26 Oktober 2017

When it is just not your day...

When you have a few consecutive days of low base, rain and no flying conditions, pilots get impatient. So yesterday there was a lot of talk if we could fly today, or better should go to Matureia straight away. A bit further inland, to avoid the morning overcast and rain from the coast.
We packed all our gear, but as a friend had told me that conditions today would be great for a big flight in Tacima, I convinced Konrad to stay here for today. It looked like a great day, but on take off, I already saw that I wasn´t as focused as the last days. I forgot my gopro cameras and spare batteries and spare vario and radio in my room, as I had packed it into the suitcase in case of travel. One of my spare phones wasn´t charged.
Davizinho helped me a lot with setting up my glider, while I was getting my harness ready. Trackers, radio, varios, water, all good. The wind was quite strong, so I didn´t want to wait and got into the air first today. With Konrad I went up well, but it took a while. Base was at 1200m. Konrad headed straight over the plateau, but when I saw Patrick Colin coming back low, it totally psyched me out. He is like a local and knows how to fly here. Windspeeds were up to 40km/h, with quite some turbulence in it, and it didn´t look inviting to me. Meanwhile the clouds spread again and shade covered the land.
Konrad killed me by saying how good it was behind the plateau, he was getting up to 1600m already. Not my day, so I decided to land in the big field where I had landed on the first day. Wind on the ground 20-30km/, gusting a bit. The approach was smoother than on the other days, but just when I thought I would touch down, a gust was crossing in and threw me to the side. I didn´t touch the ground hard, but in a bad angle, so my tip wand broke. And nope, I didn´t bring a spare one. What a day!
So glad my driver was there in an instant and helped me pack the glider and tried to cheer me up.
We went to pick up Konrad next who had landed in Campo Redondo. And the field next to his really cheered me up - it was full of stones, and in this case, a lot of rose quartz crystals! I never found them before, and I was happily jumping around to pick out the nicest ones. No idea how I will get those large rocks home, but I will find a way!
Arriving back, Konrad pulled out some spare tip wands and cut one for me so I can fly again tomorrow! Lucky girl. I just have to find back to the "flow" and relax a bit.








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