Down Under

Some of you know and some of you may not but I am in Australia right now for some hang gliding competitions. I will be competing in both the Bogong Cup and Sportavia International Hang Gliding Championships - and in a 5 day clinic in between.

Anyway, I flew here New Year's Eve leaving just before midnight which was pretty cool for a New Year's Eve and got to Sydney on the second of Janurary.

Moyes was kind enough to arrange for me to be picked up at the airport and then taken to the factory to re-assemble my short-packed glider and do some fine tuning - nice place and very very nice helpful people at Moyes. After getting all sorted out at Moyes I hooked up with Jim Prahl from Quest, we got a car, made a rack, and were off to pick Andreas Ohlsson up at the airport - we then drove 8 or 9 hours to Mt. Beauty.

We have now been in Mt. Beauty for 2 days getting gear together and a lay of the land.

The first day here in Mt. Beauty Andreas and I went up the mountain at the last minute (at about 6:30PM) and took sled rides just to fly. Today I had a great flight winding though a maze of valleys and making my way to the airstrip next to the place we rented to stay. The flight covered about 50k and was really really fun - its a mixture of mountain and cloud flying. Its summer here and the flying is really nice; there are about 10 different launches here to choose from based on the weather conditions and today cloud base was around 8k.

I have already gotten a wealth of information from Andreas and the other pilots (from around the world) I have met and I am really excited about how much I will probably learn from this experience.

Tomorrow we have another day to fun fly/practice and get our gear dialed-in; after the flying day we have pilot check-in and then Saturday (USA Friday) the Bogong Cup begins. I plan to have my gameface on for these comps but at the same time I will be flying against some of the top-ranked pilots in the world...so...umm...cross your fingers or something.

Yesterday just after I landed three Kangaroos came out of the woods to watch me break down; the animal and bird life (flocks of pink cockatoos and parrots) here is really interesting.

I will try to update this daily with pics and storys.