Presidents Log: Sept 1st

Nikki and I arrived together in Geneva and caught our private shuttle into Chamonix by 9:45 am, in time to catch the lift up for the 1st thermal flights of the day. The sled run stragglers were just landing.

The conditions the day before we arrived were unstable because of the low pressure, which is not typical for this time of year. Those monkeys who managed those sweet XC flights that day didn't realize how lucky they were - I've always dreamed of making that flight. But of course now that I'm here, we're back to the regular stable high pressure regime. As they always say: you should have been here yesterday!

The stable conditions made the thermaling quite a challenge for my 1st day. I flew for maybe an hour but could never fight my way much higher than launch. Everyone else had similar experiences, except for Mad Dog who stuck with it and clawed his way up and above the inversion to find bounteous lift. Enough to repeat the previous day's XC flight to Plaine Joux! How does he do it?? I gotta try and stick closer to him next time.

We drove out to fly at Plaine Joux with Mad Dog in the afternoon, where we again struggled to get up in the stable conditions. It was fun trying though, and we managed about an hour of airtime. Reaper took some folks to Annecy for the afternoon and they had some great soaring flights there.

After many beers from the bar at the LZ, we came back to Chamonix for showers and a nice dinner at La Taverne, a very cool restaurant downtown. After way too many bottles of Cote du Rhone we called it a night. What an amazing place this is - the mountains are truly indescribable. Hopefully we can get some more pictures up here soon!