I added up miles and hours for Santa Cruz... 243 miles, and 19 hours. Not bad for a week's work!
We had a really fun flight (although shorter than I would have liked!) at Bristol on May 5th. I got to try out my new sail (crispy!) and my freshly washed harness (no more Arizona dust) and 50% of my gear was great! Right after stepping off into a BIG ONE, I started climbing immediately and when I felt comfortable enough to take a hand off the control bar, I tried to zip up. No go. Not a budge. For the entire climb, almost 2K, I dicked around trying to get zipped up. I figured I would be in the air a while and I wanted to be nice and comfy while I played with my mostly new glider. I have no idea where Bob was except he was above me somewhere so I hoped he was paying attention while I focused all my energy on getting zipped. When I finally found that it wasnt the zipper, but a knot in the pull on the wrong side of the eyelet, I reached inside the harness and got it mostly up with the string. Okay so 15 minutes have passed and I see that I am not climbing very well anymore, so I look around for Bob. Well he is way out on the valley and lower so I go searching for something like what I had just had. NOthing doing, not a scrap of lift and we both searched the whole valley. I whacked in a landing (!) and Bob was right behind. We watched as we packed up and saw Karl have the shortest PG flight in history, and then when Mark launched for his second flight (first one was a doozy in a strong N cross) we figured he would be joining us soon. But no, Mark stepped into something and spent almost an hour taunting us. When I realized the keys to all the cars were in the cars on top, while Mark's car (with no keys) was in the LZ, I started looking at the ski resort for a ride up to no avail. Bob called his partner Tom and he gave us a lift to the top- thank God!

So at least I got to try my glider a little bit, even though I was distracted by the strong air and the zipper pull. And any day out flying is better than hanging out at work...
Oh and that's just a picture of my neighbor's house. Rochester is blooming right now...

Alt2: 2100'

Airtime: ? 20 min??