I’m flying a lot more at Torrey now that Gabriel and I have partnered on a new business. It’s a bit dangerous to form a company with a fellow paraglider. Only bad weather will help us survive.
The company is called Adaptive Energy and Waste. We’re commercializing a green technology called arc-plasma gasification. Our intention is to clean-up the landfills of the world and create cleaner electricity. Stay tuned.
I took 2 flights Tuesday. I’ve been looking to get up from lower at Torrey, that is, I’m not afraid to land on the beach for the sake of scraping back up. It was big early on in the day. Dan Danielle and I got our radios on a non-teaching frequency and headed out. Danielle wanted to go to the point. By the point I thought she meant bathtub rock which comes to a point. We were talking about 2 different areas about a half mile apart.
Danielle and I were talking about places that were a half mile apart.
It’s great to fly around with friends on the radio. It’s required in cross-country. At Torrey it's just fun. On our first run out to bathtub rock I had a lot of altitude, about 450 MSL. I flew over bathtub rock for the first time ever which was a thrill. I was losing a lot of altitude. I looked at my vario and saw 250 and falling. I was over some deep crevasses and feeling very uncomfortable about landing on the beach. It’s illegal to land on the beach at Torrey Pines State Park and I understand they’re eager to get right out there and give you a ticket. I looked back at the rock and estimated I could make it back with glide ratio, so I turned.
I just made it over the rock and looked for ridge lift. All was fine until I crossed over a small plateau in front of the ridge. For a moment I thought I’d get more lift on the front of the plateau but then figured that couldn’t be right and turned inside towards the larger ridge. I immediately hit sink. Apparently the first ridge creates at least enough ridge to cause sink on the other side. I landed safely and started packing up my ridge. I was so far from the LZ that for a moment I considered climbing up to the top of the ridge and relaunching.
Just then Danielle flew over me. I radioed up, “You’re ass looks fine from 200 feet!” Then I asked, “Do you see a trail up to the top here? I want to relaunch.” Gabriel, my instructor and Danielle’s man radioed in, “Stop getting fresh with my girl!” Before I had a chance to make a snappy comeback Danielle radioed, “There’s a trail in this south crevasse, but you’ll have to walk a bit for a launchable spot.”
Well that’s about the worst thing Gabriel could possibly hear: a student getting fresh with his girlfriend and her finding a place in the golf course from him to relaunch!
I had to laugh.
It was a long ass walk back, about a mile not to mention the 350 foot climb, and the wind was howling. I forgot how many naked men there were on that beach. A few asked me how I got beached with all that wind. It was only mildly humiliating.
I had some lunch courtesy of Dan and went out for a second flight. The wind died down quite a bit but I got a lot of lift on a small ravine by the golf course. I did s-turns over that ravine for a half hour. It was a lot of fun to find the lift and try to just keep in it.
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