Training Log Archive: CleverSky

After flying on Thursday, I looked at the forecast for Friday and Saturday, and it looked like there was no point in staying in Tennessee, so I packed up camp and headed north. I was signed up for Saturday and Sunday at Letchworth, figuring that I would likely miss Saturday, but now I had time to get to both. Unfortunately, the transmission on my car had started making worrisome noises -- I heard similar sounds from my previous car on two occasions, and had to replace the transmission both times, which is not fun to try to arrange far from home (the two prior times it had given out in Connecticut and New Hampshire, which weren't too bad). After a stop Thursday night to crash at the home of my old friend Hutch, who now lives in far western Virginia, I was too concerned that the car was going to fail on the way, so I backtracked about 40 miles and rented a U-Haul and a tow dolly and dragged the car home. I considered going by way of Rochester, but when I got to the decision point in Harrisburg I took a nap to think it over, and decided to head straight to Massachusetts. Long drive, unexpectedly in a 20-foot truck towing a car, lots of rain, which all translates to a lot of stress. Glad I can decompress now.

After two flights, one from each of the launch sites on opposite sides of the valleyas the weather changed through the course of the day, I told the rest of the crew to go on back up to the campsite at launch and I'd meet them there. And I had a nice hillclimb run. The thought of the gatorade waiting for me at the top kept me going, It's an indirect way to get there but the direct route would be a lot steeper, especially at the end.

I really wasn't expecting to see a pilot at the hang gliding competition wearing this T-shirt!

Schlepping my glider and harness out of the field where I landed, which was not the main LZ, because when I gave up on the "thermal", I decided I was too low to make it there, so I picked another field that was slightly farther from launch but easier for me to reach at that point. The walk out was across a hayed field, first with the harness, jog back, then with the glider, and it took slightly less time than my flight lasted.

No exercise today, but a bunch of waiting around and we eventually flew. I got 12 minutes, which was a pretty good flight for today. Almost everybody ended up in the bailout landing zone, just one pilot got to the first turnpoint,

Orienteering has a lot of rules, but hang gliding has a lot more. This isn't a real competition, so the rules are somewhat different and maybe more complex. At least the scoring in orienteering is simple, your score is just your time. Hang gliding scoring is inscrutable, and for this meet, it's even less scrutable than usual. I'm not interested in even beginning to try and understand it.