrating much. I stuck on the speedbar and made it to the LZ fine. The second flight was nicer, but only a sled run.

The next morning, all the pilots gathered for the meet, which unfortunately never really happened. The wind was very strong all day at launch, and only a couple hang glider pilots flew. It wasn't all bad though - the sun was shining, and the winds were light in the LZ. I think we all caught up on our socializing.

That night, John and Cathy-Anne McIssack, the organizers of the event, fed us an awesome supper with free booze! The partying lasted into the wee hours of the morning at which point I offered to sacrifice the fake rat which was part of my witch's costume, in order to appease the wind gods. Who knew a $3 fake rabid rat could bring so much joy.

Slightly hungover the next morning, we drove up to launch, waited a bit, and ended up getting a flight in. The wind gods accepted my unique offering. The winds were fine at launch, but over the LZ, maybe 800 feet up or so, it was kind of dodgy. There was a lot of lift and sink, as the winds were gusty. Our goal was to hit a target with a 20 foot diameter...most of us landed about 100 feet away! How strange it was to see the target on final approach, and feel yourself sinking straight friggen down without it getting any closer! It was a good learning experience, that's for sure.

I accomplished a couple things this weekend: good launches, being mentally comfortable in the air, and using my speedbar for the first time, outside the SIV course. I've still gotta tidy-up those wingovers, and master the secrets of finding lift. I think I've gotta stock up on those freakish looking rats too!