Posted by Geoff on 08 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: dull early, then wet, but we’ve plenty of post-conference work to do, so not a problem. And there should be a lot more snow in the mountains. If the weather clears for tomorrow, we’ll go skiing. Forecast from Wednesday onwards is good, sunny, though getting colder.
Posted by Judith on 07 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Flying
We woke up, closed the conference, smiled at a lot of the good feedback and then decided what to do with the day. As is always my luck, when I am really looking forward to something, then it gets messed up. And so it was today. I was too ill to fly.
We went to Belmunt, where there was a light SSW breeze and we met a few people already there. One of them had a model airplane and was checking out the thermal strength. It seemed to be working fine and they got ready. The first guy off flew through a thermal, but then got another in the valley and got back up high above the ridge. Geoff launched and thermalled his way along the ridge and topped out at 1500′ ATO. He could have got higher, but pulled out of the climb to head back to the front. Conditions were typical spring thermals – strong and a bit bouncy. An excellent day’s flying, though, plenty of thermals, easy to stay up, nice cumulus development. Big sink in between. After an hour or so, he went out to land. The only minor problem with Belmunt is that it is not top landable, being a tiny take-off, in the middle of trees.
I went for a short walk up to the monastery to enjoy the views and then drove the car down to collect Geoff. We considered driving back to Santa Brigida for a quick sausage and to say ‘hi’ to all our friends, but I wasn’t really feeling up to it, so instead we sat in the sun with a picnic and beer.
Posted by Geoff on 06 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: we’re into the last day of the conference. It actually closes 8.30am Sunday morning, UK time, but that’s because we have such a huge number of international delegates, from ten time zones. So all we need to do tomorrow morning is wake up, and close it (then there’s a few days work tidying up the final stuff, e.g. sorting out the professional credits some people get for attending – but our time is more flexible on that).
Tonight is the official conference dinner. So that’s me and Judith going to the restaurant across the way. Can’t wait….
It was warm and sunny today, of course. Probably flyable tomorrow, but we are not going to Santa Brigida. It’s the annual aplec festival, a sort of town and flying event. Hundreds of people descend on Santa Brigida, all to eat and drink, dance, BBQ and many to fly. A ridge we find can get crowded with five or six pilots, in weak conditions, can have ten times that tomorrow. And a small top landing is even smaller when there are hundreds of people, pets, cars and barbecues scattered all over it.
Judith writes: Say what you like about virtual conferences and the lack of networking opportunities (which is rubbish btw), but the conference dinners are excellent – no salad, soggy salmon and cheesecake; and I didn’t have to sit next to the sweaty bloke with bad breath I always seem to end up next to at real conferences. The only draw back was the after-dinner speaker… Geoff really needs to work on his repertoire.
Posted by Geoff on 05 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: third day of the conference. We went out for a quick bite to eat to the nice cafe a few doors down the road. As we walked in, there was a Spanish radio station playing a song in English. The words went more or less like this:
I want to stab myself, I want to cut my throat. I want to kill myself.
Great music to accompany a pleasant lunch out! Now, bearing in mind that we live literally on the edge of a 300 foot vertical basalt cliff, and the cafe is on the same cliff; and that a few years ago we found a dead body at the bottom of it, we did wonder if the cafe owners actually understood the words of the song. After the song, the band was interviewed, and it’s a group called the Tiger Lillies, who apparently are quite famous. Their web site describes them as “The world’s foremost Death Oompah band”. And they are playing in Madrid tonight, hence the radio interview.
Anyway…. great forecast, completely wrong. Forecast sunny, but actually cloudy, rain, thunder and lightning this afternoon. Not that it makes any difference to us at the moment.
Posted by Geoff on 04 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: we woke up this morning to see there’d been loads of activity in the conference overnight, with a couple of hundred new postings. Today is the second day, which is usually a bit quieter, whilst people catch up on reading the content from the first day – which is normally the busiest of the four. Judith spent 8 hours summarising the 67,250 words in the seven workshop discussions to make the content more accessible to people.
Fortunately (for us) today was dull and wet. Makes us feel much better when we are stuck inside. But dry and sunny from tomorrow.
Posted by Geoff on 03 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: today was a beautiful blue sky, flyable and skiable – but also the first day of our Supporting Deaf People (SDP) conference. Judith leads on this one, since it’s her field, whereas I lead on the e-learning conferences. This is the biggest SDP conference we have ever had, in terms of delegates – and the biggest conference of all types we have had in terms of postings, with the keynote session, about interpreting swearing and profanity, attracting a massive number of postings, around 275 so far. That’s a lot of words (and includes quite a few swear words too!). And it’s only 12 hours into a 48 hour theme.
Online conferencing is our main work (really, our only work now) – and in terms of online conferences where people pay a fee to attend (as opposed to free to register) we are probably the biggest in Europe and the US, certainly in the field of education. They are really interesting to do, but also very complex events to put together, and whilst the conferences themselves typically are only open for posting for four days, the event planning (and work) around that takes months. The big benefit for us is that the preparation work can, except in very rare cases where we have a meeting, be done at any time of day or night, and so leaves us free to do other things like fly, walk or sky if the weather is good.
The one thing we never seem to have enough time for is housework.
Posted by Judith on 02 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
A hectic day today. Our last day before the conference starts and still more people signing up to participate! The sky outside just got better and better and we couldn’t bear to spend the whole day indoors, so we sneaked out for a final fly before we’re housebound for 4 days. It was a south forecast, so always unpredictable, and there was strong north all the way there. On arriving at Amer, it was south. However, this was short lived and it turned west pretty much immediately. Mike, Nani, Lluis, Ivan, Marc and Sergi were already there and we drove up.
On top it was clear that it was too far off and too gusty to fly. As often happens, there were trial riders in the quarry, practising jumps and leaps. Santa Brigida seems to be a very popular spot for it. We’ve seen official team vehicles for the Swiss, Czech, Polish, British and Spanish teams there over the years.
We sauntered over and watched them doing amazing scrambles up sheer blocks, jumps, balancing, etc. One rider seemed to really, really know what he was doing. When we saw his t-shirt, all became clear. He was multiple world champion Adam Raga. Nice of him and his mates to come along just to provide us with entertainment while it wasn’t flyable.
Now it’s 18 hours a day in front of the computer for 96 hours from tomorrow am. We have 329 delegates from 16 countries and 10 different time zones. See ya when it’s all over!