A new title: German XC champion 2020 (ladies)

 

Even though I only had about 3 weeks to go flying this year, I managed to cover enough kilometres in the air to get 1st place in our national German XC championship (women)! 

Without friends and their support, I couldn´t have done it. I hadn´t flown in over a year, cause my mom got really sick last year, then corona started and all comps, including the Women´s world championship in Florida that I had so looked forward to, got cancelled. So it´s about time I say thanks to a few people :)

When Harald Stephan invited me to take a tandem flight with him at Tegelberg in his Atos rigid wing, I was happy to start spreading my wings again after a long lockdown.

In the end of August, I managed to squeeze in a few days in Greifenburg with my friend Rebi. We enjoyed the very warm welcome back of Bettina (Pension Zippo) and the Thaler family in Weisach - it was really like coming home. Just what I needed after all that stress about job, taking care of my lovely, but very stubborn parents for months, and changing from going around the globe twice a month to staying just in Germany for months. Something I hadn´t done since I moved out of my parents home, but now the only sensible thing had been: moving back in.

At Emberger Alm, I coached Rebi´s steps back into hang gliding, and she helped me a lot with my first paragliding flights after a long break. We had fun, and lots of flights. We squeezed out every flyable minute of every day, as we both had been deprived for too long. But it was hard work, as we took social distancing very seriously. We went up in our own car and took turns in flying, cause we soon leanrt that the official bus didn´t run in the afternoons. 

Landing out with a hang glider is always an adventure, but in times of corona - you just don´t want to try it. It´s exhausting and frustrating, cause nobody really stops to take you back to your car. One day, I walked some km with my harness on my back to the closest train station, took the train back to Greifenburg, while Rebi walked up to launch to get our car down. On the hottest day possible of course, with a storm lingering on the horizon...

A bath in Bettina´s natural spring water was fantastic after all that work!

During the six days we had, I managed to fly an exciting 98 km FAI triangle around some scenic, huge rocks of the carinthian alps, and also a 120km zigzag around the valley when the wind or cloud development wouldn´t allow any major crossings. For this area, it was already very late in the year, usually the great xc conditions are in spring and early summer in Austria. But I was happy about every moment in the air, and about every moment I got to spend with friends!

One evening, my Australian friend Billy and his girlfriend Katia came over for dinner, cause they had been traveling and flying for a while. 

Billy was stoked when I invited him for home cooked dinner with chanterelle mushrooms that I had collected the same day in the forest.