February 2011
Monthly Archive
Monday, 7th February 2011
Geoff writes: because Judith didn’t fly yesterday, the plan was that I would drive for her at Sant Pere de Rodes, then we would go to the beach. It was a warm, sunny forecast. However, sometimes you get a band of cloud at the coast, and for a few miles inland, and that was what happened today. Beautifully sunny inland, we could see from the webcams that the coast at Roses had 100% cloud cover. So we went for the seond best option, to fly at Santa Brigida. We did fly, but it was rough, uncomfortable air, so we didn’t fly for long. We sat it out for a while, watching the trail bikes – a French team this time – practice in the quarry, but in the end gave up and came home.
Judith is trying to finish editing the most recent podcast before the conference begins on Wednesday. Editing always takes many hours of work, cutting out the repetitions and filler noises, improving the sound quality, reordering it, etc. Hopefully, it will be worth it!
Sunday, 6th February 2011
Geoff writes: today was the Aplec at Santa Brigida. This is a big party for the local town of Amer. Everyone goes up Santa Brigida, and eats a lot, drinks a lot, and dances. And all the paraglider pilots from miles around do the same, and fly too. This is a small ridge that can get crowded with less then ten gliders, on scratchy days. With 50 or 60, it is extremely crowded. So our plan was to go to fly somewhere else, then go there later on for the party, and, maybe, flying, if it was less crowded.
Judith was ill today, though, so she said she would drive for me and Nicky, so we went to El Mont – Nicky’s first time there. As well as the flying, we wanted to show her the spectacular views.
It was hot, light winds, and very stable. It’s a ramp launch, easy for a hang glider, technical for a PG. A hang glider launched first, and went down slowly, a bit longer than a top to bottom, but not that much more. I set up, and went straight off, and had a top to bottom. Very little happening in the air – though after I landed, I did see two birds thermalling. Nicky tried to get off later, but the wind went north, so wasn’t able to. By the time they drove down, it was too late to go to Santa Brigida to fly, and Judith was still ill, so we called it a day and went home.
Saturday, 5th February 2011
Geoff writes: a nice day at Bellmunt. It was the warmest day for a while, around 20C or so – hot in the sun. There were plenty of people out to fly, but the flying was hard work. There were thermals, but these were stopped from developing by two inversions, and almost no-one got above launch, though it was possible to stay up on the lower ridge. The problem was that there were a lot of people flying, and that made it pretty crowded. In the end, both Judith and I chose to land, having got fed up of dodging people. We had a cold beer in the hot sun with Marc and Lluis, then off home.
In the evening, Nicky arrived from France, on her way back home.
Friday, 4th February 2011
Geoff writes: warm (19C), sunny, thermic. There’s a big area of high pressure here, pushing all the bad weather north. We did some work in the morning, then went to Santa Brigida (mostly because we were short of time) and flew with Marc and Oriol. A nice, technical, Santa Brigida day, with lots of lift, and some big sink cycles. We got very low down during one of them. Three of us scratching and thermalling very close together, very close to the trees and to the rocks …. for one person it would have been tricky, for three it was much harder. Judith and I managed to scrape back up, Oriol had to bottom land, as did Marc later on when he went too far out in front and didn’t make it back high enough to scratch back up.
So we ended up on top, with the usual beer and sandwich, before taking Marc’s car down.
Thursday, 3rd February 2011
Geoff writes: since it’s only the reading week for the conference, we can take the odd day off, so decided to go skiing. It started off really nice and sunny, but soon clouded over, with massive wave bars. The skiing was still good, but we much prefer to ski when it’s sunny, rather than in the shade – we find it much harder to read the snow. Though my spectacular fall today was whilst it was still sunny. We were skiing the black double diamond run, one we’ve done before. It is narrow, and you have to do a steep turn within about four metres of setting off, and today it was hard ice exactly where you make the turn. I managed the turn, but fell over immediately afterwards, losing both poles and one ski, and managed to slide most of the rest of the way down the slope, before stopping – I probably got down faster without my skis, than I usually do with them. Judith thought this was very funny.
Until a little later we went right to the top of the resort, where it was howling. You have to cross the path of a button lift, and dodging behind one of them, she hit two small snow drifts, one after the other, which made her splat on her face. Payback for laughing at me.
We left fairly early, partly because of the work, but also because it’s not as much fun when it’s cold and cloudy.
Wednesday, 2nd February 2011
Geoff writes: today our Supporting Deaf People conference opened for reading. This is the week when delegates can download and read/view the numerous presentations, in preparation for the discussions themselves starting next week. So, whilst we had a lot to do this morning, sending out registration info, etc., we were planning to take a couple of hours off this afternoon to go flying. But it wasn’t to be – nice warm day, blue skies, but very windy, north everwhere, rather than just a tramuntana, and the wind machines were giving variations on north, so it seemed unlikely Santa Brigida – or anywhere else – would be working. So we went for the old standby of a beer and a sandwich in Besalu.
And tonight, Judith is recording another podcast, which will be released in the next few weeks.
Tuesday, 1st February 2011
Finally the bad weather is over. Wall-to-wall sunshine is now forecast for the foreseeable future. The four days of snow in the mountains have produced excellent conditions. We went to ski with Debi, and Masella and the Cerdanya valley actually look like they should… mostly snow covered!
We had a lovely day out… the skiing was great, lovely views, nice chat and great to get out before the conference opens for reading tomorrow. We’re restricted for time from then, so things need to be fitted around the work. Shame really that the bad weather wasn’t next week.