Added some more photos to the Facebook, to the same album as last night. I forgot my phone at the house today, so no Android posts! 🙁

Today was a great day that started out odd.

I woke up craving pancakes. Knowing that there couldn’t possibly be ingredients for pancakes in this rented house, I modified my cravings for french toast. Could it happen? I got out of bed and went to check the kitchen. I found everything…except for nutmeg and table syrup. I could live, begrudgingly, without the nutmeg. No syrup meant the plan was a wash. But now I’m poking around the kitchen knowingly…and people are awake…so they probably think I’m planning on making breakfast. So I should…probably make breakfast. Some quick cuts later and I’ve prepared a little egg/tomato/mushroom/cheese thing, Bob has made bacon and we’re ready to go!

We drive out to Horse Canyon for 10:30-11. When we get there, the wind is blowing hard over the back. That’s bad. We don’t fly when that happens. The guys in charge of the weather say we wait, so we took some time to take photos, go for a hike, make snow angels and throw snowballs. I tried to kite a bit, but everytime I got set up, the wind switched directions on me. About 1:30 the wind got straightened out and came in hard – 18km/h was roughly what my vario clocked it at. That’s a lot of wind. But we went up anyway, picking slower wind cycles to get up and out.

This flight was hilarious. I do a reverse launch, turn around and get ready to run…and I’m lifted up and away. I don’t even get a chance to run because the wind has decided that I’m flying now. I spent about 20 minutes soaring along the ridge before I made a small mistake. I saw the other guys had moved on and I went to join them. But I misjudged the power of the wind and ended up flying behind the ridge. I turned to fly into the wind to get back…and didn’t go forward. Hit the speed bar, turned away from the wind, no luck. So I set up to land on the road leading up the mountain. As I got within 20 feet of the road, wind rotor from the ridge spun my wing around and suddenly I’m flying into the ridge. No biggie, I land there, but the road would have been sooooo much more convenient! Spent a half hour pulling my lines out of a local bush, and then detangling them at the bottom. First flight

After that, we stood at the bottom watching Jeff, Joe and Guy have amazingly high flights. Way cool! We drove to the next site, Blossom Valley, and arrived there at about 5pm. The locals said it was probably done for the day, but we were ok with a sled run down. One after another we take off and try out the ridge. An hour later we’re still booting around this awesome little ridge! At one point I decided to try to top-land – a task requiring a lot of coordination. But I turned into an unfortunate direction and again…the wind pushed me back. I ended up on the wrong side of launch and landed in the grass again. Thankfully less grass! Picked up my wing and went back to launch! Second flight

For my last flight of the day…I launched again. 🙂 Had some issues…almost didn’t get off, really. The wind had died completely while I was mucking around so I tried a few times to do a reverse launch with no success. Finally decided to forward, which was the right choice since I left the mountain with no troubles moments later. This flight was actually a sled run though, since all the lift had died. 5 minutes later I’m at the landing zone and Guy is taunting me to kick him in the head as I try to land. I landed short. 😛 Third flight

And now I go to pull out my Ikea sofa and sleep for another day. 🙂