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.....
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