Portland to Chelan

Brett Hardin, Doug Mullin and I traveled to Chelan together in Brett's ute. Brett has some back issues so sitting isn't very comfortable. He worked out a novel way of making the 7 hour drive :-)

USA bound

Landed in the US to spend about 10 weeks over here in Portland with Katje. I've been here 4 times in the last 2 years and always the same question going through customs when they ask how long you'll be in the country, if you say anything more than 2 weeks you get "How can you afford to spend so much time away from work?" They don't ask about being away from home or away from family or away from your dog but away from work, because that's what life is all about right? I'm tempted to tell them I'm here for 12 hours and have to rush back to Oz but no doubt that would end with me stuck in a small room with a sinking feeling and latex-gloved customs official.

Ability

There is something wrong in a world where a person like this is labeled as having a disability...

It's why they're called the Blue Mountains...

There was HEAPS of people flying a Blackheath on Sunday, quite the following out there now. I set up to fly but conditions on launch were pretty sporty and I was half asleep from the long drive back from Melbourne so I decided to sit out. Here's a picture of Kacper landing, as you can see, conditions were perfect...

Fake rolex and spice and everything nice

I spent all day everyday in the office so I didn't get to see a whole lot of Dubai though I did escape one evening to go to the old part of the city and wander around the souks. Traders have been in this area for hundreds of years and while the souks are labelled 'tourist attraction', the shifting of goods is still their business which means you end up with a very eclectic range of goods for sale. The different traders are generally grouped together so you can play them off with each other - textile traders are all in the 'silk souk', there's the gold souk, the spice souk, the perfume souk, the 'hey mister you want a fake rolex' souk and the chinese made plastic remote control toy souk. It's all there.

One of the things I love about traveling is finding quirky little gems that you would never come across at home, here is a picture of #246 on the list of things you will never see for sale in Australia:



No your eyes are not deceived, that is actually a giant sack of dehydrated prawns. It is sitting at the front of a spice traders shop, outside where the temperature is hitting mid to high 30's every day. Though in his defence, this is the cooler less humid part of the year, I assume the prawns are taken inside or not for sale in August when the temperature is hitting the high 50 degrees with 90% humidity. Hmmm...

I've had this thing nagging at me the whole time I've been in Dubai, it's a question
nobody has been able to answer, even the people actively involved in creating this crazy place. It's this: By 2015, there will be enough residential accommodation in Dubai for over 3 million people plus the equivalent commercial space. Dubai's population is currently 1.4 million, 250,000 of which are imported Indian and Pakistani labourers who are certainly not going to be buying new houses and settling here when it's all finished. Where are all the people coming from? Maybe they're all waiting for their house on a palm frond to be finished before the sell up and hop a plane to their island paradise. The rumours are anything from the Russian mafia diversifying to rich folks in third world countries creating a fail-safe if/when their own countries become a little too politically awkward. Whatever it is, the fact that they have designs on tripling the population in the next 7 years is probably the least weird thing about Dubai.

My palm is bigger than your palm

I flew into Dubai and landed at what will become the worlds biggest airport, had the worlds biggest cup of coffee and got into a taxi which took me along a freeway through the worlds biggest construction zone. The office is right near the Palm Jumeirah which in September last year became the worlds biggest man made island.



It held the title for a pitifully short time - it's already been eclipsed in size by the Palm Jebel Ali a few km's to the west which in turn will lose it's title to the Palm Deira just to the east. When completed in 2010, the Palm Deira will be 8 times the size of the Palm Jumeirah. Oh and I forgot to mention 'The World Islands' on which construction has just begun - this will be an archepeliago of 150+ islands in between the Palms Jumeirah and Deira formed in the shape of, wait for it, you'll never guess...the world.

The surreal Burj Al Arab is the world's only '7 star' hotel (actually there is no such thing as 7 stars, the industry chooses to call it that and the hotel choose not to say otherwise), the worlds richest horse race is in Dubai, the worlds largest indoor ski slope (though a newer, bigger one is currently being built) and not to be outdone on any front, just last month Dubai broke the record for the worlds biggest car crash involving more than 300 vehicles.

Family Bike Ride

Broke in the new bike today on the standard blast around Manly Dam in Sydney's northern burbs. I haven't done the ride since before my old bike was stolen so it was great to get out there on what Kacper appropriately calls the Family Bike Ride.



I christened the bike properly just as we were coming towards the end of the loop when I came across a small lady with a very large dog standing right in the riding line at that part of the track. I popped over a rock to get around her and saw, just as I hit the point of no return, the muddy hole that my front wheel was about to rest in and the piece of track my face was about to rest on as I went over the bars. She was very apologetic but didn't offer any practical assistance such as taking the bike off my head. Glad I bought the lighter one.

Heading to Dubai on Wednesday for 8 days work then continuing on for a quick lap through the US and back to Sydney on May 7th.

Table Rock

Went to a site called Table Rock on the western side of the Blue Mountains. I haven't flown there but Kacper and the other kids have been going out there pretty regularly. The site has great potential for XC flying and you probably want to get away from it as the landing is pretty average - the place is just rolling hills so everything is in rotor plus a spider web of power lines. Thanks to Andy for picking Michael and I up from the least shitty landing paddock (read: only one I could find with no power lines running directly across the preffered approach).

The Quike

I went to Melbourne for the weekend and stayed with Hamish, the bike store down the road had 20% off all the bikes they had on the floor so after 4 months of procrastination I couldn't reasonably hold off any longer. I felt pretty comfortable on this one but it's not quite what I ended up buying, apparently this model is pretty hard to get parts for:



On Saturday night a bunch of us went into the city to see Mark Watson as part of the comedy festival, having a drink in Federation Square before the show we came across this:



Check out Roger and Megans website at www.steppebysteppe.com.au - what an awesome adventure they are going to have!

Also at Easter

Easter in Manilla...or was that Bright? Or Manilla....

Finally decided to go to Bright for Easter, but not before 5 or 6 reversals between going north or south and silently declaring I was never going to try and forecast the weather again - I was leaning towards Bright at the time so there I went.
On Friday we headed out of Bright to fly at The Pines. There was an interesting mix of air out there - with a strong SE forecast we were surprised to arrive at launch and find absolute calm. After launching we even had a slight tailwind heading towards Bright at times which got us all excited about flying home. Staying up on the flats in front of the launch was easy with some BIG dusties kicking off now and then but every time we left the 5x5 Km square in front of launch it was into a whole world of sink. We still flew for a couple hours and in reality it would have been soarable hours before we launched had we faffed less.

Pic of me by Michael Roelens, looking towards Mt Buffalo

Saturday was a stunning day in Bright, I've somehow done more flying in Bright this season than anywhere else and this was the best day all summer. Climbs were a bit slow down low but above about 1200m it was game on. Nice Cu which filled in throughout the day and strong consistent climbs - I had the vario pegged out a couple of times :-)

Antje enroute to the Big Shed

At Easter the Skyhigh club from Melbourne run a similar gig to the State of Origin in Manilla where a group of pilots with lower airtime team up with pilot with somewhat more airtime and try to fly around. I had my own group of fledglings in Lauren, Jenny, Jim and Ilin, although Ilin doesn't count as he's a gun now! It was great just flying around the valley as there were loads of sailplanes around towing out of Porepunkah. The sailplanes are fun to thermal with but they never seem to climb for long, on a day like today I'd guess they get one decent climb to somewhere near cloudbase and then spend the rest of the day flying the ridges and averaging out the whole sky.

We took our own apple harvesting machine to Kamp Krusty...

On Sunday and Monday we flew some tandems with Antje's housemates who came up from Melbourne for the occasion. Geoff and I did a couple rounds, they weren't long flights but I'm really enjoying flying the tandem.

Weekend Warrioring

Checked the forecast on Thursday, out of habit really and noticed that it was looking about as good as it gets for Manilla. Having been away the previous week nobody was really keen to do the drive and there was talk of flying the Hunter Valley, 2.5 hrs closer than Manilla so I couldn't convince anyone. I drove myself as I was too late to get a ride with another car load and couldn't convince anyone else to come up and certainly couldn't convince myself to stay at home. Saturday had very weird cloud early on and nicer cloud after about 1pm, got to 2300m then glided into the dirt in less than 10Km. Oops.

Sunday looked as classic as any day I've ever flown in Manilla. 15-20k tail wind, perfect Cu from horizon to horizon. I climbed out to 2300m with JJ and Shep and we headed west. 15Km out I'd picked the paddock I was going to be landing in right behind Shep when I saw his glider pitch back and he screamed away. I flew in under him, about 50m off the deck before I got the climb...and we were away. Again. The sky was saying 5m/s climbs everywhere - we hardly found anything more than 2m/s and usually fluctuating between that and zero. Very frustrating. I got to Narrabri and pushed it past 90km in 4 hours and then had to leave the best climb I'd found all day to spiral down and land as JJ had already gone out of his way to retrieve me. It was easily on for Wee Waa (130km) and if I didn't have to be back in Sydney I'd have thanked JJ and sent him on his way. But looking at gliding down the train line west of Narrabri at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon with no retrieve was a very lonely prospect.

Thanks for the ride JJ!



Photo is the sunset on the way home as I managed to forgot to fly with my camera both days... :-(

Bright 321 Comp - Day 6

No flying yesterday, looking windy today. The nights have been absolutely freezing and the alpine forecast is calling for snow tonight on the mountains. Gav might get to use his speed wing as it's makers intended!

Here I am using the competition rules to my advantage.



Check out Brett's page as all this non-flying spare time has me so busy I just don't have time to blog...

Bright 321 Comp - Day 4

Gavin, the crazy little bugger, flying his speed wing off the hill after the task was finally cancelled due to strong wind. Aparently the users manual for the speed wing starts off something like 'don't ever, ever fly this thing unless you are on a steep, snow covered mountain with skis attached firmly to your legs...'

Bright 321 Comp - Day 2

Lloyd was kind enough to take us gold panning in Morses creek today and show us a few tricks. He knows quite a bit about finding gold. And catching deadly snakes with his bare hands.