In the Land of Piggly Wigglies

Just back at Quest tonight after a little road trip with Timothy up to Georgia. We checked out some of the airfields we have lined up for the Flytec Rally and all is looking great. It amazes me that once you go north across that state line into Georgia, you're suddenly in the south again...Piggly Wigglies, confederate flags and all. The really nice thing is that folks are unbelievably friendly and each airport seems genuinely thrilled to have us coming up in the spring. It seems in so many other parts of the country everyone is too concerned about liability and all the other hassles of having a traveling hang gliding circus come to town. In Georgia, on the other hand, they seem to be rolling out the red carpet. Instead of questions about liability insurance and contracts and such, they're just wondering what more they can do to help. It's quite nice.

My favorite airport, Souther Field in Americus, Georgia was a military training facility in WW1 and WW2. Currently it is slow and mellow and used mainly as a base for crop dusting operations. There's also a funny graveyard full of German crop dusting planes. Can't imagine what they are doing there.

And I Ran, I Ran So Far Away

Still gazing out my window dreaming of soaring the seawall. For now, I can only watch jealously as the seagulls get to play without me. I might be willing to give it a try if the wind wasn't so gusty and crossing a bit out of the north. It is a pity though, it's not so often that it blows this hard off the water :-( Where's Bo when you need him...he could do it!!

When you Feel Down and Out, Sing a Song...

One last glorious day of flying before Carl had to go home today. I'm not so happy at the moment, but glad we had such perfect conditions. Yesterday was by far the best day of all with the strongest climbs and highest cloudbase for the past two weeks. We went for a quick milk run to Wallaby and back...arriving back at Quest and having to fight to come down.

I hope the weather gods are as cooperative in March as they have been this time around. In the meantime, it's back to work for me...anything to take my mind off what I am missing so much.

I promised Carl great flying while he was here thinking I could lure him across the pond and deal with the consequences if it turned out to be rainy and windy. It was a lucky bet because we've had unseasonably warm weather and excellent flying nearly the whole time he's been here. Today was no exception. Dr. Jack promised reasonably strong climbs and a bit of a breeze out of the south, so we were hoping for a hundred today. When we got to the field there was quite a lot of high cloudy gook, so we scrapped the idea. Big mistake. It was gorgeous with up to 500fpm smooth climbs and and I really do think we could have made it had we gone for it first thing. Oh well, tomorrow's forecast looks even better than today's did, so maybe we'll finally get our long one!!


We finished off the day with a little "proof of concept" tandem flight ;-) I had forgotten how much fun it is to be in the air in the same glider with a hottie.