On-the-Road Tales

Headed to lunch and had an incredible garlic carne fillet. I made the mistake of ordering a dark (oscuro) beer to try and it was just nasty. Sweet, like pure soda syrup. Of course Dononvan and Marcelo told me after my first sip how awful they thought it was but I should have the experience myself! Thanks. Ick. I took a Skol to wash the taste away. Donovan, Cecilia and I headed to Cacapava. I went up in a glider with Donovan. Much less disconcerted than the first time I flew in one but it is still kinda crazy. The parachute is like a joke. The chances you are seriously going to be able to unwedge from the cockpit in the event of a problem, extricate yourself from the confine of the cockpit and open your chute wuth enough altitude are slim but hey – you put it on anyway. The instruments are in the front seat only so I had to shout the altitude and airspeed to donovan in the back so he knew when to pull the chord and release from the plane towing us. As the taildragger you are tied to by a rope starts accelerating in front, you get dragged along on the skids behind, bumping over grass with someone holding the wing off the ground. No wheels on this guy. Bc of the glide ratio, you start flying before the aircraft so you are kind of hovering in back waiting for him to get enough lift. As you climb you just hold your breath until you get enough altitude to recover in case his engine quits. All the indication are in meters since it is an old german beast so I was calculating in my head. We separated and soared around for a while. Really very interesting, you learn alot about flying because you have no second chances. You lose too much altitude, too far from the strip and you are landing in some field or in trees if you happen to be on approach. I would not mind taking some lessons just to be a bit more comfortable in them and a little less dependent on having the throttle for comfort in a real airplane!

There was a Barbq afterwards for a kid who had recently soloed. We chowed down on freshly cooked meat and sausages in the hangar and watched the lunar eclipse. It took several hours for the full moon to fully recover from the reddish shadow cast over it. I chatted with some boys studying to be Aero Eng and pilots who rode 1.5 hours each way on their bikes just to come fly! That is dedicated, I wished them luck getting into this crazy industry.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.