Tuesday Task 3

UGH!! Ok, never mind, I'm over it.... but it kind of hurts to see the lead gaggle fly over your head to goal when you've landed just short after an excellent day of good decision making and fast racing! Today was a 109k race to gaol with some turn points in the mountains and some out in the flat lands. The start was organized chaos because the day just wasn't quite on yet so 130 of us were all groveling around in front of launch in lite lift. If I was a bubble of lift I would have been terrified as I would be instantly sliced and diced up by 100 wings, and then what ever bit was left would be consumed again!

More often than not with this group if you're flying just ahead of the main gaggle, as I often try to do, when you find some lift you better really take a deep breath before you start a turn because you'll likely see a huge gaggle coming right at you and they all want what you've found!! Often I just give up trying to find a way to merge back into them and continue on unless it's too strong to pass up....

The day finally turned on during the first glide and I worked very hard to keep up and pushed out front several times. Two different times a large gaggle came in quite high above me and I just climbed underneath them until they went on glide.... and then I went on glide also, even though I could have still climbed quite a bit higher. You just have to stay with them or your race will be over... it's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to catch up once they pull away unless the day is really slow with spotty lift and they get stuck somewhere. So today I flew the 2nd half of the race about 300 meters below the lead gaggle, but I was with them or ahead of them all the way. About 25k from goal there was one final crossing of the flat lands and then a very large mountain range. We flew into the slopes about half way up and just 'pinged' to cloud base... I looked at my vario averager and I was doing 7.1 meters per second up to 3600 meters. Whoooo eeeee!! Then the instruments were showing that we would only need one more small climb to make goal, but goal was once again out across the flats and the day was getting late - and the valley winds were strong below. I finished the long glide just behind about 10 in the lead gaggle and watched them get the last climb that they needed, but then I thought I would take a shot at winning the day and pushed on ahead across the slopes thinking I would surely find the climb I needed.... Lesson for the day was to recognize at what altitude the valley winds get stronger and start blowing the thermals apart, and that I'm probably not smarter than the 10 top pilots tanking up on the last nice high terrain before the final glide......So it goes... I'm still very happy with how I flew today even though the results won't show it. I'm getting the opportunity to play chess with the masters and it is teaching me more every time I play the game...

The retrieve back to HQ was an experience in itself.. All I can say is I'm so thankful for 1, my REI inflatable seat cushion, and 2, my in ear earphones to mostly drown out the drunk Germans and others who were singing bar songs and howling at the Japanese female pilot who was poll dancing around one of support poles in the front of the bus. We had to sit at goal for almost two hours waiting for the goal to close and for everyone to be retrieved that was in the area. Needless to say there was quite a bit of alcohol consumed. There were twice as many pilots than seats, and there were bodies and glider bags strewn everywhere. At one point there were bodies actually flying through the air and being tossed around like they were nothing... I really had to keep my guard up to avoid being injured!

We are looking at one, maybe two weather days for Wednesday and possibly Thursday. I hope to work on some video editing.... Today I was seriously bumbed when I discovered that I'd left my memory stick out of my camera. Here I thought I was getting all that crazy gaggle flying on video.... Darn!

Pictures are "the agony of defeat" and a goat herder who stopped by to smile and shake our hands...

Jack