Task 1

Although only 5 flex and 1 rigid made it in to goal today, from what I've heard most everyone had a fun struggle.  They called a 124km triangle(ish) task around the valley.  Turns out conditions were quite a strong as expected and cloudbase was lower than the 3000 meters predicted.  The Italians ruled the day with Elio in first and Suan just seconds behind him.   Balasz came in a bit later on the longest, worst looking glide I've seen in a while.  We all thought he had no chance of making it in. Freddie and Tullio weren't far behind him.  I think it took them all more than four hours.  

Young Tim Grabowski, rigid wing world champion, was the only Class 5 glider in goal.  

Suan was a happy camper.

Photos from the Practice Task

Official Practice Task

The forecast called for strong west winds yesterday, so they sent us to the Monastery launch on the opposite side of the valley about 30 km away.  The wind started out fairly mellow and that lured everyone into setting up.  Eventually it started to gust up to 45kph and so the meet director cancelled the official task but allowed free flying for those that wanted to.

I love this launch.  It's a perfectly rounded, granite ramp.  There's only room for a single launch lane, so we probably won't be able to use it next year.  With the strong wind, the haze cleared out of the valley and the view was awesome.  

Probably a dozen pilots flew and reported that conditions were relatively smooth in the air.

Who knew a deputy meet director's duties were so diverse ;-)

Pictures

Practice Days

As nice as it has been having this whole place to myself for the last five days, it's fun when the whole hang gliding family starts to invade the town.  The French and Italians have the equivalent of two teams each.  Alex Ploner has returned after sitting out the worlds in Mexico early this year.  Young Tim Graboswki, reigning rigid wing world champion is here.  We also have some awesome girl pilots - Francoise (France), Yoko (Japan) and Sasha (Russia).  

Probably totally commonplace for PG pilots, but we watched a scary deployment yesterday from launch.  At first, several of us thought the pilot was doing aerobatics.  But we all started to think he was doing them in the worst possible place, low and behind launch.  Eventually we saw his reserve come out and he floated, apparently softly, down to the forest below.  

Young Students

There has been a Greek family here for the weekend.  The Greek border is just about sixty kilometers south of us and with such a perfect launch and wide open landing fields here, it's an ideal place to bring student pilots.  On Saturday we got to watch a 15-year-old kid have his 4th mountain flight.  I'm sure it sounds cheesy, but it was so heartwarming to watch (for everyone, I think, not just me).  

Dad is a pilot and instructor and he has taught his son.  They also have a younger daughter, maybe 13 or 14 who is learning as well.  What a cool family.  I always wished I could fly with my dad and brothers.  

  

Here's the family and some of the local Macedonian pilots out at the street party last night.  Dad is second from the left and mom and the daughter are on the ride side.  I think the new young pilot was resting up for today's flights ;-).  

I also had the pleasure of meeting Victoria, another young student pilot up from Greece.  She had a fantastic flight today, soaring and getting above launch while we all cheered her on.

Here is Victoria with me and Yoko, the women's world champion. 

Krusevo

I was lucky enough to get to Krusevo a few days before all the pilots started showing up.  After a week of sun and beaches with Trudy in Albania, I took a flight to Thessaloniki, Greece.  The organizers of the Euros sent a car for me and I got to enjoy the drive through the Macedonian wine country, some beautiful mountains, peach groves and field after field of tobacco farms.  It was a very pretty four hour drive from Thessaloniki to Krusevo.

The town sits on the side of a mountain range, tucked up into a little curve in the hill.  It's just about 2km from launch and is a charming and cozy little town.  I can't help but wonder how nice it must be covered in snow in winter.  

I met with Ivan and his adorable daughter Sofia and have spent the last three days with them before today when so many pilots have started to arrive.  It was nice to have a relaxing few days getting to know the local Macedonian pilots and the organizers before the busy time starts.  Everyone is warm and friendly and having flying in common makes me feel like I've known them forever.  It's kind of special how we pilots come in to a small village in some out of the way place and turn it into our home for few weeks  I hope the locals enjoy us being here as much as we enjoy getting to know a beautiful new sight like this. 

  

Albania

When I was 14 my dad pastored a church in a tiny town in the mountains of northern New Mexico. The church was on the main street and the parsonage was right next door.  One day in the spring I was out in the front yard and two French girls on a motorcycle came by waving a fistful of envelopes looking for the "post offeeece."  I recall thinking that it looked like they were on the ultimate adventure - two foreign girls exploring the countryside.  So much of my young life was spent daydreaming about traveling to faraway places.  I still have those daydreams and lucky for me, my real life consists of so many of these adventures.

Trudy and I flew from Milan to Corfu on Tuesday.  After checking a hundred different ways to get to the Albanian beaches, turns out that Corfu is closest, with cheap flights and a 45 minute ferry trip across to Saranda, Albania.  Many people asked me why on earth I wanted to come to Albania.  I didn't have any really great answer, just that I had seen pictures of the beaches and they looked cool.  For me, that's as good an excuse as any.  That, and I committed to come help out at the pre-European championships in Macedonia starting in about a week, so I would be close by.  I've said for so many years that hang gliding takes me to places I would never ever think to go otherwise.  

When I close my eyes and try to come up with the greatest adventure I can imagine, it always involves a foreign country (of course), usually one where I can't speak a single word of the language. For me, the ultimate trip involves a hot, dry rural part of some Mediterranean country, a beat up old jeep and a lot of exploring around the countryside.  

Trudy and I picked up a soft-top jeep to check out some areas outside the town of Saranda where we're staying.   There's an UNESCO world heritage sight about a hour drive from here where sometime in the 1920's I think, an Italian archaeologist uncovered an ancient village completely overrun by vegetation.  The village is called Butrint and was settled by exiles fleeing the fall of Troy.   In the center is a castle and it's a cool place to explore - literally cool because there are lots of trees and the paths around the village are all shaded - a very nice break from the heat here.  

The next day we made a second attempt to find another place that is supposed to be interesting.  It's called the Blue Eye and it's a 150 foot deep pool created by a natural spring.  We've now tried and failed to get there twice!  After visiting Butrint the first day, we set out for the Blue Eye coming from the south.  When we got tired of pot hole filled dirt roads and the sun beating down on us in the jeep, we thought we'd give its another try the next day.  After a little lunch and swim in the Aegean, we tried from the west to find the Blue Eye.  This country is much more mountainous than I knew.  The roads that appear on our paper map and even on Google maps on my iPhone are very few and far between.  I suppose because that's all they've got, the roads on the map appear to be highways, maybe not 4 lane divided highways, but at least paved roads.  Ha!  After an hour or so making our way deeper and deeper into the mountains, our highway became dirt road.  We followed it for a while.  The landscape here is very Mediterranean - mostly rocky with small vegetation, if any.  So, we could see our little dirt road switchbacking up the side of the barren hills and presumably eventually bringing us to the Blue Eye.  But, I'm pretty sure we were both having the same silent concerns about the low fuel level, deserted road, and the late hour, so we made the decision that I'm sure my mother would be pleased with, to turn around and work our way back home again.  We made it back into the last little village we passed on our way out, sweaty and sun baked, in search of a white chocolate Magnum.  A small cafe/bar in the center of town was full of small round Albanian men who must have found it funny that we had not a single word of Albanian to try to ask for ice cream.  

We never saw anything terribly notable out there, but the whole trip made me think of the French girls on the motorcycle and the fact that sometimes I get to live my best dreams.  Funny thing is that my travel addiction gets worse with every trip.  Like a drug, it takes more and more exotic locations to get the same gratification....soon, I'm going to have to start looking into space travel ;-).

Here's Trudy with a big announcement at the Butrint amphitheater.

Some local traffic on the way to find the Blue Eye.

One of my favorite ferry crossings ever.

Selfie at Butrint.

View from the second failed attempt to find the Blue Eye.

Breaktime

After nearly 6 weeks and more than 6000 miles, it was time to take a short break from the road trip.  I never imagined I would enjoy 6 weeks of solo traveling so much.  I wasn't alone the entire time.  I got to stop and visit friends in Kitty Hawk, New England, Michigan, Montana and British Columbia and then hang with my baby girl in Bend, Oregon and with family at home in the San Francisco Bay Area.  But the time alone was positively therapeutic.  I must do this again.

I have agreed to help out at the pre-Euros in Macedonia in the middle of August and I wanted to spend a few days on my beach in Florida before flying to Europe.  So, I decided to ditch the car in LA and hop a flight to Orlando.  I've never spent any time in Florida in July, but I actually enjoyed the heat and daily storms.  With a schedule adjustment, there's plenty of time from about 6am till sometimes as late as 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon before the thunderstorms start.  I loved it.

I arrived in Munich a few days ago and after a quick visit with Yves, I've made my way down to Lake Maggiore to hang with Gary & Trudy for a few days.  I love having friends all over the planet.

Next stop, Albania.  

Canadian Nationals - Lumby, BC

The idea for this whole road trip started with my good Canadian buddies Tyler and Rob inviting me to the Canadian Nationals up in Lumby.  Seemed like as good an excuse as any to hit the road for the summer.  After all my national parks and hiking, I was so ready to do some flying on my brand new T2C and there's nothing nicer than a small, relaxed comp with good friends.  Quite a few foreigners also made their way up to BC - Konrad, Dustin, the Rhythm of Flight boys, Bruce Barmakian and Dangerous Dave among several others.  

Lumby is such a cool site.  It's a small valley surrounded by launches on nearly all sides.  Randy and his wife own a beautiful piece of land that they've created Freedom Flight Park - complete with two grass runways, a clubhouse, wifi, showers, camping...everything you could ask for.  The nearest launches surrounding the flight park are relatively small and tend to be earlier sites, so most days we started from a site about an hour an half drive away (bigger mountains and a higher, later launch).  But, goal was normally always back at the flight park so it was very convenient.  Tasks were relatively short (compared to Big Spring and Forbes), but nicely challenging and taking us over beautiful mountains next to a big wide open valley every day.  Talk about easy and relaxing!  Although they said conditions were a bit softer than normal, it couldn't have been more perfect in my eyes.  Lift was generally not much more than 500 fpm and climbs were smooth and soft.  On the last few days we were getting well above 10,000ft and the views really were awesome!

I hope Randy decides to hold the nationals again there next year.  I loved it and would happily make the trek back there again.  We joking talked about spreading the word around that the flying was crap to keep the place totally to ourselves....but that wouldn't be very nice.  It really was fantastic and I'm excited to go back again.  I just hope it doesn't get totally overrun by a bunch of stressy foreigners ;-).  

Close Encounters

Next stop after the Badlands and a quick cruise by Mt. Rushmore was a day visit to the Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  It's not a hugely known site, but any child of the 70's that remembers Richard Dryfus making sculptures in his mashed potatoes will know this place from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It was a perfect stop between the Badlands and Missoula as it was hardly off the highway at all and it gave me a chance to get out of the car and stretch my legs for a short hike around the tower.  Driving in, it's an impressive site as it seems to just stick out of the middle of nothing but prairie land.  It would be interesting to speak to a geologist about how this thing came to protrude out of the middle of nowhere.  I was too lazy to listen to the ranger talk and just preferred to hike the loop around it and admire the giant columns that make up the tower.  They're actually much bigger than they appear in the first picture.  Notice in the second one, the size of the climber working his way up the side.  

The prairie road coming into the park is full of adorable prairie dogs, dozens of them that peek their little heads up from their holes in all the open fields.  Reminded me of the ones at Big Spring.

The Highlight of my Roadtrip

I never dreamed I would find one of the coolest places on my summer roadtrip in South Dakota. Who even knew there was anything in South Dakota?  

I left my new favorite northern city of Minneapolis around midday for the 7 or so hour drive to the eastern edge of the Badlands National Park.  I had my new little Volvo all set up for car camping, with a super cool portable shower, tea kettle and mini blender for morning shakes and comfy memory foam mattress in the back.  It's definitely not outback roughing it or anything, but it was fun not being in a hotel.  I arrived at the park entrance just in time for a gorgeous sunset and a ranger talk. This place is cool...not like Yosemite chock full of tourists, busses, and a fancy lodge and shops.  Really there wasn't much of anything other than a campground and a mini amphitheater where they have several nice telescopes to view the night sky.  With almost zero light pollution, the sky was amazing!

Car camping in the little campground was an adventure thanks to sizeable storm that blew through around 2am the first night.  In the talk that the rangers gave that evening, they told about the storms that came through on Friday (this was Monday night) that produced 2 tornados.  So, when I was awoken by freight train-like wind noise in the middle of the night, it scared the crap out of me.  I jumped up and out of the car to find all of the other campers also out of their tents just watching the spectacular light show and half wondering (as I was) if we should worry.  Turns out, we only got hit by the edge of the giant cell, so nothing all that severe.  But, it did produce the coolest horizontal lightning I've ever seen, nonstop for a solid half hour. 

The hiking in the Badlands is like everything else there, pretty deserted, in the best possible way.  On my first full day there, I went for a 8 mile loop through and around all the rock formations.  I counted exactly 7 other hikers on my trail.  Gotta love that!  I wish I had a good photographer with me to capture the scenery.  My pictures just don't do it justice.

I want to go back...soon!

The Land of Prince & Aveda

If you ignore the eight months of winter, I'm quite certain I could live in Minneapolis.  After leaving Niagara Falls so disappointed, I got to spend a weekend in Minneapolis under the most beautiful blue skies.  This city has now moved up on my list as one of the best cities in the US (along with San Francisco and Boston).  It has gorgeous weather in the summertime and is chock full of fit, active, outdoorsy people cycling, running and swimming around the many picturesque lakes.  I guess all that exercise is necessary as they boast the best donut shop in the country.  I had to check for myself, of course.   And, I loved the Minneapolis Institute of Arts - it rivals the Met (in my opinion).  

Now I think I need a summer house there ;-).

As Long as Niagara Falls

For some strange reason, I have always wanted to see Niagara Falls.  It was right on the route from Pippo's house heading west to BC, so I couldn't resist.  Well...I suppose I'm glad I got that out of the way and I won't likely ever do it again.  It was not at all what I expected.  Although the falls themselves were cool, they've turned the area into a mini Vegas.  Rather disappointing, but at least that one is checked off my list.  

Next stop...my Italian

No way to have a roadtrip without stopping in New England to hang out with my Italian for a few days. Good cooking, great wine and my favorite company.  Filippo's house is slightly out of the way when one is driving from Florida to British Columbia, but I couldn't help myself (and I wanted an excuse to see Niagara Falls).  Massachusetts is great in the summer time - both weeks of it.  Uncle Rhettski's new flight park is under an hour away.  We stopped in to see Rhett and his tandem pilot Anna (who I hope will be on our US girl team very soon).   Also hung out at Pippo's drop zone and watched old men jump out of airplanes all day.  Happy times.

On my last day there, I took a whale watching tour out off of Plymouth.  Didn't get as close to any whales as I would have liked (although this boat did), but we got to see Humpbacks, Minke whales and Finbacks...and heaps of tails.