I walked over to the paragliding school next to the landing zone around 10am. There were a few people milling about and I met a French guy Didier that was a driver for a British guided group. I was trying to suss out how to get up to the top of the hill and just as the school mini-van was about to leave, I introduced myself to Francois, the owner of the school, and there happened to be one more spot in the van. I sat in a row with two 16 year olds. I wasn’t sure how much experience they had but after seeing them take off, they were pretty decent for their age. I had a few aborted launch attempts and then took to the sky. I climbed along the ridge by the launch and then headed north. There were a couple of other paragliders on a rocky face with a few antennas on the top. I never did see them from above like the other pilots did. I scratched along at about half the height of the ridge, wary of some power lines that ran up the spine. I turned back and continued to ridge soar. I noticed a yellow paraglider above the ridge that turned out to be a tandem. I couldn’t help but imagine their thoughts of “That poor bugger way down there...”. A kilometer or two back towards launch and I finally found something and was soon up to the same height as the tandem. Sweet. I worked my way back to launch and then went around the corner, to the St. Andre side. I wasn’t paying attention, playing with my camera or something, and then I realized that I was under a dark cloud and going up, and up. I pointed myself for the blue sky ahead, over the lake, but realized that I was getting to the edge of the cloud fast enough. I opted for a spiral to lose some altitude and held one for close to a minute (I think...who knows for sure when you’re plummeting towards the ground!). I escaped the cloud suck and still had a lot of height to play with so I enjoyed a bit of a boat around the sky over the LZ and the campground. Great 2nd flight of my trip!
Heading towards the antennas:
The lake by St. Andre:
High over the landing zone and the campsite (the treed bit):
I had seen a large white vehicle carrying some Brits with paragliders and paramotors pass by Betty and later on one of them, a friendly bloke called Tim walked by and introduced himself (and for some reason I thought his name was James, all I can think is that he might have said “Name’s Tim” and I just heard the first part as James. The group he was with was hanging at the paraglider clubhouse as there was Wi-Fi there (they didn’t know about the Wi-Fi at the campsite) and that I should come and join them. At 5pm they were going to assess whether it was worth ascending the mountain for an evening flight. I hung out for about an hour and the conditions weren’t improving so I walked back to my campsite. I caught the end of the Slovakia-Italy football game where the Italians were the heavy favourites but were down 2-0 with 10 minutes to go. The game finished 3-2 for the Slovaks...unbelievable, 3 goals in the last 10 minutes of a World Cup game! I suddenly noticed that the conditions had improved so I rushed back to the clubhouse and luckily the Brits hadn’t left yet. We climbed in a mini-van taxi to go to launch (the driver doubles as a local ambulance driver....good to know, but hopefully he’ll always be a taxi driver to me!). It was windy up on launch and I had a few aborts but I eventually got away. There must have been 20 or so paragliders enjoying the evening lift. I didn’t venture too far from the launch area but climbed higher than I expected. I was about the fifth last pilot to land and there was one guy who far outdid everyone, crossing the St. Andre valley with plenty of height to try and reach a grassy, knobby mountain top that I hope to reach one day. During my flight there was one pilot who waved at me, I waved back not thinking much of it. It turned out to be my friend Torge from Victoria. He now leaves near Hamburg with his newlywed wife Jodi, who happens to by my ex-girlfriend. I knew that they were in the area as Torge was attending a geology course out of Nice (he has his doctorate in geology and works for an oil company in Germany). I was supposed to meet them earlier in the week but I had all of those Betty issues. It was great to catch up with Torge in the landing zone and then Jodi and her lovely, mature dog Satah showed up. We went for dinner in town. It seems like most restaurants are pizzerias, which is okay by me. We sat on the patio of one place and eventually, as usual in France, the waiter finally showed up. We were dismayed to find out that the beer delivery guy had not been by so they only had wine. After ordering some pizzas, Torge, thirsty for an ale, went on a mission to procure some beer for our meal. I haven’t seen a French member of a wait staff move as fast as one did when Torge put the contraband beer on the table. He explained that we couldn’t drink that beer. Having already been put off by the service up until this moment, we decided to venture to another eating establishment. It turned out to be the same restaurant that they and I had been to with Pierre on different occasions. It was a lovely meal, lovely to catch up with them and a lovely end to the day.
A traffic jam we had to contend with en route to dinner:
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