Wednesday

Great workout today. 100k race with pretty good racing conditions for the first half and then things slowed down as we worked our way down the valley. I had a "very unprofessional" launch as the technical director put it... Because of my bomb out yesterday, I lost my preferred launching status, which is something I've not been without for awhile. I never got it at a world cup comp because they just do an ordered launch from #1 all the way down the list, but I'm pretty spoiled with it everywhere else. So, I had to get ready early, and I was going to be one of the first to launch when they decided to move the start time back a half an hour. This extra half hour was all the time it took for another 100 pilots to get ready so my window to launch early was closing in a hurry. Yesterday there were 15 pilots who were not able to launch because the wind started blowing from over the back. There wasn't enough wind to do a reverse launch so I had to do a forward, and other pilots were laying their gliders out below me on the hill so it was 'now or never'. Unfortunately the "now" part of the equation didn't include any wind at all to help me so I just went charging down the hill, jumping over not one, nor two, but three other gliders as I valiantly guided my wing this way and that way finally getting airborne at the bottom of the launch area. It was just plane UGLY! I didn't do any damage to anyone's glider but that was clearly the ugliest launch I've had in quite awhile. I thought about trying to abort but that probably would have been worse than just getting it overwith and getting air borne. This rocket ship I'm flying needs alot of speed to get airborne!

I finished today maybe 7th or 8th or so and am pretty happy with how I flew. There were maybe 25 out of 145 pilots in goal. Took almost 3 hours to get back to Roldanillo with one stop for some refreshmeents. They had two busses at goal to take us back - one pretty nice one with nice seats, and another worn out one with bench seats. For some reason they put our gliders in the nice cumffy seats and made us ride in the old bus with very uncomfortable seating... Weather looks even better tomorrow so should be another great race day.

If you're reading this Mom or someone is reading it to you HAPPY BIRTHDAY I LOVE YOU!

Jack