Today dawned brighter than usual, and was very good for flying for those that went up. One pilot not in our group who is staying here said he had a tangled brake line that he could not fix and wisely opted to land ASAP safely while is other two friends has long uneventful flights.
We had a lealisurly breakfast consisting of papaya juice and slices with Apple and banana and a ham and cheese omelette.
We kept busy with more preparations.
We tackled the phone set up for our guests and inventoried all the phones. We verified SIM cards, charged batteries and made sure we had it all working.
My phone needed to be backed up and then restored with a new local SIM card in order to work. Problem was, the wifi to back it up is so slow, it would take around 15 hours or more. The people at the phone shop recommended I drive 40 minutes to Cartago, to have the main office for the "Movistar" network do some high tech magic to make it work. I tried deleting a bunch of photos so it could back up the data faster but no dice. Rob was super helpful and suggested to just get a travel phone to remedy this problem. We found lots of decent phones for not a lot of cash on his laptop. In the end, Julian the lead server in the dining area helped me pick out a low priced android smart phone so I could fulfill my guide duties and check pilots in when they landed safely. I will once again be able to talk, text and pull up all our shared data on the go. Whew.
Dave Tuener arrived in time to have dinner with us as did Brian Howell.
Dave's gliders got lost on the three flights to get down here, after leaving Mammoth with three new feet of snow there, on a motorcycle with all his stuff. Of course he brought an extra front tire too, as it was getting bald, and as expected, he changed the front tire himself, on the way to make his first flight out of Sanfrancisco. Nice!
Brian arrived with all his gear since he had been flying all last week in nearby Roldanillo with his brother and other pilots staying there. Farmer should arrive tomorrow and we will finalize details and ghave a staff meeting on Friday.
That's it for now. Flying is coming up soon. Lots to do on the ground first.
Hasta mañana!
Martín
