Vientiseis

The day looked ideal. I am flying Dorian tandem today. Blue flying monkey shirt and cloud shorts seemed appropriate. I am feeling great today. Better than usual. I have high hopes for my group.

Fruit and granola with yogurt. Mmmm. 

Julian, our concierge at Casa Blanca. Is going tandem today with Rob Sporrer. He seems relaxed and excited. 

 A really big group today. 28 people including guides. Perfect. 

Rob Sporrer adjusting Julian's harness. 

An inch worm measures my leg. 

In an effort to encourage early launching, Farmer set up quickly and launched early, making several low passed overhead. 

Dorian and I launched near the end, with two of my group landing before we could go and join them.  Rats. Hugh launched late with us too, and we climbed up to cloud together and went south to join the other pilots at the last ridge, affectionately known as the jumping off spot. We gaggled for what seemed like a long time, but climbs were slow and we had only occasional strong thermals. After a while we all topped off the thermal at base at 7200'.  Rob and his guys charged access to the middle of the valley and got a climb.  Some got up, and some landed. 

Dorian and I left after they marked the climb and got a few turns in before finding another climb, but not enough to get back up to cloudbase. Hugh joined us and Brian headed towards the road and some other pilots. Brian's group got up and away, while Hugh, Dorian and I landed next to Forrest, A pilot I know from Oregon. Forrest was enjoying the last day of his month long solo trip. It was good to see him again and wish him a safe trip home. 

A tiny praying mantis was on my wing as I packed In the shade of a huge tree with the others.

The field we landed in perked little and we gained a few hundred feet before finally landing among the charred cornstalks. So much for my new looking wing. Oh well, the carbon wipes off mostly. We hopped on a bus to Roldanillo and had juice and empanadas there. Perfect. Yummy. Satisfying. 

We caught the La Union bus with 5 minutes to spare. Sweet. It is 2:22 as we roll into town. Plenty of time to prep for my talk, do laundry, or just take a nap. The west wind is already here.  Early. 

Once in La Union, Dorian and I caught a Tuk Tuk back to Casa Blanca. Once there my plans changed. Today was a day of wing repair. 

John landed mostly in the soccer stadium but draped his wing on the wall, breaking an outside B-line and skinning 5 others, mostly C and D lines.  The outer protective sheath was damaged on the five skinned lines, but fortunately the core was intact. We carefully redistributed the sheath to cover the exposed cores and taped over the damaged part, preventing slippage and sun exposure to the cores. The broken line took some time to fix by hand sewing the two ends into loops like regular lines have. For the gap I sewed a similar diameter line as an extension to join the two ends. We measured against the opposite side's identical line to verify length under tension and sewed it into place, girth hitched on each end where they joined. Voilà. 

Another pilot we call Johno, landed near a field being irrigated and a guy on a tractor with a powerful water jet thought it would be fun to spray some local kids to cool them off from the midday sun from far away with the joint arc of water. It didn't occur to him that the glider was also in the path, dousing it with water and dirt, making a muddy wet mess of his wing.  Oops. 

We got johno's wing laid out on the downstairs tables where the west wind blows through and dries it out quickly in the shade and wind. The dirt dried too, falling off as the fabric rippled and flapped from the moving air. His harness was also wet but not his reserve. Whew!

Good old fashioned sewing. 

Rich, who went too deep (up the ridge behind the power lines) got low and it became too close for him to fly back out over the high tension, high voltage lines. He was on radio and was being coached but made a mistake and now had to side hill land just below launch to avoid crossing dangerously close to the lines. He did a good job and landed without incident. Some helpful locals ran to his aid, grabbing at his gear to help him up the steep slope, and letting him ride back to launch on the horse. Unfortunately they also accidently deployed his reserve.  Marge took care of the repack, while I tended to mending lines, and some also some loose stitching on the leading edge of yet another glider, mostly superficial but worth doing. I took a break from the sewing to give my presentation which started just a few minutes late, and ran 15 minutes into dinner. 

Dinner was some sort of breaded meat and curly pasta with green sauce. Delicious!

After dinner I went down, finished up and then retreated to prep my gear for tomorrow tandem with Phyllis (again). She hasn't really flown at all solo, though she does own a wing.  Lars, her husband flies and so this way they both can fly each day. 

The misshaps were many today but morale is high. I think everyone is excited for tomorrow. Rob, a new pilot has been flying really well. Today he flew almost 6 hours. Wow!

¡Hasta mañana!

I'm off to bed!

Martín