French Adventures

Man, oh man, what an adventure I had getting out here to France. Without boring you all to bits, I’ll sum it up in a paragraph:

My flight from Toronto to Heathrow was delayed and the plane almost left without me, on the plane I got zero sleep thanks to babies crying and a kid fascinated with the overhead light switch, in Heathrow the line to clear customs was over an hour and a half long, when the bus from Heathrow arrived at Gatwick airport there was a lineup from inside the terminal snaking all the way out the doors. This two hour line ended up being for checking baggage as the carousels were not working properly, and my flight to Bordeaux was therefore delayed by 3 hours. This was by far my most exhausting travel journey ever, but I met some great people along the way, and arrived here, with my bags, in one piece!

The Dune itself is well…massive! The weather is hot but the sun reflects off the dune making it even more of a scorcher. The Brits I’m flying with are great (God I love the English!) and so far things have been going pretty well.

Yesterday I soared for about 45 minutes and just spent some time messing around with my glider on he dune. The wind was a consistent 25-30 k’s which made it perfect to muck about.

The two flights I had yesterday were somewhat uneventful, as ridge soaring tends to be. I think soaring-wise I did well, and although there was plenty of “traffic” to watch out for, I just anticipated what others would do and felt confident cozying up as close to the ridge as possible.

On my landing during my second flight I thought it would be cool to fly downwind as far as possible, and then spin the glider upwind at the last second. Well…I waited a touch too long upwind and ate sand on that one, but hey, where else would you want to practice this stuff? I’ll have this move down-pact by the end of next week.

The sea breeze right now is a touch too strong and a bit scattered, so we’ve taken a break from the sun and will be back at the Dune in a bit. I’ll have more adventures to recite soon, I’m sure.