Re: Mexico

I'm all wet.

Here is a quick update to let you all know I survived my Mexican SIV clinic ;)
These guys are SO my style down here, here was how Rulo described what he wanted me to do on my second run over the lake today: "Ok, so you're going to do a negative spin first, I want you to spin 360 and as you come out facing the lake again go directly to a full stall (he's of course describing everything in detail), then you can do a SAT and just as you are bleeding out from that I want you to keep some speed and come out straight towards the lake with a big climb and then full stall again dynamically and this time come right out of it - check your surge it's going to be big, then whether you do everything right or not, chuck your reserve."
I see what he's doing ... and I like it!! He basically wanted me to actually practice the negative spin and full stall but then just get myself completely f#cked so the reserve deployment is as realistic as possible :0
I headed out over the water with a plastic baggie over my radio and a plastic water bottle we found in the trash can next to launch tied to my reserve handle so it doesn't sink. Oh yeah, they put a life jacket on me too. Rulo tells me to go for the negative spin. I bury my right brake, spin quickly and fall fast. I let out my right hand and forgot to go directly to stall but instead tried to just check the surge. I was way late and this time I definitely got some line slack as my wing flew forward and down and frontaled while I shot a small arc right between my linesets. When I hit and came tight on the lines again I expected another huge surge but I was actually flying straight and level again! Rulo says o.k. you can do the SAT now. I'm so excited for this! I ready myself, take a wrap on the right brake, and pull into a spiral... a bit too timidly. My spiral winds up and I realize I am burning precious altitude but I think to myself if I can just manhandle this thing into a lazy SAT then my descent will slow. I lean and pull harder on my right brake. By this point I had done a couple revolutions in a deep spiral and was going Mach Loonie so it was incredibly hard to get my wing to break past horizontal. Just as it starts to come around into a SAT I realize that I'm probably less than 300 feet up and it's time to get serious. Rulo is saying something over the radio but my only thought is getting the reserve out. Since I'm now trying to bleed out from the spiral I take my right hand out of the brake and reach for the reserve handle. I notice my wing is now mostly out of the spiral and it's starting a climb-and-dive/surge exit but I'm too preoccupied with just getting the damn reserve handle out, which is firmly stuck as I give it a tremendous tug. NOT the time for this to happen as I actually am kind of counting on this thing presently! (Btw, it stuck rather badly during the 'dry' reserve clinic a couple months ago, AND I just read a safety alert notice from my harness's manufacturer that my model of harness has been having issues with the velcro tab that closes the outer reserve container pins sticking to the pin laces and making it difficult to pull the reserve and inner container out. NOT a good quality for a harness and not something that's ever been told to me before this trip!)
(Rulo thinks it might also have to do with the reserve handle bridel being too short so that when I pull the handle the bridal is actually pulling on the still-pinned reserve container and actually making it harder for the pins to pull through and release the outer container...)
So anyway, I get the thing out on the second, slightly panicked tug. I don't even take the time to recoil my arm or look where I'm throwing - I know exactly where I was that reserve and it's out behind me because I'm now about 75 feet above the lake and headed straight for shore! At this point I actually had a split second to check out what I was going to hit and it looked like I was going to be *just* inside the water's edge (good) but also headed right toward a metal railing fence that extended somebody's property line 15 or so feet into the lake (not so good). I felt my reserve inflate and tug me back almost immediately. In fact it pulled tight and inflated so quickly that I was a bit surprised. I was more or less flying straight and evenly toward shore and maybe 50' or less up when the reserve pulled tight. I had pulled right brake because I thought I was going to have to steer away from the fence and I hadn't been positive I was going to get any help from my reserve any time soon. Actually, now that I was out of the spiral I would have been in bettter shape had I just kept my brakes in hand and flown my wing back towards deeper water. But since the idea all along was to chuck the reserve and as I exited my deep spiral at 200' I thought I might actually like to have it out anyhow it was a fine decision to throw it then...
My wing turns out toward the lake and begins to downplane but it actually is pulling me away from that nasty metal fence so I let it go. Although this increases my downward velocity I'm fine with that and hit the water a second later. I can just touch my feet to the bottom and the landing was gentle (although, had I downplaned into a solid object at this speed it probably would have caused injury.)
It was amazing how quickly my legs became entangled in the lines of my glider! Even though I was pretty much just standing there trying to get my radio off and into the boat which quickly arrived. Rulo and I were laughing so hard - and the video that my friend Thomas took from shore is pretty epic!
So, all in all I learned a TON. I know that my surge control timing is still late and I can't wait to practice more full stalls, spins, heli's and frontals over water. I feel really good about controlling asymetric collapses as I have had many at this point. I also feel good about spin appreciation turns as the surge out of these is much less violent than from a stall or negative spin. I know I have an issue with my harness reserve container/handle that needs fixing. And, I know that a SAT is actually going to be an easy maneuver to do on my wing. Sweet!
Oh yeah, and yesterday I did another full stall, this time with Rulo watching and guiding me over my radio. My right hand accidentally came up a bit right when my body fell back and under the wing and it put me into a perfectly flat and stable helicopter for several revolutions! Ha! But that's another story...

Full-o stall-o?

Today, Sunday, I had the most exciting flight of my career. It began with another launch of Peñon. As I was working the morning thermals I found myself joining this great thermal with another pilot who was the only one in it prior to me. There were about 5-6 other wings in the air all looking or coring their own thermals but this one was The One to be in! So I adjust my angle of attack on the cylinder I can clearly see the other pilot scribing as he turns so that I'll enter on a tangent to it, turning in his chosen direction (right) and also 180 degrees opposite him. It all works smoothly, which is actually kind of rare in my brief career of thermalling. Usually the two or more pilots in a thermal can't agree on where the exact core is so you have overlapping circles, each are usually oblong and ever changing as the pilots attempt to find the 'sweet spot'. Then you have people rising at different rates, nearly colliding, having to turn when they don't want to to avoid collisions etc. It's a clusterf&ck!
But this time things work out just like in the video. The other pilot's on an Ozone wing and we quickly make a rule to only include Ozone wings in our thermal. Even though his wing looks like a Mantra we are staying exactly opposite of each other, turning tight (45º++) turns, and rising at exactly the same speed. Then he yells over that he has a helmet cam on and that I should smile - I hope I get to see that picture, how lucky! We continue like this for at least a minute and soon we are hundreds of meters above any of the other pilots - and still climbing!! I see Alex join our thermal (even though she's on an Advance, we let her in since she's a bit below) and as things start to level off we are at about 3100 meters, nearly 3000 feet over launch and the other Ozone pilot yells "Vamanos!" and begins heading off toward El Peñon. Alex and I follow and this is where you can see the difference between a beginner wing and an advanced wing. As I'm still ploughing toward the rock the other pilot has already arrived on top of Peñon and is doing tight circles up in the thermal over it. I eventually get there but I'm much lower and have to go do the 'face dance' with Peñon. I'm a little more confident this time and I am able to quickly rise up to the top and get in the thermal above. By this time the other pilot is gone, but I begin my XC voyage alone and happy!
I work Peñon for a bit and then head back to the wall behind it. I creep near the G spot but things are pretty gnarly and I try to keep a safe distance from the rock wall/ridge. I'm not getting much lift but I continue to work things for about 1/2 hour and finally I am able to get a lift. It was pretty tense as the thermals are powerful and bumpy today. Glad to be up high again I work the thermals coming off the 'crazy thermal mesa' as the locals call it. It's crazy indeed and I am fighting full time to keep my wing above me. It gets slammed to the left, to the right, surges, starts to collapse - save it! - banks more, banks less, Wham! I fall out of it, get back in, grab that air! Wooo Hoo! Up I go!
I follow the ridge out all the way to its end which is incidentally the top of the slope where I almost walked back up to relaunch yesterday. I catch a huge thermal off of this slope and begin to head back. At several points I am way over 1600 fpm climb rate and I reach a height of 3400 meters, a new record for me.
All of the sudden - my wing make a loud BANG... And it's gone. I mean, I hear it flapping loudly behind me, but I'm falling like there's a toy GI Joe parachute attached to me and I just go 'hands up' - I'll let the Mojo2 figure this one out! When I see my wing again it's in the approximate shape of a wadded up piece of newspaper, just about to be added to the fireplace. WTF?! I wait only a fraction of a second more and then BAM it reinflates and surges. I think I managed to check some of the surge because my lines never go slack, but seeing your wing out almost 90º in front of you when you're not in the middle of a wingover is not a fun sight. I swing under it and fly off laughing uncontrollably! I couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes. I love my wing!!!
So I head towards a hill in the distance and I know from my height that I shouldn't have a problem reaching it. But as I near it I cross the convergence and begin battling head winds coming off the lake. I reach the hill very low (o.k. probably still 3-500 feet above the trees) but just when I think I might have to start heading toward a farm field for a possible landing I hit the thermal which is popping off this same field and it takes me skyward. I cruize up to almost 3200 meters again and now it's just a lazy glide to the lake. I'm in the convergence zone so I know I should get decently even lift all the way back. I take a pee, eat my sandwich, get some water and take some pictures. I'm staying up and when I get to the lake I'm still at about 2200 meters which is maybe 500 meters above the lake. I see boats crossing the water below and can see the landing not too far in front of me.
Hey, why not do a full stall? I just had essentially the same thing happen to me already today and I was over trees and rocks then! So I remind myself what to do - Take a couple wraps in each hand, bury both brakes evenly, KEEP THEM BURIED until my wing reappears overhead, gently let them up as long as the wing is overhead and in sight, let it fly, check the surge - got it! I go for it. My wing disappears agian, this time on purpose! I mean, that thing shoots backwards when you full stall, it was impressive. I keep the brakes buried and wait a couple seconds, the wad of paper appears overhead and it's making an awful sound - like it's just PISSED that I am doing this to it. I begin to release the brakes, evenly. As my hands rise the G forces return and my wing is just itching to be flying agian. It surges violently forward. I don't remember checking it but I assume I did, probably a little late at near the end of it's surge. My lines stay tight and I'm happy about that but there appears to be a small crevatte at each wingtip. At this point things get a bit blurry, but I remember going hands up and watching the right crevatte pop out. My wing either surged again or dove into a turn because it flew off violently forward and to one side a bit, toward the left side where a small crevatte remained. I think I braked with both hands and possibly a bit harder with my right hand since the wing was off to the left. The left crevatte popped out and there was another surge/dive and I was back under my fully functional wing. I checked my altitude on the vario and it said I was at 2000 meters so I think I lost close to 600 feet during this whole thing, but that might not be exactly accurate.
I do the best, biggest wingovers ever - they feel like loops on each turn! I pull out the camera and take a video from between my knees of me doing some more, smaller, wingovers. Then I do my first decent assymetric spiral, which is fun but I only do it for a couple turns since I am nearing my LZ. I bleed out the energy from the spiral in the same direction (no reversals for me... yet!) and set up for a perfect landing.
Again Rulo is there to greet me, he says he say my full stall and he congratulates me on my awesome day of flying. He says we are all set up for a boat tomorrow so it looks like I will get to practice some more frontals (which Trey later explains is what probably happened to me the first time my wing lost it's shit) and some more full stalls. Then he says I should throw my reserve - I can't wait!!!

¡Arrriiiiíba! ¡Aye Carúmba!

Saturday took me on a great XC voyage over Peñon again, then I touched the G spot and made my big break for the next ridge and the Three Kings!! I had seen photos in the USHPA magazine of comp pilots flying to this ridge during the pre worlds competitions that are held here often. But I made a fatal flaw of forgetting that I am flying a wing with a top speed of, oh, maybe 12mph and a glide ration of 1:1 when I'm heading directly into the wind. My second error was to turn with the wind (right) and arrive on the lee side of a prominence on this ridge. I thought I could still find some good thermals since a long valley ended near where I was headed. I scratched and scratched to no avail. But where I landed was probably the cleanest most pristine place I have ever seen in Mexico. It was at the top of this valley, surrounded on all sides by long sloping treed ridges that turned into gigantic rock cliffs as they intruded into the larger valley below. And there was a spring of water coming out from the ground near where I landed. What's amazing is that although you could definitely drink the water (I didn't though because I still had plenty in my water bladder) it was coming out of the ground at a very comfortable temperature. Most spring water I've felt before was ice cold - I'd say this came out of the ground at about 65 degrees!

So I sat and enjoyed a nice lunch all by myself in this meadow next to the spring. I knew I had a very long walk out (5+ miles) but I was happy and just enjoying the experience I was having. After I ate and packed my wing up I walked to the nearby dirt road and in about 2 minutes a old blue Nissan Truck that was barely running pulls up and with nary a word exchanged I hop in the back, how cool! There was a family inside and the little girl kept looking back at me and shying away when I smiled and waved.

I learned a lot on this day. Like where to aim when you're on glide for the next (hopefully) thermic spot. I also got some great photos of the convergence line and the pulse thermals that were popping off the ridge back near the G spot.

The truck took me to the town at the base of this smaller valley and I waited for a taxi for a bit. Then some guys who were kind of watching me suggested that they would take me to Valle for $200 pesos, I politely declined. Then the suggested that I sack up and climb back up the slope at the base of the ridge which came out from the G spot and pointed directly at where I sat. I considered it for a bit and then thought that this would be the awesomest day ever if I relaunched and then flew back to the lake instead of spending money and gas! I began walking upslope, crossing a barbed wire fence and steering clear of some mean looking bulls that were grazing. Then this little kid, maybe 7 years old, comes running up after me and he's yelling at me. I didn't know what he wanted exactly as it was very hard to communicate with him at all. He knew not a word of English and didn't understand how to play charrades so I pretty much just kept asking him "Que?" and he would rapidly repeat what he had just blurted out. At one point I thought I caught the word "Toro" so I asked if there were "Toros" up the hill where I was headed and he shook his head "No".

So I was really confused and although I thought that maybe he just wanted money or something I began looking around and decided that the landings were not very optimal even if I made it to the top of this slope without being gored and managed to launch successfully. The chances of me making an immediate 'save' at only 200-300AGL were slim. So I followed him back down the hill and this time we walked right by those bulls I saw earlier. I frantically made bull horns with my hands and pretended to gore myself while making gurgling sounds but the little kid said that they were "no bravo" which I was really hoping meant not brave enough to notice the ginormous bright red pack on my back.

I paid a taxi an exorbenant amount of money ($100 pesos) to get me back to El Peñon and when I arrived alone I was not exactly looking forward to yet another solo launch in mid-day conditions. Even though all previous had gone well, I doubted this guy knew much about rescue or first aid or even what to do if I ended up in a tree. So I made a call to Gui who I had seen on the drive up at nearly cloudbase doing endless circles. Instead, I heard Fiona reply, "Gui just threw his reserve. He's alright, but the thermal edges are really bad."

"O.k., Vamanos!" I say to the taxi and motion for us to leave. "Yo no neccicito muerder hoy!"

I thank Fiona for the info and head home which costs me another $50 pesos. :(

As I neared town I called Rulo and he said that he was taking a group of tourists up to fly tandems off of Torre and that I could join them. I did and it was a great and easy glassoff off of Torre. I threw some nice big wingovers and circled back to the launch several times to repeat the acro. Then again over the lake where I briefly considered trying a full stall, but instead did some 'spin appreciation turns'. These are where you just bury one brake and that side of your wing goes negative (stalls, and flies backwards) and your wing does a fast 180. At this point your wing is way out in front of you and you get a big swing down and out going the exact opposite direction from when you started. It's a great maneuver to know if you suddenly find yourself headed toward something bad, like power lines you couldn't see until the last second, and I'm glad I got to practice them.

As I neared the lake landing I notice that it was almost completely covered by wings, kids, people playing frisbee and families sitting down and eating. WTF!? The thing is already small enough and surrounded by things you don't want to hit on all sides, now I've got to spot land a Chihuahua? As I set up for final approach I felt like I was in a good position to land mid-field next to some gliders that were being folded and I assumed the frisbee game would stop long enough for me to land. But as I got about 20' over the near edge of the landing field I hit some warm, bubbly, up air and people started chanting 'La Luca! La Luca!'. Apparently it's funny when some dumb píloto overshoots landing and goes for a swim. So I'm careening towards these two groups of people SITTING on the far edge of the LZ. One group starts screaming and getting up like they want to run but I turn left a bit - my body swings toward the second group, and I glance at Rulo who's got his hands out like he's holding onto brake toggles and he's got his burried by his knees! So I do a couple of big brake flaps right as my body swings away from the second group and I land gently next to them. Everybody is cracking up and talking in Spanish but I managed to spin around and grab my A's and keep the wing up and kite it so that it doesn't land on the first group who's hurriedly picking up their kids and dogs and picinic materials so I can set my wing down. Rulo looks very relieved that I didn't hurt any of his potential customers and I pack up, grab dos Coronas for mi y mi amigo Vladamir and watch the rest of the pilot carnage from under an umbrella. One of the local pilots stalls or something when he is behind the LZ and comes down hard on this 'bridge lawn' and impacts a metal railing hard. People run over and carry him off the field on their shoulders (nobody is celebrating here...) and some kids pack up his wing. I get the feeling that this sort of thing happens often here and isn't really a big deal to the locals!

I eat pieces of thermals like you for breakfast. - You eat pieces of thermals? Eww!

Friday, Febuary 12 - I finally made it back to the lake today! The day was another beautiful sunny day with Cu's popping up in all the usual spots. I had it in my mind to be patient and just work the thermals coming up in front of launch for a long time before committing to XC'ing. I launched rather late in the morning (probably at 11:45) as I was taking pictures of my fellow pilots getting ready and launching. They all quickly took off into the distance while I patiently worked on my thermalling skills. I am starting to make a 3D mental image of the moving air as I fly around in the sky. As I feel lift or sink I make a map of it and then try to remember where it was, where I've flown since feeling it and also how far has the prevailing winds have shifted it from where I first experienced it. My usual technique is to first fly to the normal thermal trigger spots. This is where having local experience with a flying site is invaluable. Second to that I try to estimate where thermal collectors and triggers might be located. I'm slowly learning how to do this. It's really straightforward stuff - usual collectors are fields, the darker the better, rocks and rock faces. Triggers are the downwind edges of those fields and rocks. Also points on ridges, bowls of ridges, ridgetops, peaks, rock outcroppings, tall tree lines and cloud shadows have proven to be triggers more often than not. Even though that all sounds simple enough it ends up being quite difficult to not just end up wandering around bouncing into and out of thermals and spending as much time in sinking air as you do in rising air. First the prevailing wind takes everything and puts a slant on things - and different slants depending on where you are, what time it is, how big the thermal is, etc. Then there is the sinking air to contend with - however big the thermals are, there is an equal amount of sinking air very close by!
I spent over 2 hours just riding thermals as high as I could over launch. I watched as Jeff, the local tour guide for gringos, headed over the back. And one by one everybody left and I was all alone.
Finally I tentatively moved out front from the top of my last ridge thermal. As I poked toward El Peñon I was waiting to hit the sink that is usually there - at which point I was going to do an 180 and head back to the launch ridge. But as I slowly continued into the headwind I hit a couple pockets of rising air and soon it became clear that I would make it to the face of El Peñon at about mid-height.
That rock is intimidating! As I got closer and became a speck of nylon in front of this huge beast of vertical rock and trees I could tell that there was warm air just flying up the face of the rock. I tentatively got closer and closer to try to grab that air but even at what felt like 50 feet away I was not feeling ANY up air, and even some sink. I was way too scared to try to get any closer, the thought of half of my wing grabbing that upward vertical cascading air while my other wing sat in this still air further out front had mis huevos en mis throat. After poking around for what seemed like forever, I finally started grabbing bits and bits of up air, mostly out front of the rock on its SW spine. When I got above the rock and started turning circles again I felt really excited - I might actually be doing the right things today!
The next objective was to move around this rock to the large cliff behind it. I was very worried about hitting rotor or turbulence behind it, next to it, near the large cliffs I was supposed to be going toward and from another band of cliffs that form a 60º angle with the first one. Basically I had no idea where to go safely, so it required that I slowly poke my wing around here and there in the places that I thought were safe and wait to be proven wrong. Luckily, even though I was in fairly rough air and closer to the trees and ground than I like to be in these conditions, I had only a few minor blips of nastiness and soon I was climbing up again. As I got closer to the point where the two cliffs converged in a saddle (locals call it the G spot) I hit some incredible climbs and was soon up at around 3100 meters where I noticed Gui flying in a nearby thermal too. I kept playing it safe and now I could relax a bit since the prevailing winds were blowing in the direction I wanted to go, more or less. I just tried to stick to the thermals and drift toward my next objective, which was a small hill on top of the mesa I was over.
I knew that if I made it to this next small hill (and the thermal that I heard was always over it) I would be entering the convergence line where winds from the south (the valley in front of Peñon launch) collide with the air from the west (coming across the lake). There was almost always a long cloud street at this convergence and sure enough, right as I reached the hill I got taken up high again and there was lift pretty much everywhere. It was Thermals for Jocks 101 and now I could more or less point it toward the lake and just stumble into thermals surrounded by more thermals!
I was pretty excited to say the least. I probably went about 20k but I am mostly excited about the realm of flying possibilites this seems to open up. With the combination of good weather, and my newfound knowledge of thermals it almost seems that the sky is no longer the limit! I can imagine going wherever I want across the land, just staying up on the rising air alone. And with a faster wing (which will be my first purchase as soon as my business starts to pick up again!) an even greater range of freedom will be available to me.
I called Rulo as I was gliding to the lake, and I took a few pictures to capture the moment. He was waiting there for me with a beer in hand, a smile and a congradulations! It was cool that he was stoked for me even though he can do this flight without problem almost everytime he flies. My flight took 4.5 hours and I was very exhausted - there's rarely a moment of rest when you're flying in air like this! I got a ride home from him and got a very good night's sleep this night.

¡¡Fly ´till you drop!!

So I am on a Spanish keyboard - the ¡ is where the + is and so forth, even though it says otherwise, so forgive my púnctuation!¡
It´s about 3:40 on Thursday. I am slightly relieved that the weather has moved in and it's too windy to fly - I'm SO tired!
Sunday evening: Flight off of Torre, the locals' hill. Great introduction to the air here and it was so nice to be greeted by a smiling new friend, Rulo, and whisked right up to launch. Thanks Rulo!
Monday: Met Rulo and his friend Alexandra and we drove to El Peñon straight off to fly some real thermals. I am so thankful for all the times I've been lucky enough to get into turbulent and thermic air because this was no Thermals 101 launch. In fact, it was so gnarly that Rulo actually went parachutal in his comp wing and had to full stall to recover!! My Mojo2 is still a pig and this pig is saving my ass on this day. I was still at the point of having the knowledge, but not the reactions to fly this air. I actually had to process each reaction: 'O.k. my wing went back HANDS UP - o.k. my wing just surged CHECK IT - alright my right wing just dissapeared and I'm going straight up DO NOTHING - MOJO2 TO THE RESCUE!!!'
Actually my wing is a lot more fun up here at 6000-9500 feet and with an extra 20 lbs in the harness, my wingovers are seriously over 180 deg turns each and I feel like I'm about 45° over horizontal when I do them over the lake!
So I flew through some thermals and bounced around for a bit then I though, hey, why don't I go over to that there Peñon thingie and soar over it? Well there's a reason that everybody isn't parked over the rock and that's because there's a whole valley of sink between it and the launch. So I flushed out to the valley floor and landed at an 'alternate' landing that Rulo told me about. I didn't even make it to the 'Piano' (the locals say that you should still be able to hit the piano landing field even if you were flying a grand piano). So this field is a long way from anywhere, just a couple of farmers' homes around and usually you have to wait until you can hitch a ride with a local or a taxi. I decided that my pennance for sinking out so disgracefully would be to hike back up to the launch - only about 2 kilometers and maybe 400 meters elevation gain. The trail I began on quickly disappeared and I found myself bushwacking up a strange hill in the middle of Mexico. Now normally I wouldn't have thought anything of it but suddenly Janice's words of caution ran through my head 'Carefull of the snakes and scorpions out there!' Awesome.
So I made it safely back to launch by around 2pm. The thermal cycles are rockin' and I'm alone. So I call Rulo to tell him where I was and he said he had never heard of anyone hiking up to launch from below. I asked whether it was lunacy to launch again and he said it was my call, which I read to mean 'Totally Fine!'
So I launch again. Thermals are bigger, but also easier to stay in. My Vario pegs out at 1600fpm and it did that several times this flight. I got about 400m over launch and then I did something I've never had the chance to do in the great Pacific Northwest... turn and fly over the backside of the mountain!! What a trip! I sank like a rock but slammed on full speedbar to make it to the Peñitas which were supposed to be thermal triggers. BOOM up I went, I was XC'ing!! (Sorry for all you veterain pilots who think this is old hat - I'm so amazed to be doing this at all!)
I pushed hard and kept finding thermals, riding them as high as I could (I'm still flying in and out of them like a novice at this point) and then hammering speedbar to get to the next one. I almost made it back to the lake landing. On my final glide I was not high enough and I had about 1k of trees and houses to clear with no landings possible and I was battling a fierce headwind. With my speedbar on all the way I was going at about a 1:1 glide ratio - so at a height of 300m AGL, well, you do the math. So I turned back at last and landed in a strange field. That was a trip as well - landing in a strange LZ and not having any prior knowledge about the conditions except for what I gathered while in the air. I stayed waaaay back from a row of trees that I though might cause turbulence and the landing ended up being soft and sweet:)
Then I walked to the highway and stopped for some awesome Tortas at this little stand (Rulo thinks this meal was what made me sick :( ) and hitched a ride from a local farmer toward the Torre launch. He drove me about 2k and then let me out, I still had about 2k of steep dirt road to walk when suddenly a newer Toyota Tacoma truck pulls up beside me. Now, I know my friends sometimes cringe when I use a stereotype - and they know I'm being tounge-in-cheek usually, but this was just classic. There were 5 people in the cab, and 8 in the back along with about 7 large paraglider bags! They were literally stacked 2 high and one guy was sitting on the roof of the cab. 'Va a Torre?' they ask. 'Si!' I reply and I hop in back with my feet dangling off the side.
It was another pleasant evening flight off the Torre and into the sunset.
Tuesday: On this day I got my ass handed to me in several respects. First I sunk out down the left bowl at Peñon and had a pretty desperate landing in a field just past the valley road right next to a bull. I was sinking fast and was even worried that I might not make it to the field in the first place. When I finally got there I was about 20 feet up when this HUGE warm bubble pops me up about 40 feet and then drops me again. Swinging towards ground I do the biggest flare of my life and unexpectedly land rather gently. So I pack up and bushwack a bit, cross a stream and a barbed wire fence when I notice a paraglider wing hanging from this tree branch on the hill behind where I had landed. Apparently Alexandra had tried for the Piano and hit the same huge sink I was in, only she kept fighting for it until the bitter end rather than spinning around and coming back to land where I had. So I reversed course and after a few minutes I was standing at this large stream of brown putrid water with a thick forest of bramble, vines and pine on the other side - and some paraglider at the top of this 100' tall hill stuck in a tree. I didn't know whether the pilot was hurt, stuck or what so I though it was best that I tried to scramble up to assist. What followed was about 30 tortuous minutes of the worst bushwacking I've ever done in my life. At several points I was suspended in the air by a tangle of branches which were caught in my legs, stuck in my helmet hanging off my pack, wedged in the nape of my neck and hitting me in the face all simultaneously. By the time I got up some pilots had landed to assist Alex and everything was fine - she had ended up touching the ground with her feet but the tree tore a small hole in her glider.
I was rewarded with a ride up the road to where a taxi was stopped. Since they were all calling it a day and I wanted to go to Peñon again I had to talk to this taxi driver and see if he could take me back up to launch. When he agreed to do it for only $30 pesos I was stoked but then he started driving what I thought was the wrong direction. He procedes to drive me back down to the valley and he parkes at the base of El Peñon rock and says 'Esta Peñon, no?' After a vigorous game of charades he finally understands where I want to go and begins driving me there stopping to ask direction several times along the way. At the top I am very grateful for his help and give him $60pesos since he got a much longer taxi ride than he initially bargained for.
Then I attempted another flight back to the lake from Peñon and this time I was scratching desperately when I got low to the Peñitas. I tried my best to suss out the thermal triggers and was lucky for a while, but eventually landed in another field, this time almost spot landing a huge Yucca bush that would have ripped me to shreds if I had gone another 2 feet further. As I'm packing up my wing and thanking Mios Dios for the soft landing these two young guys come out to greet me. They're very nice but quickly the broken conversation indubitably turns toward me having to pay them for landing in their field. Rulo had warned me about this and said to expect to pay $25pesos to machette wielding farmers if you land in the wrong field. Now these guys didn't have machéttes but they were asking me for $50 pesos (about $4US). Here's where not knowing Spanish can really cost you. Unable to bargain because I don't know the Spanish version of 'Come on, you're robbing me blind here!' I pay and say 'Gracias!', they leave me to finish packing.
So I get back to the highway and the first cab that comes by wants $120 to get me to El Peñon launch agian. Uggg...
Back at launch, pretty much alone again except for this lady from Alberta who was watching her husband, Gui, soar above the Peñon.
I take off again (in a lull between thermals), this time quickly finding and spiraling up in this huge thermal to over 1000m above launch!! As I begin to slow my ascent I notice my breath is fogging my glasses and I look up to see a cloud actually beginning to form about 100' above me! It was one of the prettiest and neatest things I've gotten to see while flying. Clouds look so much different from that close, you can see all this motion in them and the power contained even within a small Cu is just breathtaking.
Unfortunately my (lack of) XC prowess can take even an amazing climb such as this and turn it into an unplanned landing in about 2 minutes flat. As I made yet another gripping landing in some field between some farm homes about 8 little kids come running up to me. They are all super excited and we became good friends. A few of them started folding my wing right away even though I wasn't really ready for them to do so. I helped them finish up and then took some pictures of us all. Showed them how to use my camera and let them take some photos of each other and me - it was a ton of fun. I felt like a huge American Jerk when I went to leave and I wanted to give them something for their troubles but since I was out of Pesos all I had were a few US dollars in my wallet. And since I figured I might need to use them to convince a taxi that I was good for payment to get home I offered them a single dollar saying 'Para todos! Para todos' as they were fighting over it. When the oldest girl finally emerged with the dollar she began laughing and showing everybody how I had just given them this totally worthless piece of paper. They were all looking at me like 'WTF'? I tried to explain that it was worth 12 pesos and that seemed to brighten them up a bit but they were still pretty puzzled. Oh well, I keep telling myself that I am just bringing a bit of the glorious US of A to these poor folks and maybe it will convince them to travel abroad themselves someday in order to spend it!
The taxi home charged me a fair $80 pesos, but it still turned out to be a long, exhausting, expensive day and I was starting to feel really sick in my gut from something I ate.
Wednesday led to 2 more flights off Peñon, both of which were great learning experiences. At this point I am sticking much more closely to the cores of the thermals I find. And when my wing reacts to gusts, updrafts or downdrafts I react much more instinctively and properly. It is such a great feeling to center a core and just have your vario beeping merrily the whole way up!
I used to watch videos of competition pilots who had their varios beeping obnoxiously during the video and I would think 'How annoying, I never want to have one of those stupid things beeping in my ear while I'm enjoying my flight!' But now it is the best sound ever! When it winds up into a high pitched frenzy and almost becomes a single tone you know you are close to 2000fpm and you are hitting the jackpot. But when you leave the big thermal you usually hit big sink and the vario starts to make this sound that sounds an awful lot like 'Boooing'! :) It's really funny actually, when my vario starts booing at me I get on the speed bar and try to get away but the words from that Simpsons character Mr Burns keep echoing in my head 'Are they saying Boooo, or Boooourns?' and then I imagine my GPS replying happily 'I was saying Booourns!' ha ah ha
Anyway, both of my flights on Wednesday ended up short of the lake, the first brought me to near where my second flight had brought me. I felt better about that one because I landed next to Rulo who is a very good pilot and is on a comp wing - albeit about a half hour after him! That was when I met Alberto who was a shy 15 year old who helped me fold my wing and everything and he didn't even ask for money but I gave him $21 pesos anyhow. I have these two funny pictures where I'm holding the camera and taking a picture of the both of us and in the first one we're both kinda frowning or at least not smiling so I say 'Hey, we've got to smile!' with a big grin and in the second pic we're both grinning.
Last night I went out for the first time since I came here and had dinner with Rulo. I ordered the trout for some reason - I don't even like trout back home, and when it comes as a whole, gutted fish with head and tail sitting in a stew of veggies and secret sauce it doesn't get much better. I ate most of it anyway and Rulo shared some of his Chile Relleño with me which was WAY better than the chile relleños you get back home at Chevy's.
Today (Thursday) the weather front had come through and it looked like it may or may not be a good day for flying. I was finally feeling much better and so it was with excitement that I took off with Rulo and Jesse, a nice dude from Seattle who works as a nurse at the UW hospital. Rulo wasn't going to fly, he was just going to drop Jesse and I off, which made me feel bad but I was very thankful for the ride! I launched first and was thermalling very efficiently in the weak late morning air. I tried to be very patient and just keep clam and not do anything impulsively like head over the back too soon before things began developing properly. I really felt the air well today - I can really sense where I am in the thermal now and I am usually right when I guess which way to turn to grab the rising air. I can really feel my inside wing with a good amount of brake grabbing the air and my outside wing which I am lightly using the brake to help control my turn and bank angle and also to feel lightness which tells me I'm getting close to the outside edge of the thermal. All the time checking and releasing surges and fall-backs. I had my entire left wing disappear on me today! It was nuts! But I was so high that I didn't even get worried. I knew that my right wing was in decent air that all it took was a quick pop on my right brake after I started to fall and spin left a bit to keep anything from happening and my left wing popped right back out a half second later.
After playing around in the big thermals for a couple hours I headed back to try for the lake again when I was about 800m over launch. Again I went the wrong way, flew into a bit of a headwind while in sink and managed to lose all that gain and more. I was worried for a minute that I wasn't going to make it out from the forest and into a clearing but I stopped sinking so badly and was able to make it to the first Peñita where I found a few pops of lift but nothing big enough to get my novice ass back up into the sky! I had to turn and land in this small valley that had almost no level ground - it was mostly trees, valley walls and there were 2 huge sets of power lines crossing the middle of the thing! I was seriously without a good landing and also kind of worried that I was so close to the back of the launch hill and surrounded by so many trees that I would hit rotor. I also had no idea what direction the wind was coming from (it turns out later I discovered that the wind was changing directions quickly which means that I was probably in the turbulence from the trees or hill anyhow.) So I made sure to miss the powerlines and came down in a gentle spiral figuring that whenever my groundspeed appeared to be the slowest that would indicate that I was heading into the wind and thus solve my landing direction question. I ended up landing in almost zero wind, with maybe a bit of a tailwind since my wing continued flying over my head after I stopped, but a lot of speed and a hard flare made it not too bad at all.
A very nice family helped me onto their lawn and a couple of kids helped me fold my wing. They had a bunch of cute puppies running around and were all very friendly, happy people. I wonder what they do all day? There was about 8 people in this one house, at least 3 generations and probably 4, all together - just chillin' and happy as can be! The little hooligan who kind of took charge of folding my wing was demanding more and more money and then he wanted money for showing me to the road to get a taxi. Then as we sat there he kept asking for everything I had, phone, sunglasses, headlamp. He started beating on his brother because I had given them each $10 pesos already and he was feeling gyped for having done the majority of the wing folding. So I conceded to give him another $5 for his extra help. Then he kept handing it back to me and demanding $10 pesos for 'helping' me to the taxi. I finally aquiesced but it was actually kind of a tense few minutes as he had brought his older, larger friend over to sit with us (who he kept teasing and was telling me his friend was 'marricóne' or 'homosexual' which was the only English word I heard him say. I tried to stop the teasing by saying 'Esta bien' which made them both laugh because aparently that made me marricóne as well - oh well, it's hard to teach tolerance when you know about 30 words of a foreign language).
The taxi wanted $100 pesos to get me home, which at that point I couldn't really bargain since I just wanted to get out of this valley. I asked him to stop by the field I landed in the previous day so I could run over to where I landed and see if my fleece gloves were still there. As I ran into this field I noticed that there were 4 or more muchachos milling about and they each had a weapon of some kind. The first guy had a scathe or large, curved knife of some sort that he was sharpening. I kept asking '¿Esta bien?' and as long as they kept nodding I kept jogging towards where I had landed. Then they all came over to see what I was looking for and I tried to explain, not knowing the words for 'gloves' or 'yesterday' and they eventually communicated that they hadn't found anything and so I jogged back to the taxi without incident.
It's wierd out here. Kind of hard to explain. Everybody's fighting to survive and everybody's a hustler - always trying to sell something high and buy something low. Some people you can tell are just good folk, like the taxi driver who stopped so that I could run across this huge field. I didn't want to carry my heavy pack and wing and I was a bit uneasy about leaving it with him since if he drove off I would have no good way to call for help or really even describe who he was, but I could tell he wasn't a bad guy and I left him with my wing for about 10 minutes while I ran across this huge field. Last night a group of kids tried to demand $10 pesos from me when I walked past them. The oldest and largest one said in English 'You want to see my pistola?' and made a gun with his hand. I was not too worried because several of the younger ones were grinning at this point so I just said 'Adios!' and turned to walk away. At that point I took out my pocket knife and kept it in my hand for the rest of the walk back home. I don't think I'll take any back alleys at night anymore, but then again I live next to two 'back' alleys so there's not much I can do there!
Well the weather is turning and I don't know how the flying will be tomorrow. If it's anything like today it will be a toss whether I fly or not because it was quite windy and I don't know if I could have penetrated out to land at the piano even if I had wanted to. And I don't want to fly back into sink and turbulence and unsavory little muchachos again.
Rulo said that he would get a boat, a waterproof radio and a lifejacket if I wanted to so some SIV maneuvers this weekend. He'll give me a good price and he definitely knows his stuff and is very safety minded so I think this will be an awesome opportunity for me to learn full stalls, pull some spins, maybe some frontals, and he even suggested I throw my reserve over the lake just to get some 'practice' with that! How cool would that be!!
Alright, I appologize, I realize this reads more like a journal than a cool, artsy narrative like John's blog. And it's not as concise as Spyder Monkee's, but I needed to write down some of the week's events even for my own recollection as much as sharing it with you all!
This has been and continues to be such an amazing experience for me - I am so thankful to everybody who helped me get here! Love you all!