Experience….

... it gives you the ability to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.

After two crappy, high pressure, windy days we were all looking forward to a change. The forecast was calling for light north winds. North isn’t the best direction here, but light sounded good, and there was even a possibility of clouds, so maybe the inversion had broken.

Naturally this morning the wind was strong and north. I headed out to Godfrey’s anyway, and as expected no one was too excited. Heikki, Pedro, and I decided to go for a drive to check out the Sky Ranch and the sailplane operation over by Lake Keepit. Naturally, as soon as we headed off the clouds started to build and things looked a bit hopeful. After making the rounds we skedaddled back to Godfrey’s and up the hill. It didn’t look too bad, but the strong north cross cycles had most of the paraglider pilots grounded. We set up our hang gliders and I launched first, turning right into a nice climb that had me 800 feet over in no time. I was just getting comfortable, zipping up and settling in. By this time Pedro had launched and was scratching in front. He started to turn in a weak one about the time I was committed to going over the back with my climb. Instead I pushed out front to join him and in no time at all I was flushed into the bailout LZ. Pedro soon joined me, and then we watched Heikki launch, fly straight out, and make a valiant attempt at a climb above the bailout before joining us. Why was this vaguely familiar? Oh yeah, this was basically the same flight I flew at Mystic when I ended up in the bombout. I had the day in the bag right off of launch and I blew it. What are the chances I’ll make that mistake a third time? Stay tuned……