Good evening to all!

I am writing these lines from my hotel room, crushed on the couch, just exhausted at the end of quite a day!

After a computer failure, struggling in order to do my posts so that all of you can be kept updated, I headed for the airport as quickly as I could so I could help with the retrieve office; just half a mile before reaching the airport, my pilot announces on the radio he is coming in, no finish – well, at least he is coming home safe. :)

Getting into the hangar, I look at the wall and see about 5 red retrieve cards, all to the North, fields or airports. And as we are taking the glider apart more people start coming in, no finishes though. Wow, the weather did fail them to the North!

Just as we are in the box going to the hangar, we get notified that our friend, Scott (SF), landed out and he needs help, as he doesn’t have a crew. Wow again! I was just thinking about a shower and an early dinner, so I can catch up on sleep. Not today :(

So we drive for about 2 hours to get to Portales, where, surprise, 4 of our gliders landed out. And on our way there we past 3 more trailers heading to the surrounding fields. So going North for the last turnpoint was really interesting today. And the sunset was great over these plain fields.

I do not know the total number of landouts, as we got back around 11pm, but please check the scores here – http://scores.qtsolutions.com/.

The conversation on our way back was fun and entertaining, with lots of stories and learning, but the one for the day from both the pilots accompanying me was – do not get greedy, it will make you come down faster! And 2 simple rules: #1 Land at an airport; #2 If it really looks bad, turn around!

More tomorrow after the pilots meeting and a review of the day.

Good night

MD