¡¡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!