Moving on from Laragne

Tuesday, June 29th

We headed back up to the launch for hopefully another great flight. There was more of a north wind and so the cycles needed to launch weren’t coming up the south face as they were the day before around noon. So we parawaited for over an hour and Richard was the first one in the air. He had a nice forward launch and enjoyed his short flight. Then Ian, Gans and Alex took off. They didn’t find too much lift. Alex performed a nice SAT (an acrobatic manoeuvre) over the large dolphin shaped landing zone. Kes, Tim and I finally took to the air but all of us didn’t even make it to the big LZ and had to land in a small, sloped bomb out field after only about 5 minutes in the air, what a difference from yesterday. It was a tricky landing but I was happy with how mine turned out. Landing up a slope is not that easy to do as you run the risk of hitting the ground hard.

Alex was flown back up to launch by Richard in the helicopter and then picked us up. We returned to the campsite and decided to break camp and head a bit north. There was a drop zone for skydiving that Alex and Tim wanted to hit. Gans was keen to go for a tandem jump too. Kes had to stay behind in Laragne as his vehicle needed a new wheel bearing.

We stopped at the airport of Gap-Tallard and watched some skydivers land. One of the officials there told us that Gans would require a medical certificate in order to jump so we would have to sort that out in the morning. We hung out in the cafe of the hangar (beautiful facility by the way) with some of the guys taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi while I watched Japan lose to Paraguay in penalty shootouts in the World Cup. Upon leaving to find a campsite, Betty decided not to start. She’s been acting up again and starts 50% of the time in the last few days. The skies had opened up and we decided to wait in the vehicles until it abated before push starting the campervan. I’m lucky that I have these guys to help me out.

That evening the stars were out so we did some gazing. Gans had never seen a satellite before and we pointed out a few to him. It wasn’t until a few days later that he confessed that he hadn’t actually seen them...oh Gans, you do crack me up.

Oh, and the reason for no photos...my camera ist kaputt...not my HD helmet cam but my point and shoot one...will have to get a new one.