Cloud Base addict

1st day without the big monkey on my back (J.O.B.)!  Yesterday was the last day at the office.  Time to play.  It was on the top edge of my wind comfort zone.  Blowing NE between 10 and 20-22mph.  And the ramp-up to 20+ was pretty immediate and would blow snow around.  It had just cleared from fairly poor visibility and it was about 25 degrees up on launch.  Wanted to really stay on top of the glider!

My big concern was what my newly cut eyeballs would do in these conditions.  I don’t want those freakish “flaps” coming unstuck!  I’m 5 days out of LASIK surgery and supposed to put drops in every hour to keep them wet since post LASIK eyes don’t tear for a while.  The sunglasses and visor combo I think made it reasonable.  I had to unfreeze my eye drops for one last pre-flight wetting! 

It was mega-soarable but really rolling air.  Right off launch, I got up high enough for some altitude burning and in 4 minutes of airtime had done wingovers twice and climbed back over launch wondering what to do next.  It was tense flying because of all the “texture”.  Faster than should be possible, you could zoom up to cloudbase at 7900ft and then buzz around.  Went cruising beside the towers as close as I dared to those wires, and then back over to launch and then out over town wondering how far the lift went.  I found the end and happily came down.  It was exhausting flying for some reason.

I’m pretty sure it could have been a great adventure 10 miles S to my house and very doable.  Even if you just soared the hogback in ridge lift.  Ida tried that in a second if I wasn’t worried about ruining my new eyeballs.   

Really wicked air on launch.  All the wind socks were showing a good wind direction, but whipping around like a squirrels’ tail when he’s up to something.  Just tried to keep the nose down and things level enough to get max speed before leaving the ground and it worked out pretty good. 

So the eyeballs held up fine and didn’t act overly dry or anything.

Landed in the Miner’s field and dodged all the 4ft castration poles on purpose b/c I have 20/15 vision now!  It was all possible b/c Allen Sparks donated his time to walk up to launch with me on a brand new knee and drive my truck down to pick me up!  And he took all these great pictures too! 

Thanks Allen.  Got home just in time to clean up and go to a kid’s Birthday party and got my first dose of playing the Wii.  I most certainly should NOT get one of those.  Even Golf is fun on that thing…

Airtime:  24 min

Flights:  1