February 2010
Monthly Archive
Saturday, 27th February 2010
The promised storm down south (and tracking north) was something of a damp squib here. There were weather warnings of 140 kmph winds in Cantabria and Galicia, but like most of the bad weather recently, it made a big beeline around us. No spectacular rain showers and barely any wind. If there hadn’t been the occasional dribbles of rain and the fact that we wanted to finish off some work before going on holiday next week, we would have gone out flying!
In order to get that summer feeling, I signed up for the first ever Women’s PG Open, held in August just down the road in Ager. And while I was at it, booked my flight home from Nice two weeks later. Roll on June and Slovenia…
Friday, 26th February 2010
Geoff writes: the forecast was giving it sunny all day, and light and variable, mostly south – just in the north east corner. The rest of Catalunya was likely to be stronger winds, though still sunny, with temperatures up to 21C. We decided on Sant Pere de Rodes, thinking that other places might be blown out. We met up with Oriol, Mike, Johnny and Wolf in the bar, and drove up in a couple of cars.
On top, it was strong north, with whitecaps on the sea, but we waited it out and it went south, as usual, when the sun came out – it was cloudier than forecast, and in the mountains it was raining and/or snowing. It seemed very unstable, so I expected strong thermals, but when Oriol launched he did struggle a bit, never getting above launch height, though he did fly for an hour or so. He was followed by Mike, then later by the rest of us. When Judith and I were flying, the wind had picked up and gone off to the east, so it was very bumpy close in to the ridge; it was more thermic than when Oriol first launched and Judith got to 400′ ATO, but the turbulence forced us out from the ridge, and the drift with the thermals was quite fast, so in the end we decided to go and land.
Wolf had a good flight, launching last, and did a nice approach and landing (but he is a skydiver!).
Not a bad day all in all, followed, of course, by a beer back on top when we went to pick up Mike’s car.
Thursday, 25th February 2010
Geoff writes: a nice day was forecast, but we thought it would probably be too windy for flying, so went skiing (me having more or less recovered from my near-fatal accident of yesterday). In the mountains, the weather wasn’t as good as we expected, cloudy, with wet snow at the bottom of the pistes. We stayed high up, but eventually it got clagged in, and started spitting with rain, so after three hours or so we gave up – cloud, rain and wet snow don’t make for a great days skiing. At home it was sunny and warm. The difference 50km makes.
But I did have a nice experience to counter the crap a couple of days ago with the Guardia Civil. The van was booked in for repairs, so whilst I was waiting I went to a cafe, where the owners started chatting to me, asking me what such and such a phrase was in English. When it was time to pay for my coffee, they refused to take any money, because – they said – I was so friendly.
Next time, I’ll order a full meal…
Wednesday, 24th February 2010
We had something of a dilemma today – skiing or flying. Both seemed possible and the Niviuk guys and Johnny were going back to Sant Pere de Rodes. In the end we decided to go skiing, not having been so far this week. Conditions were good and the upper runs beautifully groomed and despite it being 20C at the beach, it wasn’t slushy. Sunny and warm, although a little windy at the higher levels.
Geoff splatted on the last run, and nearly took out a kid. He worried about subsequent concussion, internal injuries, broken neck, lassa fever and ingrown toe nails until I told him to pull himself together. It seems the only lasting damage is a severe case of hypochondria!
P.S. Johnny and the Niviuk guys had a great day at St Pere, getting several hundred meters above take off. Johnny flew for an hour and a half, landing sweaty, exhausted and exhilarated.
Tuesday, 23rd February 2010
Geoff 23 Feb 2010 | : 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
Wind, wind, wind, so we worked, worked, worked.
Sunday, 21st February 2010
Geoff 21 Feb 2010 | : Holiday, Trying, but failing, to fly
Geoff writes: a bit windy and cloudy today. I did go out, but too windy to fly. However, the forecast for the rest of the week is good – with one forecast giving it 21C on Friday, though that seems a bit optimistic. But we’d better get in some more skiing soon, just in case….
Judith writes: We spent the morning playing with Maya, did a bit of shopping for potato bread and cheddar cheese and then my mum and I did a matinee performance of the ‘frog nobody wanted’ on the puppet theater my mum made for Maya. It’s an impressive tapestry with marionettes and movable animal faces pocking out of the landscape. The dialogue was a bit improvised, but with a bit more rehearsing, I think we could become quite passable at it.
Then off to Dublin and the flight home…