Flights 140-3

This is a perfect day: 10AM conference call with my partners at the gliderport nailing down some specifics of a technology that, when commercialized, will save the world. A few hours writing specs to a illustrator who’ll be building our collateral. Another hour of working on the pro-forma and conditions got good for flying.


From astocker.com.

I took my wing out. It was very north again. I opened it up, worked out some kinks in the lines and put it back down. The wind died down. Back out with the spreadsheet.

Within an hour conditions were good again. A number of wings had taken off including Gabriel with a news reporter.

Flight 141

My first flight was brief. I was trying to do wingovers in the background as the cameras were fixed on Gabe and the news babe.

Flight 142

I got some nice lift and really tryed to lay into my wingovers. Wingovers are a lot like swinging a swingset in the sky, except, you never move backwards. That is, when you swing on a swing set you move back and forth. In wingovers you swing forward and turn right, swing forward and turn left, etc. I’m not sure why I never noticed this before today. There’s very little chance of falling in the wing which I suppose is the big fear. I came down to adjust my harness.

Flight 143

This was a long one. I headed south towards the mansions. There was plenty of lift at the last ridge before the pier. There’s a large apartment complex there which usually I’m eye-to-window with. This time I was well above it. I considered taking a run all the way to the pier for a moment, then decided I better test the north winds for the ride back first. That’s a long walk.
As I headed north past the mansions I started to sink. It seems no matter what I did I was going down. I passed the rhino horn and hoped for a recovery in front of the LZ. I just kept going down. I scraped as close as I’d ever scraped at Torrey.

Nothing.

Scraping that close to the ridge the little thermal bubbles that pop off were more in control of my wing than the liftband. I spotted some nudies on the beach and decided to land so that my wing and lines were as far from them as I could navigate.

Down I came.

Considering the strong lift I had experienced at the pier I never imagined I’d end up on the beach. Within a minute Dan spotted me on the sand. He yelled, “I’ll be right there!” I wouldn’t have asked him to come land on the beach but within 5 minutes he did some wingovers down to a nearly perfect landing to hand me a bottle of water. Amazing.

It was pure camaraderie. Dan came down to be with me. It’s no fun to walk up that hill. It’s much more fun to have a friend and share the experience. That was nice.

We drank some water and started the hike up talking about work, women, life and love.

By the time we were back on top it was late. I had to buzz out to pick my daughter up from French class. No loss. The wind had died down very low and was more north than ever. A perfect day though, through and through.