Monkey Business

Seems like I've been writing more about my non-flying activities this season than my flying! Oh well, it's all good and Sue and I have been having a really nice time together. It used to really bother me when we couldn't race due to the weather, but I've become better with it over the years. The world cup, after all, is also about seeing different places, and enjoying the temporary immersion into other cultures around the world.

As with most of the world cup destinations I've visited thus far, they are usuallly well of the beaten tourist path, and typcially located in beautiful mountainous regions. Hakuba is no different with the exception that most of the valley floors are covered with rice paddies!

Today was another good day to leave the local Hakuba valley as it poured rain there all day. Again the competition organized a day trip for the foreign pilots. One bus went to a castle in Matsamoto, and the other bus went to see the Onsen Monkeys. "Onsen" is Japanese for hot spring or hot bath, and we all know what monkeys are! Put the two of them together and it makes for some very interesting and entertaining sight seeing.

It was about a half hour walk through a beautiful forest to get to the river and hot spring. There are about 200 monkeys which inhabit this particular area and they seemed quite at home with all of us gawking at them and taking pictures. The youngsters were playing endlessly while the adults looked on and seemed rather board with it all. When I first walked into the area and came upon the first monkey, I sat down on a rock and started to film him with my small Go Pro video camera. He came right up to me and actually started to climb on me while reaching for my camera. Fortunately my grip was just a bit stronger than his as I was prepared for his antics! He actually got his hand around the camera and we had just a bit of a tug-a-war for a moment before I elbowed him and made it clear who the dominant male was at the moment....

The young babies were definately a 10 on the cuteness scale. I watched one very young one venture away from it's mother, trying bravely to climb a small little hill on it's own. It made it a few feet and then lost it's grip on the ground and rolled end over end backwards right back down to it's mother who reached out and scooped the little guy up as he was about to go tumbling by....

The organization is optimistic and thinks we might get a chance to fly tomorrow. Looking at the satelite and weather forecast I can't say that I agree but nothing wrong with optimism. It takes a minimum of 2 decent days of racing to make the competition valid enough to award 15 places in the Superfinal. If this ends up being a total bust for racing, then my last chance for a Superfinal spot will be in Chelan in July. I was orginally planning on attending the Greece event next month, but have withdrawn from that one as it just wasn't working out to get the time off, and I'd really like to stay closer to home.... Might check out the Rat Race competition earlier in the month....