Well the last race day for the Pre-Europeans comp was windy but still quite fun... They called a 66k 'elapsed time' race which I had never done before. Basically, everyone is racing against the clock instead of with each other. This was done for safety concerns and was a good call. I decided to leave early because I knew that If I flew the course and arrived in goal early on I would get many 'leading' points which is part of the scoring algorithym. I left with a half a dozen other pilots headed across a large valley, but the initial glide didn't look good so I angled off toward a smaller mountain near the start cyclinder and found a nice climb which got me into a really good position to make the first crossing. The rest of my initial group had pushed on and were already looking pretty low. The rest of the flight I flew by myself with 140 pilots behind me. Some waited up to 45 minutes at the start before they headed out. Conditions were quite strong at times and at one point I let myself get a bit downwind of one of the turn points and I was just barely able to penetrate into the headwind to tag it. It took me almost 10 minutes just to go a little over a kilometer!! Crazy! When I finally did get that point, and then the next one the long glide to goal was straight down a large valley with a huge tail wind. I was making 80-85 kilometers per hour for much of it.... felt like I was in an airplane there for awhile. When I finally climbed up to the last ridge top and looked over and saw the large goal line I realized that I was the first one there, and even though I probably wasn't the fastest, I would have a good score with the leading points I would get.
I ended up 2nd for the day, and took 6th place overall for the competition so I'm quite happy with my result, and feel good and warmed up for the world cup event coming up next week.
Sue and I had an amazing day today hiking the mountains behind Abtenau. We didn't fly today as the forcast was for thunderstorms and high winds, but once again the forcast wasn't too acurate and the day turned out gorgeous. We hiked for about 5 hours and made it to the top of a mountain, which had a cable in place to help us up the last 30 meters or so. We sat up there and took in the view and snacked a bit, and sure enough as we were gazing a paraglider flew right by us!
On the way down we rode the rail tobagan thing which is pretty fun. Another really nice dinner with a band yodoling in the back ground. Then packing and getting ready to head out early in the morning... Sue is headed to Nice to visit with her sister and some other family, and I am headed to Munich and then to Istanbul, and then to south-western Turkey to rest up for the world cup starting on the weekend...
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