A Surprising Sledder

Saturday, August 14th

I first woke up, looked outside and it didn’t look pretty. Not raining but lots of dark clouds. I figured I might as well sleep in a bit and perhaps I would leave town and head into Italy. I woke again at 9:20, looked out, blue sky! Well some at least. Okay, got half an hour to get ready and see if the Parataxi comes by. Sure enough he did, albeit a bit late. The vans they use have three rows of seats and technically should only seat 9, 3 in each row. Well, being a capital driven company, of course they put 4 in each of the back two rows and 2 plus the driver in the front, so 10 paying customers. Garth and I learned early on that during the morning stop at Teja’s, it’s wise to position oneself close to the door to hop in and get the best seats. The front is good, or the first person in the back two rows gets a window but the last person for those rows usually has half their butt half hanging off the seat...not comfy for an hour ride, half of which is on dirt road switchbacks. Well today, finally the cops decided to crack down on all of the paragliding vans. We were pulled over and Wolfgang was given a lecture, a ticket and one PGer had to get out and stay behind (not sure how the policeman does his math but technically 2 pilots should have gotten out). Wolfgang was told that every person has to have a seatbelt, not that I ever saw a seatbelt in the back rows, nor did the cop check). I wonder if Wolfgang and the other van operators will now change their operating procedures...it does equate to a comfier ride for the pilots!

Once again I decided to wait up on launch, hoping for better conditions but as luck would have it, they actually slightly deteriorated. I took off and hoped to glide to Kobarid. It was looking promising for the first half of the flight, having only lost 200 meters in 5km glide but then I hit massive sink coming around a corner and soon realized that I wasn’t going to make it. I decided that I’d press on as a few other wings had where I should have turned back to land in the official alternate landing zone. I watched as a couple of wings landed in a field that had already had its hay cut...what harm can there be in that. I landed, packed up, and although the other pilots there were happy to just hang out, I figured it was only a couple of kilometres to town. I got half way there when a car slowed down to give me a ride and one of the pilots that I was talking to up on launch was in it so I hopped in. The driver gave us a lift right to Teja’s...perfect. It wasn’t a great flight, but a flight’s a flight.