Belated Flight Reports

The Rat Race was kind of a blur for me, perhaps because most of my landings were at the vineyard, where I got an early start on the celebrating each day. I had intended to make time to post articles and pictures as the week progressed, as in past years, but to my relief JD volunteered to fill in for me, and he spun some great yarns from his perspective as a new Rat Racer. I also knew that Reaper's camera was on my helmet recording most of my airtime, so I'd have a video log to review later on. And the tracklogs are available to view on the scorekeeping website. So now, a week after the comp, having watched my videos, and pored over my tracklogs, I have squeezed the following details of the week's flying from my besotted brain, to be accompanied below by assorted helmet cam video clips.

Update to JD's Rat Race: Epilogue and Credits

Epilogue

I went to Rat Race to learn and have fun. Although I earned an advanced degree in thermal flying and had one of the greatest vacations I can remember, I came away with so much more.

Update to JD's Road to Rat Race: Rediscovery

Task 5

Let's just get this off my chest right from the start. I am not comfortable flying in Lee, thermals or ratty air. I've experienced enough deflations, wingtip collapses, and sink for a lifetime. I know this may not be my normal writing style, usually upbeat, or at least hopeful, but I find myself in a different world. Let me explain why.

Update to JD's Road to Rat Race: Redemption

Task 4

With weather almost identical to yesterday, but perhaps a bit less windy, we knew the game was on. I won't bore anyone with the drama going on in my head at this point and just get to the comp, because that is where the drama truly unfolded.

Update to JD's Road to Rat Race: Remission

Task 3

Pilots awoke today to another bright, sunny day with numerous cumulus clouds already forming. Looking to the sky, it looked like a perfect day to get really high, yet local pilots had a melancholy look about them meaning something was just not right. Stepping outside, a brisk wind revealed the source of their frustration. Still learning thermal flying, I didn't see a problem, after all, if the wind isn't blowing on Oahu, we don't fly.

JD's Road to Rat Race: Remission

Practice Day

Words can not describe how excited I was to attend my first Rat Race, and I honestly counted the days until the last slowly passed, and it was time to board an airplane. LeeAnn and I flew into Portland and rented a car, so that we and Alex had transportation for the week. They gave us a brand new, shiny Mercury Mariner with leather seats and 100 miles on it and we drove away laughing, knowing we would return it with over 1,000 miles and a "bit" of dust.

First Task

Weather for the first task day was great, even better than the practice day. They called a task identical to the practice task but extended by about eight miles to goal at a waypoint located far down one of the valleys. I didn't make it to goal, but I did tag all the turnpoints on the way, and ended up low in time to make a nice landing at the vineyard. So I actually made the practice task goal from the day before.

Lagging behind

Not in our racing - in our blogging! I've recruited Jason to help out on this project, so hopefully we'll be seeing some entertaining and fun articles up here very soon. We both have lots of pictures and videos to sort through already, just from the first two days. Thanks for all the comments so far!

Practice Day

Saturday's practice day was the biggest one I've ever attended - I think we had almost all of the 110 or so pilots at the meet. The weather has been rainy and horrible all spring until the day before yestarday. Somehow it miraculously cleared up in the nick of time! We had nice light northerly conditions for a fishbowl practice task around the Applegate Valley, ending up at my favorite alternate LZ, Longsword Vineyard.