Half way down the airstrip at the sheds I released and turned back into a light thermal. Scrabbled around for awhile at 200m AGL trying to find the strongest lift, then started slowly climbing. Des came over the radio warning of a dusty on the airfield. Where? I look around below me half anxious, half excited and spot the little whirling dusty slightly down wind where all the cars and gliders are. Oh goody, it looks like a small one and where there is a whirly/dusty, there is sure to be a thermal. Track behind the dusty, high out of its furiously spinning clutches and find the thermal in its wake. Climb at around 3ms in air with brittle edges, but it is going up. No more soft Manilla thermals that's for sure - I am back in Africa..in De Aar. The Shaolin and I had been thermalling for quite some time and I started daydreaming and musing about 'When is a dusty a dusty and when is it a thermal. ' WAP'!!! The Shaolin concertina's above my head and packs itself behind me. 'What the...what do I do now?' Before I really do anything the Shaolin takes control. WHACK!, he thrusts out his wing tips with impressive force and determination. A short dive forward makes us both happy and we are flying again. Ok... 'Welcome to De Aar', as Des is known to say on such occasions.
For much of the flight, the Shaolin and I bubbled along under the inversion in a wide variety of thermic air. 0ms, 3ms, 6ms with little opportunity for day dreaming as the thermals were often NOT well defined and without a strong central core and required searching for best lift in broken thermals all the time and attention for sudden sink inducing minor collapses. I found that drifting under the ceiling of the inversion in 0 - 0.5ms worked well for me in covering distance with little risk, just drifting in bubbles trapped and tracking along under the ceiling heading downwind together. The further north east I flew the more I wished I had my camera - I had left it on launch not expecting much from the first flight. Almost left my water and a fleece because I did not expect to get away in the light conditions. Very glad I wore my fleece at the last minute - very cold. The tapestry of crop circles around the Orange River, the dam and the green fringe vegetation was stunningly colourful..and all new for me. Lovely vistas.
Tried something new today . Visualisation. A technique I know from body healing, but have seldom applied to flying with regards to dealing with fear. Greg Hammerton's book Beyond the Invisible discusses this technique on conquering fear and so I decided to try it for myself with my own personal variation. My strength and my weakness is that I am an emotional pilot. I take things personally and attribute human emotions to natures elements. 'The air is trying to kill me'. 'The mountain is hard and waiting to break me if I so much as make one mistake'. These are enormously negative thoughts that I have struggled to conquer the past two years. They have sapped my enjoyment and amplified my natural awareness of danger to a high sometimes paranoid level of fear that is really no fun to endure. Andre Rainsford-Alberts shared with me a little of how he prepares for a flight when we were at the Worlds in Manilla recently. Sports psychology plays a huge part in his preparations and I recognise that my mind, in its present state, is my greatest weakness. Time to turn that around and make it my strongest asset alongside my other powerful potential ally - my emotions - my ability to 'see', to empathises, to create, to realise.
So after my concertina collapse, I am paying attention, plotting my course downwind, marking potential thermal triggers. My first thermal takes me to 3344m ASL and I feel the inversion and track slowly, so slowly downwind. Decide that I am not covering ground fast enough, the 0 - 0.5ms lift making me impatient. Speed bar and pull away...into sink that has me wishing I hadn't. Climb up again and from here on I milk the light lift for all it is worth, whilst drifting with the wind towards my intended goal somewhere up ahead in the north east. I don't leave the light lift unless I 'see' a likely trigger ahead. Around 50km I fly over some small hills thinking I will pick up lift from them but get the line wrong and it is all sink. I line myself up with a gap to the right in the mountains hoping to alleviate any rotor as I sink below their height. There is a farm on my left, a road perpendicular to my course up ahead and 3 or 4 windmills clustered together to the right. The house is the more comfortable retrieve option but off course to my maximum distance from De Aar and so I keep straight, trying to maximise my glide. 58.5km....59km...59.6km...I don't want to land at 59.9km and I am really floating on air currents and angels breath, eking it out.
The windmills start to turn to my right and I change course slightly in their direction. I am too low, but there is a chance that I will catch some of the lift and float a little further to my 60km goal and I take it. As I pass downwind of the windmills, attaining my 60kms I set up for landing and turn into wind to land next to the road. Whoah. There is something here and I hold my wing into wind. S off slightly for awhile, scooping the air and slowly start to climb. Wind is stronger than I expected on the ground and soon the road is out of reach and I am over no-mans land again. Better make the most of this. The thermal develops fully and has my full attention as it is very active. Normally I grit my teeth and bare it, but this time I try something different. This is a Big Mama thermal throwing me back up into the sky, scolding me for being so low. She wants me to fly and to fly far and is NOT trying to kill me. It works and all of a sudden the air is my friend and the yanking and the pulling is but an impatient Mama dusting me off and putting me back in the game, back up into the sky to be the best that I can be. (Don't knock the alternative stuff. It helped me to Fly Far in De Aar :-)
In Greg's book, he wrote on the inside page: May the Air be ever your friend. This has been my mistake. Not understanding that the Air is my playmate who welcomes my time up high and wants to see me do well and fly with me across this Earth. Earth becomes my lover and the Air and I explore this landscape, the valley's, the curves, the gullies, the stubble, the texture and the shadows as One. We flow like water, following the indentations in the Earth, rising with the heat, always flowing.
Momentarily, on my second highest climb of the flight, I experience a moment of vertigo. I am so high, so fragile, the Earth so far below. What if I fall? An absurd thought, the Air is not even rough at this point, but I feel giddy and a moment of panic creeps in. But high is good, it is ok. Come back to the Air. Feel a part of it, not separate. The Air is my friend. Feel the Air, be a part of the Air, feel its movements and flow with them, don't fight them, flow. And all is well again and we move on. We are at One once more.
70km, 80km, 98km..one step at a time, 10kms at a time. Don't think too far ahead, be in the present. At 98.3km I know that my fourth 100kms is in the bag as I have the height for the glide. We have reached the Orange River and it is gorgeous. This is my first crossing and the land and the river is beautiful in its contrasts in colour, texture and form. A small plateau rises up ahead that I have to climb over. Work a light thermal for ages, gaining height ever so slowly. Finally get enough height to go over. The wind seems to be increasing. At my average height of 1500m AGL it is between 20-30kms. Not much difference on the plateau I notice. Fly past Luckhoff Town on my left (big white lettering on the hill makes it easy to identify) and scratch around for lift. I worry that I am coming up to Kimberley airspace, but not sure how close it is. I am 120km from De Aar. Turned out not to be a problem although when I go for 200km I will need to fly more to the right in order to fly between Kimberly and Bloemfontein airspace. Definitely increased speed over ground but not hectic, although still surprised that it is the same as up high - I am travelling at 60kms/hr on trim.
Ponder on whether I should start following roads for easy retrieve. Up until now, I have thrown that restriction out the window and just flowed with the wind as if it was water on the land. Tarred road to my left, dirt road to my right, wind down the centre. I make the mistake of going left thinking now of retrieve options. Bad move. 14kms is covered quickly and I turn to land at 134km in a field near a farm house a few kilometres from the tarred road. As I turn I realise that I may have made a slight error in judgement on the airspeed and my landing spot. Barbed wire fence directly behind me, cannot mess up the landing, not going forward much, no space to clear the fence. Duff my attempted 'C' Riser landing, but the outcome is still good as the Shaolin decides that self preservation requires his leading edge to turn over into the ground whilst I clumsily pull in one wingtip. We both give thanks for an awesome flight experience. Retrieve in the form of Fonkie driving my Toyota Fortuner and Ulf are waiting for me at the farmhouse by the time I walk out.
Ulf flew 77km on a line about 10km to the east of me. Lionel Miller flew his first cross country 18 kms. It is interesting to note that although Ulf took off ahead of me, our pattern of lift according to the IGC files is almost identical, perhaps proving that thermal triggers are regular and can be mapped as Jaco has done for Porterville. It is not necessarily by chance that we fly far, it can be a science. Magic is often explained by science. Luck has being described as improving with practice. We can become magicians with study and practice. Flatland Cross Country Magicians.
I hope that one day, this ordinary girl pilot will succeed in overcoming her fears, aligning herself with the Elements and become consistent in good cross country distance flying. I don't have to achieve World Records, but I do want to improve on my personal best regularly and be consistent, as I rate consistency as a base element of mastery. Paragliding is teaching me to handle my fears, to dare to be the Best that I can Be, to welcome success and not to fear the Light and the Power within. And to see a very beautiful World from a very different perspective.
Flygirl, still clearly euphoric :-)
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