The drive down I-5 corridor is simply amazing and the views are majestic. I knew right away this trip would be unforgettable. Once we arrived in Jacksonville we had a few hours to kill until Alex landed, so we walked the town and ended up in a game of pool at the J-Ville Tavern. Needless to say, LeeAnn kicked my butt the first game and conveniently let me win the second, because she knows I am such a sore loser. This defeat certainly seemed to set the tone for practice day and Day 1 of the comp.
Practice day dawned bright and beautiful with the clearest blue skies I have ever seen. As Alex has already mentioned, over 100 pilots attended the mandatory pilot's meeting and prepared for the day. Over the past few weeks, LeeAnn must have asked me a dozen times if I was nervous about competing in the Rat Race. The answer was always simple..."no, I'm just going to learn and have fun"...right up until we arrived at launch! Within seconds, my hands started shaking, my breathing became more labored, and I couldn't eat more than half the sandwich Alex bought me without feeling sick.
It wasn't so much what awaited me out on the practice task, it was simply knowing I had to launch in front of a hundred or so pilots with decades of experience, as a brand new P-3 who began flying just over a year ago. As I envisioned myself running off the edge with a cravat, a compression knot, and twisted risers, it dawned on me as clear as the morning sky, "I'm not ready for this," and asked myself, "what the heck am I doing here?"
When the pilot meeting on launch began and the task was called, I couldn't write the waypoints on a sheet of paper because my fingers were no longer working. Now I knew for sure I would "be that guy" on launch requiring the first tree rescue of the comp. Nevertheless, I'd paid my entry fee and airline ticket and dragged my wife to Rat Race's practice day to volunteer as a launch assistant on her birthday. There was no way out now.
The best part of my first flight at the Rat Race was my launch. The wing came up smoothly, I checked its forward travel, turned and torpedoed into the Applegate Valley, wondering why I'd worried about anything. That feeling lasted six seconds. I hit my first thermal just off of launch and my wing shot toward the sun, tumbling me backward until I thought for sure the wing would stall. With barely enough cognition to remember the wing would shortly surge forward, I applied enough brake pressure to keep the wing from frontaling...and so the flight continued for what seemed like an hour and a half.
In truth, my first flight at the Rat Race lasted 15 minutes, mostly because my thermal avoidance radar kicked into high gear and I never got over 200 feet above launch. I simply wanted to get down and kiss the ground in the LZ, not caring whether or not I would lock lips with a cow pie or poison oak. I told Alex afterward that nothing could have prepared me for what I had just experienced. Thermal flying is so very different from ridge soaring, and I knew for a fact, at that moment, that I had no idea what I was doing.
I packed my wing and caught the bus back to launch to let LeeAnn know I was safe, and also to see when she could get away from her duties to join me at Headquarters for a cool frosty beverage. But seeing her on launch, on her birthday, sunburned and exhausted yet still volunteering, caused me to rethink that option, and I depressingly unpacked my equipment for another attempt. My second flight at the Rat Race saw me to about 700 feet above launch, just enough to make sure I could go on glide to the Longsword Winery. I was then, at last, completely satisfied, knowing it was goal for the practice day, and I didn't care that I never reached the start cylinder or a single waypoint along the way.
Task 1
Another beautiful day, another day of defeat. Very little changed between practice day and task 1, other than greater meteorological conditions promising a high cloud base and easier valley crossings and a more competitive atmosphere. Fifty percent of the field would make goal today.
Alex launched early with many of the other pilots competing for goal, and I launched minutes before the start window opened. While Alex climbed out with the graceful ease that only "the King" can demonstrate, I was still ensuring my waypoints were correctly added to my route page. Another flight ended with the same tired, tense muscles after an excruciating 15 minutes of airtime, in which I was tossed, banked, twisted, and spat out of thermal after thermal, landing in the main LZ utterly humiliated.
Alex, on the other hand, was busy tagging every waypoint of the previous day and landing just a few kilometers short of goal. I launched a second time before the launch window opened and similar to previous flights, found myself well below launch and drifting way beyond the spine I should have been flying. Almost by habit, I pointed my glider toward the main LZ and succumbed to a depression afforded only to those who enter a paragliding contest only to realize they know nothing about thermal flying.
However, 200 feet above the main LZ, I heard the rising tone of my vario telling me there was one last chance for another circle, and not wanting to glide straight into the LZ, I turned. After one turn with a 200 foot gain in altitude, I attempted another, only to gain another 200 feet. Still climbing and wondering what was happening, I realized the possibility of a low save, if I could only stick with the thermal. Circling again and again, I was back up to launch height, having gained nearly 2,000 feet in a thermal that didn't scare the crap out of me. Although I sank out from there, I had a smile on my face at the LZ.
Task 2
Today was so different from any previous day. First of all, the skies were overcast with a huge weather system that precluded any blue sky from offering a hope for flying. Pilots gathering at Headquarters repeatedly asked, "have they cancelled the task or are we going up to launch?" While local pilots infused optimism into conversations that the clouds would clear, few others entertained the idea of flying.
After a brief pilot meeting, we headed to launch in spite of the conditions. We found the entire mountain shrouded in a cloud that extended 500 feet below launch, and we had no idea what was yet to occur. With a brief respite from the normal rush, LeeAnn, Alex and I remained in our slightly less shiny rental car and contemplated the day. We ate sandwiches at 10:30 a.m. that were meant for lunch, and discussed the possibilities of doing laundry.
Out of a whim, Alex asked to watch the GoPro video I'd shot yesterday on my 15-minute flight, and so I fired up the laptop and began my mentoring session. Within 30 seconds of launch, Alex had me figured out. "You're flying right through the thermals without slowing down and you're not turning in the lift," he remarked, noticing my hands cemented in one place as my vario beeped incessantly. "I know," I said, "I'm too busy watching for collapses...and what do you mean about slowing down in the thermal?" I had so much to learn and the next 20 minutes under Alex's tutelage would pay huge dividends.
My first and only flight on Task 2 was brilliant! Okay, not brilliant, but I did meet all my expectations. I planned to follow Alex off of launch but that guy is just on his game, and I was not yet ready, or relaxed enough, to launch with the early-goers. Yet today I felt a bit of confidence building. I had made a low save the day before, and maybe, just maybe, I had a better idea of how to find lift in these obnoxious thermals that still continued to rock my world.
My launch today was less than spectacular. I nearly leveled a wind flag off of launch and it was a good thing it was a flexipole. I received my first applause of the competition for keeping the wing flying despite my awkward track. I headed to the spine of the ridge off of launch and waited intently for some lift. Finding my first thermal, I slowed the wing and turned, hearing the wind cruise by and my vario begin to scream. I turned and turned, rising higher and higher and watched as other pilots began entering the thermal below me.
Within ten minutes of launch, I was at cloudbase with the rest of the field, and had only 3 minutes to devise a strategy for flying the task. The entry today was a 1K cylinder entry that we had to enter after the start window and then proceed to the 400m cylinder at the same WOOD LZ waypoint. My strategy was easy now, because I saw Alex a couple hundred feet above and just followed his line. I could see that pilots were using the convergence lift off the spine to stay high and I was in the game.
I took a minute on glide to look around and just relax. It was an awesome sensation to be a part of this enormous fleet of wings headed out over the valley below. I was so grateful for Alex and Paul Murdoch's advice in the previous days, knowing that whatever happened next, I had at least put myself in a position to fly XC in the race.
On glide across the valley I tagged the start window cylinders, and kicked in some speed bar to get through the sink. When I reached Rabies Ridge, I was still about 400 feet above it, and thought, "This is working. Let's find a thermal." It was at that moment that my wing started shaking and bouncing from side to side. Each side of my wing took a substantial deflation, although not simultaneously, and I said, "Uh-oh" and a few other choice words that I hope my GoPro did not record. I immediately scanned the horizon and saw other wings fighting something invisible, with few climbing out toward the waypoint. The wind out of the west valley was compressing the lift over Rabies Ridge and we were in the rotor. It truly felt like I bounced off a wall that wanted to thrash my wing and send me to the thick forest below.
I turned to find lift as my altitude quickly diminished and I was getting nearer to ridge height and stronger rotor still. There was not a thermal to climb in, and I was drifting northeast due to the strong winds. Finding the main LZ well to the southwest of my position, I calculated my glide and realized I would need full speed bar to get over numerous power lines and barbed-wire fences if I hoped to reach it. There were already 50 or more pilots in the LZ folding their wings and I joined them, thankfully without the same fanfare I'd found off of launch.
I was happy to see Alex and a number of pilots I've met at the LZ, not because they didn't make goal, but because I was able to stay with them today and made the right decision to land. Only 11 pilots made goal, and only about 10 others made it beyond the first waypoint. It was a very difficult task but a great day to fly. I can't wait for Task 3 and another chance to improve my thermal flying.
1 comment:
Nice posts! Keep um coming. Its great for all of us to hear your stories and remember out first times on crowded launches and first thermal experiences.
Scrappy
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