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The Oz Report

Thermalling over the Strawberry Festival

Stellar day at Ridgely. Me and Akula (thee dog) arrived just before noon to the largest number of gliders I've seen in quite a while. Awesome surprise to see Paul & Lauren's shining faces which was quite unexpected. Rushed to get the glider setup as I had seen a bunch of Cumi's starting to pop down South while I was driving over the Bay Bridge. It was a cloudless blue sky over Ridgely and remained that way for the rest of the day. I entered the launch line around 1:45 as many gliders were starting to rain from the sky. John M launched just before me and was already on the ground when I launched. Expecting to add to my long list of sled rides this year, I was surprised just how much thermal turbulance was out there on tow. At 2200 feet, I watched as the Tug rocketed up and my glider joined the space shuttle launch a few seconds later. I fell out of the thermal in a hard right turn and knew I had no chance to get back wings level. As I reached for my release, the weak link snapped (AS IT'S SUPPOSED TO) and suddenly I was off tow. I followed the ensuing hard right turn around 270 and entered the thermal that had just bucked me and continued by climb up to 5500 feet. I was joined by Paul and soon after Matthew, which was an awesome feeling as its been quite a few years since the 3 of us have been in the same thermal. Thermal drift was only about 4 mph so I just lazily drifted with it. Dan T joined me in another thermal a while later and I decided it was nice to share! Deciding to explore, I flew up near Greensboro, got down to about 3500 and caught another thermal taking back up to 5700. I headed south down by the golf course and then at about the 1:15 mark, I decided I was cold and was ready to head back. I parked myself over the Ridgely fairground and performed a few wingovers for the Strawberry Festival crowd, deciding at 2500 I would pull VG and head back to land. Caught a screamer over the town and took it up to 6200 and decided to fly a little while longer. Once Matthew radioed up that all of the above mentioned pilots were on the ground, I decided that my work here was done and I was not only freezing, but exhausted. Heading back to Ridgely, I corkscrewed down and enjoyed the warm air that rush up to meet me. Ended the flight with a good landing for 1:48 total flight time, longest flight in over 2 years. Hung around for the rest of the day enjoying all the friends and the good company at Ridgely. Did dinner en masse at a little Mom & Pop Italian joint in Greensboro and got home at 11:15.