Friday 07/07/2006 0:32:44am Name: sunny jim E-Mail: singlesurface@yahoo.com City/Country: usa Comments: day five, chelan xc classic,tom sinks out at the chelan airport while I hold on to drifting thermals for a twenty miler..........floating low over small lzs and thanking God I'm on a single surface glider..........this brings Tom Johns and I within ONE mile of each other on the final day six! Day six, Conrad Kurp(third place), Tom Johns, and I all thermal out together. I lose track of my buddies and get low over Wells Dam looking for an ace card. I look out over the columbia river and see three redtails going up like rockets and decide to join them........1200 feet per minute....to 9,500.....drifts me N.E. towards the Colville REServation.....I can hear the war drums.......getting low over the bridgeport Dam..barely going to make it to the rimrock on the far side of the dam .... must have triggered a thermal when I unzipped to land cuz I took a ripper from one hundred off the deck to ten grand!...straight on to indian country! ...can't make it over the next ridge so I turn back to land a short ways from the east end of Omak lake....great lz.. but as I'm breaking down I'm thinking...I'm in a hole with no phone reception and no radio contact"... I started worrying and asked the question, "how am I going to get out of here?....silence...and then.... "I got you here, I'll get you back"..... good enough for me.....keep breaking down....start walking....the lake looks refreshing enough...and whats this?...? Indians riding bareback shoulder deep through the water..everything looks slow motion.....practicing for the upcoming Omak Stampede suicide race where they race down a forty five degree embankment into the okanogan river and into the stampede grounds......"it's won or lost in the water", Zane Best tells me, sitting astride his stallion bareback complete with black braids down his back....I feel like I've walked onto the "dances with wolves" set and I'm Kevin Costner.....except I can't see anyone who can play, "stands with a fist".....too bad. My new indian friends feed me fried chicken and cold beer and give me a ride out to civilization........and it turns out that this 48 miler wins the meet for me.........SJ out

Thursday 07/06/2006 1:22:25pm Name: sunny Jim E-Mail: singlesurface@yahoo.com City/Country: usa Comments: thanks Ben, I looked up my day one score and I the triangle on day one with the multiplier works out to 61 miles, not 66........Day two was a great day for single surface as well but not for me......I had a hard time getting accross to the clouds out by Mansfield and Tom Johns, who was in second place, jumped to first place by getting under those clouds and racking up a 47 mile single surface flight to almira, WA.!! So now I'm in second place and tom Johns is fifteen miles ahead of me and the weather turns bad for day three and day four......very stable...no lift...at least not enough lift to get us accross to the flats....yet I notice that Tom Johns is steadily increasing his lead over me!!! Now, on day four, he is actually twenty four miles ahead of me!!! What Tom is doing is getting as high as he can and then he is just turning downwind and plummetting into the farthest landable LZ along the river! Brilliant strategy. If the bad weather continues he's got me for sure! the Chelan xc classic has just turned into a GLIDE-OFF!!!!

Wednesday 07/05/2006 5:31:43pm Name: Ben Davidson E-Mail: falconxc@tekflight.com City/Country: Comments: Nice going Sunny Jim. Wish that we were there. Funny, saw in the Oz Report that those lowly single surface gliders did generally better than double surface KP gliders. Charge onward!

Wednesday 07/05/2006 1:44:20pm Name: sunny Jim E-Mail: singlesurface@yahoo.com City/Country: usa Comments: first day of the classic......with eight single surface competitors!..this group is growing! thats up from five last year and usually only three or four in past years......Day one was an easy clombout over the Butte and a great day for a single surface triangle so I whipped out a withrow/ mansfield/ and back to the butte.....I think its a 44 mile triangle with a 1.5 multiplier but now I['m going to have to go double check on that.........I can't remember!...but I think its' going to be 66 miles..........I flew Kamrons new single surface ship that doesn't have a name yet and I really liked it a lot...I did somthing new this time.....I flew with full stereo headphones under my helmut and I loved it!!! You just aint lived until youve thermalled up listening to "Lady in Red"........!!!!!!!!!!.......sj out

Sign this Guestbook | Manage your Guestbook

Page 1 of 16

Go To Page: