France vs Cali 1:0

After successfully fulfilling Grandma-duty in Germany, i headed directly to France to join a bunch of Swedish pilots, mostly newbies. We spent a couple of days at Chindrieux, a beginner-friendly site where they could get as many sledders as they wanted (and some of us some nice thermal ridge soaring flights). As the rain approached, we decided to pack up camp and move southwards to Saint-André-les-Alpes - a great site! I had to do some fighting and convincing in order to be "allowed" to launch mid-day. 'Cause girls can't fly (of course, how could I have missed that?), and three years of flying is nothing (well, at least in Sweden). But then I had great flights together with the other more experienced pilots under a beautifully cloudy sky. I flew a rented Atlas, an old single surface glider with pretty poor performance, so unfortunately I wasn't really able to fly anywhere far from launch and LZ, but at least it handled nicely and didn't try to kill me...

Another rainy day came and we went on to the next site. Too late for my taste, we missed a day of flying because the guys weren't able to make up their minds in time and get out of bed in time to be at the flying sites when the winds were good. So we drove around trying to hit a bunch of different flying sites just to see the wind being either down or too strong and found a small, small ridge soaring site at night. I didn't really get any lift and decided I was nervous enough about the landing (a rocky, uneven, small ridge with trees all over it) to go land immediately while the others got a nice sunset flight.We then camped at Laragne, a real hang gliding mecka. At least 50% of the people at the camp site were HG pilots and the LZ was also directly there. Pretty nice... :) But Mistral was blowing, a strong northwind which made the site unlaunchable. We drove to Saint Vincent, a little town on top of a mountain with a castle and a small ridge. The main LZ is above launch and the place is crowded with PGs, so only a few of us got to launch into weak lift. Three pilots made the climb away from the ridge and over to the main mountain, while I and another pilot scrambled around at the ridge, trying to avoid the PGs and still staying up in hopes of eventually making it to the LZ. I tried for two hours without a single second of relaxation until I couldn't master the strength for turning and dodging PGs anymore and had to land in an angry farmer's field below. The prettiest place I've flown, I just wish I could have enjoyed it more.The next day, it was still pretty Mistral-windy, making our attempt to fly midday a bumpy, windy, turbulent, extended sled ride into a turbulent LZ. At night the wind had died down a little and turned to be perpendicular to the rim and I got the most beautiful flight so far in my flying career. Really smooth lift, both ridge and thermals. I took the last thermal up to cloud base at 8:30 pm and then just enjoyed the amazing view of the sunset over the Alps all around me as I glided over to the LZ and slowly circled away my altitude to land 10m from my tent after three hours in the air. :)The next, and our last, day, most local and visiting pilots launched mid-day for windy sledders as we had done the day before. Almost nobody seemed to be getting up so we decided to wait. After 4pm the day suddenly turned on, I launched and had no problem whatsoever to get up. Went straight to cloud base and had to make sure not to get too close and high to be sucked in as I flew around for about an hour. I eventually landed as the sky turned darker and darker and went back in the evening for a calmer ridge soaring flight. It wasn't quite as nice as the night before and my arms finally failed me, telling me that enough is enough and now we need a couple of weeks break before flying again. ;)I got 18h of flying in only 12 days, I got to fly with clouds as I've never really done before and managed to show some people that you don't need testicles to fly a hang glider. Well, I also got a mild concussion from jumping into the car door frame just as we were about to leave the place for a 27h-drive back home to Sweden. :p Here's a nice video summary which one of the pilots made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71HYjy4MNg4&feature=youtu.be


I'm in the blue and white glider with my light blue/yellow harness.Maybe we should meet in France to fly next spring?? :) Until then I'll hopefully have managed to buy myself a decent glider of my own...