Sorry it's taken me so long to update here. I am at Highland Aerosports at the East Coast Challenge- and challenging it has been! First, Mark got too buried at work to come along. So the decision just to come was tough- I have never really been to a comp without him. It has been eye-opening to see just how much he takes care of. But I had the week off of work and I really want to kick Lauren's ass fair and square, so I headed down. I watched a very inspirational movie on the way down- Astronaut Farmer- and figured that was a good omen. The drivers I passed on the highway while watching this movie weren't very inspired, however. Anyhow, I set up camp pretty quick and got a little tour of the flight park- bring on the flying. I didn't watch any weather before I drove down, Barry changed the flying plans a bit. We got soaked on Sunday and spent the day battling the rain and messing with equipment. Kraig brought my revised Matrix as promised, and now I can actually zip it up. Betty Pfeiffer did a nice job on the zipper- and in a very timely fashion.

So Monday, the forecast was for a ton of wind, but lift (not GOOD lift) so we called a task and flew. I took two tows- the first was picture perfect... didn't find a single thing to turn in though... and landed in some rocking air near the staging line. I got right back in line and towed up behing Lauren. This tow was rough right from the start, and when I pinned off and searched for lift, all I found was 1/4 turns in shit. Every once in a while I would get half a turn, but I never got back to my tow altitude and figured I would just waffle on downwind and get the task started. Thats all I did, except downwind wasn't on courseline, so in zero sink to 100fpm down, I dribbled for 7 miles at 1800' right to the ground. I saw Paul Tjaden just as I started looking to land, and at a big flat field we both gave up the ghost. Lauren fared much much better- shoulda followed her! No one made goal but everyone had fun anyhow.

So Tuesday we went to the beach- way too windy- and that was a great way to kill a day...