Journey Home

Corinna and I arrived today in Munich after a loooooong flight around the planet. We drove from Newcastle to Sydney yesterday with Stuie and then flew from there to Kuala Lumpur (9 hours) and then on to Vienna (11 hours) and then to Munich (1 hour). I will fly back to Orlando tomorrow after a bit of catchup on my sleep in Munich. It has been a lovely trip and I am happy to have made a lot of great new friends that I will hopefully see again very soon.

I got to finally meet Tony Barton at Newcastle. He is a great American pilot who has lived in Australia now for quite a few years. He was a well-known comp pilot but he stopped competing right about the time I started, so I hadn't met him before. He does tandems on the beach all day long with a nice little landing on top in an incredibly small spot - I wouldn't be attempting that anytime soon. I also got a tour of the Airborne factory from Scott - very tidy and organized place and everyone is super friendly! We started talking about it over lunch and I realized that there are very few hang gliding factories that I haven't visited....really just Aeros in Keiv and maybe one or two other small ones. I guess I might have to make that my mission....to see them all.

We were able to spend a few hours in Sydney yesterday and shopped at the Paddington Market. It's a great outdoor market with jewerly and arts and crafts. Stuie is a great shopper and put up with us speeding around the market looking for a hat for Corinna. Of course, we were having such fun that we lost track of time and found ourselves speeding to the airport and nearly missing our flight.

Leaving Canungra was very very sad, but I did get to fly again on the last day, thanks to Jonny. He is the best host and took me to Mt. Tamborine for a quick flight. Although both Jonny and Lee warned me not to leave the mountain too low, I was a bad girl and found myself on that big floater in a headwind that had me not quite making the landing paddock. Lucky for me I found a little something that took me up again. I'm really enjoying flying these floaters around....they are so easy!

Here are a couple of random pictures - me launching at Beechmont, Tony spot landing, Jon Sr. (the only one I could understand on the radio thanks to his lovely American accent :-) and Kath Kelly and her big new belly (she's due in February, so she'll be ready to fly again for the Women's worlds in May and we'll get to see her and Lee and the new little guy then!)