Today I got the start right. On time. At the right place. With the right guys. During the first transition, and the first transition only, I experienced again this cool feeling of leading the pack. Anyway, the race is won after the last glide, not at the end of the first one. We had an interesting task to complete, turning clockwise around the Ibituruna Peak, let’s go.
So we had the first task of the 2013 SuperFinal. An overcast sky was not looking too good until noon, a front is announced from the South for the next days, nevertheless the Meet Director sent us on a not-so-easy out-and-return trip to Engenheiro Caldas. Honorin is the winner of the day, taking the right amount of risks to validate as low as possible the (cylindric) End of Speed Section, say 100m AGL, find a thermal savior in order to gain 1000m and glide to goal 8km away.
6:36am. Skype bell is yelling on my cellphone. Then on my tablet. What the hell, I was sleeping so well! Who’s that? Well, now I am smiling, my 21 month old son just understood the purpose of the green button next to my face on his mother’s iPad… An opportunity to spend the 24 missing minutes making faces in front of my screen. Life can be good sometimes.
After about an hour waiting for the official 20R$ shuttle for the unofficial training day, four of the right on time pilots – me included – jumped in the first 4WD offering a 20 minutes ride to the take-off instead of the usual 1h+ for two mere additional Euros. That gave me ample time to stick my number on the wing, eat and drink and chat again at the Bar da Rampa. Plus some surf thanks to the very convenient W-LAN connection, plus some simulation with the latest beta version of the Compass firmware, which I am sure is not the last.
Second training day in GV, different conditions. The sky looked good in the morning but during the bus ride to the take-off it changed dramatically. Almost totally overcast. And after one hour spent drinking and eating and chattting at the Bar da Rampa, rain curtains appeared upwind, east of the Ibituruna peak. I repacked by precaution.
Almost all the French team has arrived, so everyone minded his own business: Antoine goes airborne first, then Jojo, then another one… well, let’s look how they manage it. Some raindrops fall, Antoine flies away with ears, Jojo hids to come back a bit later. OK, let’s go now before the real rain arrives. In fact, it appears I took off to go meeting the rain personnaly. I experimented a new technique: after years of practicing turning on the edge of Cu’s with the wing-tip a bit in the fog for half the turn, now is time to try the wing-tip a bit in the rain for half the turn. Not easy, not pleasant, I go away. Wings are scattered all around the peak, let’s find a dry route and not drift too much with the wind.
After 20kms or so, a low save, a slow recovery, time has come to make it back to GV. My intention is to cross the blue cell towards the peak, Laurie wishes to experiment the cloudstreet terminating in rain pour. OK, girls first. Once under the dark cloud, over its shadow, I cannot grab her bubble and here we go again. An opportuniy to check that my bright R-Team Orange is not fading with the 30° washing program. I push the bar to escape, goes visiting a white but wet friend, checking how dry or wet is my gear before releasing the bar and touching my brakes. Strange how these seconds seem like hours.
I like to comptemplate rainbows. Watching one a bit too close and from above, I turned my head away and headed for the landing place. A 50km out-and-return was the right flying dose for today. Tomorrow, first official unofficial traning day for the 2013 SurperFinal!
