Work
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Tuesday, 23rd February 2010
Posted by Geoff on 23 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Beach, Flying, Work
Geoff writes: an interesting day (for us, if not for other people), with a mixture of work, flying and conflict with the paramilitary police.
The work is doing the final edit on a web cast/multimedia site guide. We’ve been thinking about doing web casts for a while, for topics which need more than just the audio available in the podcasts (e.g. weather, RASP), so decided to produce multimedia descriptions of LMSC sites. The first one, a kind of experiment, is now finished. It can be seen here.
For the flying, on what was a warm, sunny day, we went to Sant Pere de Rodes, the nice spineback ridge by the coast. As well as Nani, Jesus and Johnny, various Niviuk test pilots and designers turned up to fly, including Dominique (the Niviuk MD), Urban and Aljaz Valic (test pilots), Olivier Neff (designer), Simon Issenhuth and others. They came to this part of Spain because everywhere else in Europe has bad weather (except maybe Britain last week!). They had a couple of carbon wings with them, still under development, and it was interesting to see these. Incredible performance. We all launched off the south side first – not epic, but most people stayed up for a while and got above launch, in spite of some high cloud coming in. Eventually, all bottom landed.
We all went up again, and flew off the north side. I was first off, and soared a bit, then went to land in the car park by the beach, where we always land in a northerly. The others all landed there too. As we were packing up, drinking beers and discussing which bar to go to, a Guardia Civil car drove past, did a U-turn, and came into the car park. For those who don’t know much about Spain, the Guardia Civil were the paramilitary police force which, after the civil war ended in victory for the Fascists, were used to violently oppress those areas which had opposed Franco – which included Catalunya. They aren’t as vicious as they used to be, in the new democratic Spain, but you wouldn’t want to get on their wrong side. And, clearly, they have switched from fighting the Spanish resistance, to oppressing paraglider pilots, who they said shouldn’t be landing in that car park (which has been used for years). Maybe they were just bored. All the pilots at this point were foreigners – us, French, Swiss, Slovenian, etc., not one Catalan or Spaniard, though that would have made no difference to their attitude. Dominique, to his credit, started arguing with them, whilst they were collecting everyone’s identity card, and checking them to make sure we were all legal.
We decided to play the stupid English tourists who speak no Spanish, and gradually crept off to the van, whilst they were arguing with Dominique, hoping they wouldn’t notice us. We got as far as the van, but when we started the engine, they shouted at us to stop, so we did. They had guns.
In the end, it all came to nothing – they gave everyone their ID back, and eventually went off, after Dominique told them we’d be flying again there tomorrow. It wasted maybe an hour of our time, and was a staggering display of arrogance, and completely pointless. And hardly a good advert for a country which wants more tourists to rescue an economy which is an even worse shape than Britain’s. (Mind you, as far as I know, you can still take photos in Spain without being arrested, which certainly isn’t the case in Britain. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/feb/21/police-arrest-photographer for another display of pointless harassment, this time in the UK, where every photographer is now treated as a potential terrorist).
So, all in all, an interesting and, mostly, enjoyable day! And the forecast is very good for the next week or two.
Monday, 22nd February 2010
Posted by Judith on 23 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Wind, wind, wind, so we worked, worked, worked.
Wednesday, 17th February 2010
Posted by Geoff on 17 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: after the rain (and snow) of yesterday, a much nicer day, but too windy, and the wrong direction, to go flying. So we did some work, which was fine after our series of house guests. A good day to catch up.
Temperatures are now getting back to normal. Should be around 16C tomorrow at the coast.
Tuesday, 9th February 2010
Posted by Judith on 10 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Work
It rained all night, so we woke up to the mountains around us covered in snow. Masella has 30cm extra snow and the roads higher up needed snow chains. The forecast was for more rain/snow, so in the end we decided it was just too much hassle. So another work day for us; finishing off conference tasks and preparing for the LMSC committee meeting in the evening.
Weather better from tomorrow, so hopefully we can get some flying in.
Monday, 8th February 2010
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.
Saturday, 6th February 2010
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.
Friday, 5th February 2010
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.