Day 1 Task 1 Santa Cruz Flats
The task was changed while we were staging, the wind was fortunately not going to be as strong as earlier predicted so a triangle task was called. Everyone was pretty happy about that since we bragged about goal at the pool from last year... I had a nice tow behind Jim, although I got high on him right at the start- he came up fast to keep me on. I left the start circle alone, everyone seemed to be hanging out in mediocre lift and I made a promise to myself to NOT do that. I glided toward Casa Grande and fought my way over the city mostly on my own. I saw a gaggle ahead, and tried to catch up. Halfway to the first TP, I went on a glide and got low. At 2000' the lift was not good and I got nervous. Down to 1500' and I spot a big dust devil and head towards it. I knew I was going to get rocked, but the alternative to wrestling it was landing in it's wake- an option I did NOT want to exercise. At one point I thought for sure I would lose control of the glider, but the incredible strong lift got me up and out of danger of landing and suddenly I had TONS of friends. We headed towrds the first TP and Mark caught up with me just after. We tagged the 2nd TP and headed towards goal. We got separated in one climb and I went on. The big mountain in the path of goal was my last climb and I knew it wouldn't be enough. Mark was landing a little ways back and I tried to milk every last bit to make the last 5 miles from 2K. I stopped to turn in one piece that turned out to be a mistake, and landed with PK 4 miles short. Well, what did I learn? First, that my glider has a left turn. Second that I made some really good decisions about when to leave lift and get moving, but I really need to push even harder since again, I ran out of day and let people who started behind me catch up. So, today's weather looks great, so I will tune the turn out of my glider and fly faster! Pictures later...