Arizona Task 7
Writing this from NY - it is so hard to get my head back to the last task while I have mountains of work piled up before me. But I will try to put myself back there.
It was a bit cooler- like 103 instead of 105- and the forecast looked identical to what yesterday actually was (unworkable lift). I got my stuff together and headed to the tow paddock and as I was carrying my harness from the truck to my glider, it felt clunky. Or it sounded clunky. Or both. Kraig had told me the day before not to carry the Matrix like a baby- it would stress the hinge. Well, I guess I stressed the hinges. I took a lookl inside and I had blown not one, but both the joints completely. Uh oh, not flying with THAT harness. Good thing my sister Laura is my size and she just happens to have a harness. It's a High Energy thing with lots of cords and cables and I could fit a family of five in the storage compartments. Very comfy. Kraig quickly changed out my hang strap to a shorter one he had, and looked at my harness shaking his head like he is about to give a terminal prognosis to a very sick patient. I was all out of whack now- worried about my harness, worried about towing with Laura's harness, worried about landing wit Laura's harness.... so I tow up behind Jim and besides getting hung up on the cart for a second longer than I like, the tow went okay. He brought me downwind to where Mark was thermalling with Jim, but I couldn't figure the lift out very well or else they brought up the ladder on me, and I wound up landing back for another tow. First time this meet that I had to relight. Well, I am setting up on final and I see a dust devil on the runway and I figure I have time to land as it is moving slow. So I check the streamers and line up and next thing I know I am screaming fast along the ground and the wind has switched. Ah well, a fair downwind landing in my comfy new harness.... I have to take a tow behind the trike (another first this meet) and Corey blasts me up on a high tow to get me back in the game. Now Mark has landed and Jim is going back for another and Mark says to hell with it and heads for the pool. I am doing my head's up thing like I do in my CG 1000 and feeling the pull of the pool at the resort while I work my shitty lift for half an hour getting just 300' above tow altitude. Finally I just give up. I try to get streamlined enough to make it back to the resort, and it is an easy glide. On the ground I am kicking myself as soon as I get into the pool for not going for it. I realize that Mark and I are the only uninjured competitors that are still present that threw in the towel. I won't make that mistake again. I came to fly, and to compete, and even though it didn't hurt my standings, it did something to my psyche. Hearing the stories later of the so-so flight just made me feel like an outsider. Didn't like it a bit.
The awards ceremony/dinner was put on by the local club, and it was AWESOME. Great food and a nice place to eat it. I won another pair of speedsleeves (YAY!) for taking top female honors (yeah yeah, I know...)and Jonny of course took first place. Dustin and Jamie did a great job with this whole meet. I am surely going back next year. I keep looking at the weather there now- hard to beat 900fpm with b/s ratio of 9! It's like that today (Tuesday) and we had a couple of task days like that. Great flying there- big flying. The only downside is all that dust. I will reunite with my glider soon, try to un-short-pack it, and hopefully my harness with recover in Australia soon enough. I doubt I'll have it by ECC time but maybe the CG1000 will do.