July 7th, 2006



Hoping the day turns out better than yesterday. Lots of pilots in the bail out down below yesterday and with the best flight of the day at 47 miles folks are hopeing for more drying of the air and higher cloubases with more cohesive thermals. Eric and I need to redeem ourselves today!

I launched right after Bruce in a no wind cycle and had a bit of a right turn while running down and running and running and running but I did finally get off the ground. Follwed Bruce on out over the knob and hooked one while I noticed that my radio had come out of its harness area and the ptt wires were out so I was w/o comms. Ignoring it I just worked the thermal for all it was worth on the leading edge of a cloud. Climbing slowly I got fairly deep back into the pass between King and Coyote at 9k and even with the tops of the ridge at that point. Here I had to decide to either go out the pass or bail and come out front. Turns out Wayne was 700' above me in the same thermal as we drifted past launch and he found much better lift and was able to take it up and over for ~30miles and tried to radio me to tell me to follow him! I made the right choice (given not knowing about Wayne skying out above me) and came back out front in the sink right down to the lz for a much better landing than the day before. Flew for 55 minutes and had a blast.

After I landed I spent quite a bit of time talking to a nice older lady who stopped by on her way to bingo. She'd been stopping by for the last 5 years and no one had ever talked to her and answered her questions. I had a wonderful time talking to her and explaining some things about this game of ours. While I was talking to her I kept my radio handy to listen to Ben and Eric and they soared above the mountain. They got pretty high and decided to head out. It was really cool to hear the decision be made and then watch them go on glide. After a few minutes of gliding things didn't look so good. Ben went West iniatially, waiting things out and then south. While Eric went straight over to Hwy 22 hoping to go around the black thunderstorm but as he headed South so it did. Eric finally tried to go around its backside but had no lift and landed 13.4 miles from launch. Ben in the meantime had a better line over the tops of the ridge to the south of King and got a thermal allowing him to continue for 16 miles.

Bruce sunk out just before me and Wayne made it 41 miles just past 4 corners.