AMS-SFO-DalyCity-Funston

Subtitle: She who thinks hard does not fly.
Subsubtitle: Karen went to Westlake again.

Ok, birdbones may hold the record for the shortest time between a hang gliding flight and high altitude cross-country, think trans-Atlantic flight, but I have a new one for you. I thought that after an 11 hour flight from Europe, I'm going to take the Bart, stop at Trader Joe's, grab food and then go take a nap. I did all that. I took the Bart to Daly city, went to the local Trader Joe's in the Westlake mall, and took a nap on a bench at Fort Funston, my head promptly on my harness. All thanks to cleanpants and Karen, who left a message on my phone, that Funston is in the cards today. Ah it was. But we didn't play the cards right.

Early on, it was north-cross, with a shear setting up, white caps here and there, gusty. No good, even if you didn't wake up on a another continent this morning. Karen scored a tandem (twice!), which involved a wet landing (ask her!) and going to Westlake for a nice long voyage ... And she was the only one who took to the air today. About 4 pm the wind straightened and softened up, and cleanpants and I walked back and forth, wondering. Should I, or should I not? I thought too hard ... I didn't fly. Another ground school day ... met some folks, got everyone's 2 cents on rotor, angles, approaches, beaching it and rolling paper. 

Flight time: 10 hrs 30 mins but it doesn't count.

October Dunlap Trip

From Mike L

I drove up from LA saturday to meet Kurtis, Anthony, Karen, Robert, Clay, Andrew, Zach, George, and Jesse at Dunlap.  Most of us flew saturday with a few locals and most of us except for Kurtis (I think) essentially had ~10-15 minute sled type runs although kurtis and the locals made a decent day out of it.  On the bright side, we had dinner at Pinehurst, which was impressively delicious, full of beer, had free pool, and included a variety of songs like 'rock lobster' on the digital jukebox.  Sunday we started with morning sledders, which were mostly uneventful, and then proceeded with flights after lunch.  I launched as wind dummy and stayed up for a while, getting over the launch (~400 over probably), then surviving the first flush cycle to a point but then getting killed in dirty air at north point until I decided to head out toward house ridge and the LZ.  I probably netted 35 minutes. Big thanks to Zach for finding a good thermal that I pimped.   In any case, most of us agreed there seemed to be an inversion not too far above launch as all the lift just seemed to die up there.  Anthony did well on his U2, soaring well over the southern edge of the ridge, before returning to the launch bowl and finding The Flush to End All Flushes.  The club sonic I was flying flew decently; in any case a big thank you to you guys who fixed it over the last year (?), as I collect it was in a much worse shape when it was 'inherited'.  The hang point on it has been fixed such that the trim is now more or less correct (depending on how you carry the glider bag) but the hang straps are....uh.....deserving of replacement.  There's some other things as well but that's for another time   All in all a fun weekend although the flying wasn't the best.  We got to fly, and it was a safe weekend, so that's what matters.  Hope to see you guys in the mountains more often. Michael

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