I'm drowning - It's over

As if to put a major exclamation point on the Nordic Open, this evening at the awards ceremony, it started to rain when they began giving out the awards, and when it came time to award the open class top 3 pilots, the skies opened up and just poured cats and dogs on the ceremony.... It was pretty funny the timing of it all.

We flew today but it clouded over and shut down the lift after about 30-40 minutes of racing.... every pilot sunk out on course before the first turn point.

Sue and I will be starting our adventure home in the morning. We're going to go back via Paris and will hopefully make it home Sunday evening late, but more likely some time on Monday....

Sue didn't suffer with the weather as I did and really got out and enjoyed the Slovenian countryside. It really is a very appealing country and I expect we'll be back again some day for another visit....

Thursday, July 9th

Boy I guess I have some serious catching up to do! I'll start with the current moment and go back from there....

Sitting with Sue at lakeside of the Hotel Bor. We are listening to a local folk band playing for the competition. We just had an excellent pizza dinner at a local restaurant and a beverage and are ready to relax and enjoy the beautiful evening.

Today, against all odds we actually got to race and it was quite fun. It was a rather short task at only 32k, and I don't think I relaxed long enough to enjoy the beautiful scenery for the entire flight, but it was quite fun. I came so very close to winning the race but landed just 100 meters short of the goal cylinder!! I figured I should go for it and made really good decision making until the end where I pushed on towards goal without gaining enough altitude to make it. But I'm quite happy as I was in the lead and in position to win.... just didn't quite get there. There was a large pole and a tree which kept me from finishing my final glide so I had to pull up and land short so I could have a safe landing....

On Monday, we drove up to launch and the weather was lousy and we weren't even able to free fly down the mountain and had to load back up in the vans and bus and drive down. At the pilot meeting on Monday they told us that the weather for Tuesday was looking really dismal, with a chance to race on Wednesday afternoon. This was all the news that Sue and I needed to set off on an adventure for a few days to celebrate our 25Th wedding anniversary.

First we headed west to the Slovenian coast on the Adriatic Sea. Our main goal was to try and find sunny weather. We found a very busy tourist city on the coast and nice weather as well. We drove around and went for a walk and decided that there were way too many people and it was just too busy here so we decided to drive down the coast into Croatia.

We really didn't have any plan but were just going for it.... the farther we drove, the nicer the weather became. After an hour or so we found this very cool small hotel which was built right on the edge of the Adriatic Sea and was just exactly what we were looking for. In 10 minutes I was in my swimming suit, enjoying 80 degree weather, swimming in the Adriatic Sea which was like a bathtub!! Sue elected to sit down with a nice glass of wine and we both soon became entranced with the whole situation. What an amazing transformation from being in the pouring rain in Preddvor just a few hours earlier!!

We enjoyed a wonderful evening together and did up our 25th anniversary in style along the Croatian Coast.

After sleeping in on Tuesday morning, we set out with 2 items on our wish list for the day. First was the caves of Skocjanske, and the second was to see the home of the famous Lipizzaner stallions, both located in South Western Slovenia.

The caves were absolutely amazing. I know I'd been to the Grand Canyon Caverns when I was young and I remember how enormous the caverns were. These caves in Slovenia were also very large, but they also had a large river crashing down all through it. It was really something, a huge cavern with a large river canyon, all a few hundred meters underground. Whoever engineered the lighting did a good job, and the stalactite and stalagmite formations were amazing. About a 2 hour walk with 6 kilometers underground....

Lipica, the home of Lipizzaner horses since the 1700s was only 15 minutes away from the caves so we headed right over. We thought that we might even spend the night there but we ended up just having a very nice guided tour of the stud farm and stables. Beautiful animals and an incredible setting. If I were a horse then this would be the Stables of the Four Seasons for horses. The history was quite interesting.... a very British guide explained how the horses had to be moved several times because of the wars which were going on in the region over the centuries. It's amazing that the stables and horses survived it all. They currently have 44 breeding mares, and a large herd of Lipazzaners on the grounds of various ages... each and every horse is branded just like a cow on his left haunch with a 3 digit number. The stable for the stallions had stall after stall of Lipizzaner studs which were remarkably similar in size and shape. I'm sure the personalities were quite different but physically, you almost couldn't tell them apart.

We were so close to the Italian boarder that I suggested that next we head over into Italy for dinner and to see the sights. Triste was just across the boarder.... a large coastal city so we set our sights there and soon found ourselves in an extremely busy city with narrow streets and not a parking spot to found ANYWHERE! Believe me when I say that it was absolutely nuts driving around. There were scooters everywhere and I don't think you could have found a place to park your scooter if you'd needed to. If I'd had my pickup truck from home there in Triste, I physically wouldn't have been able to drive it around except for the very main streets.

We quickly had our fill of that scene and headed north out of the city and soon found a nice park and pizzeria which was catering to locals. After a good meal we walked for an hour along the sea and then drove back into Slovenia where we found a nice hotel for the night. We arrived back in Preddvor Wednesday morning to more rain and another cancelled day.

We decided to go to the movies and take it easy at a large shopping mall not too far away.....

Today Sue tried to wait it out with me to see if they were going to go up the mountain or not but eventaully gave up and drove up to a beautiful lake called Bohinjc, which ways about an hours drive, where whe walked and hiked and had a really nice day in a spectacular setting.

Slovenia, is an amazing country and has a really good feel about it. I could easily see myself living in a place like this.....

Sunday task 1 Nordic Open

As happened so often last week at the Slovenian Open, conditions looked quite good earlier in the day, but when we finally got a task called and everyone off the hill, conditions once again over developed and it started to rain out on the course line. It was fun while it lasted but was over far to soon. Again, the forecast isn't looking so good. The pattern much of europe has been in for several weeks seems to be continuing with high humidity and scattered thunderstorms....

Sue drove me up to launch today and we went for a nice hike before the task was called. The launch is at the top of a large ski resort and the views are breathtaking....

After flying Sue and I drove in to Kranj and did some sight seeing and had a nice walk along a river which runs through the city. I really like Slovenia... I think it's my favorite europe destination thus far.....

Preddvor warm up flying

On to Preddvor and the Nordic Open

We made the move today to the Hotel Bor in Preddvor, which is only about a 40 minute drive from Zelezniki. It's a very different place, however, with flat lands and then a large mountain range in the backdrop instead of the multiple valley's of Zelezniki.

After the last day of the Slovenian Open was once again canceled due to rain after many pilots had launched, I folded up my wet glider and gear and Sue and I headed for clearer skies and our new diggs. The weather was beautiful when we arrived, despite pouring rain back in Zelezniki. I quickly found a few other pilots who were interested in making a late afternoon flight and we headed up to the launch. I enjoyed a magical hour long flight with one of the more beautiful high mountain backdrops I've experienced with a paraglider. Boy did I ever need that flight!!

Sue and I finished the evening with a nice meal and then I finished my registration for the Nordic. Tomorrow they are saying that we might be able to have a short race so we will see... Have heard such optimistic forecasts several times this past week, and the weather forecast is less than inspiring....

My camera is packed in my glider bag so I'll post some pics from today tomorrow...

Slovenian Open task 3

Actually, there hasn't been a task 3 yet.... not that the organizers haven't tried valiantly. The last two days have been characterized by going up the hill and then sitting around for hours listening to the thunder and getting rained on. The sun comes out briefly and then the cycle repeats itself. Tomorrow, the last day is supposed to be good weather, but we've actually heard that report more than once before....

Today, Sue went up the mountain with me. We drove our rental car as far as we could and then walked the rest of the way up to launch. We enjoyed hot chocolate and some really good home made soup in Ratotvec Hut. They called a task and the sun came out and we all started getting ready. Then before we knew it there were ominous dark black clouds just behind launch and then the thunder and lightening started and then the rain... we just barely had time to quickly pack up our wings and run for cover. I decided I'd had enough sitting around so I checked in with the organizer, grabbed my glider and Sue and I walked back down to our car.

We decided to go check out our next location for the Nordic Open championships in a small town called Preddvor. It sits just at the base of a gorgeous range of mountains - mountains quite large with much rock higher up and what looks like a great flying potential.

I've just finished talking with the organizer and he has given a ton of options of places to go and sights to see this next week when the weather is not so good!! Probably a drive up into Italy and some beautiful mountain lake hiking....

Pics are of Pete Schaefer and I flying down after they canceled the day yesterday. A local wild animal Sue and I ran into while hiking back down today, a few wild flowers, and the Hotel Bor where we will be moving to tomorrow for the Nordic Open...

Slovenian Open task 2

We'll today we made another valiant effort to have a race but the weather again was quite difficult. The cumulus development started early and by the time we got up to launch things were really looking strong. Then a solid layer of high clouds moved in and shut down everything. Instead of waiting for the sun to come out and for things to start cycling again, they launched us and everyone was on the ground after the first glide out from launch.

It was pretty fun up on launch today because there was a herd of wild animals grazing right where we lay out our gliders and launch. Some of them were quite fascinated with our multi-colored paragliders and I think some of them were even having some shameless thoughts which I won't expand upon any further. It took quite an effort to get these wild animals to move away from our launch area...

Enjoyed some fun volleyball on the very nice sand court which they have at headquarters, and then drove back up the mountain to try and get in a late afternoon flight, but again, the weather didn't cooperate and the winds were blowing the wrong direction. On the way down we stopped at a very nice hillside restaurant and I had enjoyed a very good pizza and some refreshment.

Tomorrow the weather is looking better so we are all hoping that we might get to have a fun race day... we will see!

I believe Sue is on her way to London now and hopeful will find her way to Slovenia tomorrow sometime.... There are many beautiful hikes to do and plenty of adventures to be experienced in this beautiful, very friendly place.

One of the pictures is of a huge gun mount which was kept as a monument to when the Germans came into the area and completely wiped out the local population.