New home with genuine mountains!!

So it's been a while since i last blogged here, i guess it's time for an update!

I guess the really big news is that i am no longer living in the great flat land of Western Australia where our biggest "mountain" is 800ft, we have become masters of "dune gooning" 3ft sand dunes because we cant be bothered with the 2 hour drive to said "mountain" and we dont really have to worry about landing options because they are everywhere. Big open 5km wide flat paddocks which will have a dead tree for shade, if you're lucky. No longer will i be ground towing, because they just dont need to over here. (which is actually kinda sad.. i liked ground towing. Areotowing scares the bejesus out of me!)

I shall never again dance on the bar of the Wyalkatchem pub to celebrate a cross country flight. *sigh*

But not that that's really all that troubling, because i now live in Canungra. A place which is arguably the flying mecca of Australia. I look out the window from my home on Mt Misery to see Mt Tamborine launch and in the same distance the other direction i can go to Beechmont. I've been coming to drive at the competition here for the past two years, and now finally, i might actually have to courage to fly in it!!

Also of note, my poor little abused Fun 160 has been saved from the ravaging hands of students.

So i left Perth on the 21st December 2008 and set off in my little car for a last blast on the beautiful coastal cliffs of Albany in Australia's south west. Of course, murphys law came into play and we didnt fly a damn single day. until i left.. I am so very well practiced in hang waiting now. :(

Anyhow, never mind, because i set off from albany to drive solo across the Nullabor desert to Forbes for the comp over there. Four days of driving for ten hours a day and i finally arrived. I was at Forbes to drive for Curt Warren and Tony Lowrey who i successfully convinced to allow my good buddy Steve Elliot onto the team also. I'd met Curt at The Canungra Classic the previous october and i may or may not have been drunk when i agreed to drive for him "and his buddy tony" at Forbes. I'd always driven for missy, so it was good to have him on the team. I always knew what i had to do with Missy. Beer? check. Cigarettes? check. it's all good. That was until the first day when missy unfortunately had an accident on launch which he never recovered from. I didnt see him lock out, but it was horrible to see the aftermath. He was always so strong and independant that it was very difficult to see him lying there on the ground barely able to breathe. I think that is always going to stay with me that afternoon. Missy was a great mentor to me in my early flying, especially helping me to keep going after my accident, even though he never saw me fly. I'm not entirely sure how i managed to drive to goal that afternoon to pick up the other boys while steve was being helicoptered to hospital, it's amazing i could see at all through all that mascara!

But anyway. I'll never forget you Missy. you were a legend.

So the rest of the comp carried on like they usually do. The boys flew, i drove, we all drank beer and were merry! I should also point out that on the first day at forbes also, before Missy's accident a russian pilot on an Aeros glider tumbled and threw his reserve, he came down beautifully and suffered only a few bumps and scratches, the same couldnt be said for his glider.. and then to make things more interesting a dust devil whipped up in the launch line and took out five gliders! I felt really sorry for the two Norwegians Olav and Oyvind who had only flown their gliders once before suffering carnage. Amazingly Olav was able to salvage parts off Oyvind's glider and managed to fly to goal that day! determination! I was a useful little driver and while chatting with Tony as he was waiting in the line i was able to jump on his wing and prevent him from being flipped over like a turtle while gliders in front and behind him were trashed! it's a shame that he didnt set up his GPS properly and got lost on the way to goal..

On the third day at Forbes, Trent Brown decided he would try to scare the shit out of us some more and gave everyone in the paddock a very big scare whilst trying to thermal in a dust devil. He got slammed into the ground so fast that he bounced (while also giving everyone watching the impression that he had just killed himself, including the general manager of the HGFA and the Police investigator who was looking into the accident on the first day) It was a big vicious dusty just at the end of the tow line, which meant that all the tugs were flying straight for it, landing three pilots including trent in it. Goodness knows why they decided to thermal, but a few turns told them that they shouldnt really be there. while trent got pummelled into the ground, nick purcell managed to land safely and the Aeros glider flew out the other side. I freaked out because Curt and Tony were either just about to tow, or just had and i didnt want another one of my pilots in a medivac. thankfully they were both waiting on the dolly. phew! Trent was okay, despite the impact, as the paramedics were trying to put a neck brace on him he was heard to be saying "nah.. you can put that on after my next tow.." i guess the glider did it's job, the uprights both went through his shiney new sail, and when i saw the broken parts a month later at the Moyes factory it turned out that every tube on the glider was broken. poor little brand new Litespeed RS.

Thankfully that was the last of the eventfulness of Forbes. The rest of the week went off without a hitch, bar a few days off in which we drank a fair bit, went to Parkes for the Elvis Festival and finally a rest day so that we could attend Missy's funeral in Sydney. And no matter how many times people say i look like Paris Hilton in them, i am so thankful that i own huge sunglasses!

Wow. Forbes was heavy..

Meanwhile, after that eventful week, i headed south to Mt Beauty for the Bogong Cup. This time i was driving for the Norwegians and Jonas Blecher, a young German pilot. the weather was not so good at Bogong, so a lot of our time was spent hang waiting and chilling out in the mountain stream. It sure beat hang waiting in a sheep paddock though, so i wasnt complaining. The area down there in Victoria was amazing and i'd love to fly there someday. Mt Buffalo is somewhere i have to launch from, no matter how much just looking at that ramp makes me want to wet myself with fear. I think there were three flying days in total, and nothing really much to talk about. Great party on the final night with a live band and an awful lot of Jagermeister!

From Bogong, i headed south to catch up with a friend from high school and see all her wedding plans. She moved to Melbourne just under two years ago, and although it was sad to see her go, it's good to see her so happy. So it's a trip down there in august and a pretty dress to buy!

I only stopped in Melbourne for one night and was back on the road to hang out with my flying buddies in Stanwell Park. I fell in love with the place on first sight and can only dream of living in the place i was staying. I had become good friends with a swiss girl named Claudia who was also driving at the competitions, so i went to stay with her at "the bunker". I cannot imagine a more perfect location. I woke up in the morning to the sounds of the waves breaking and looked out of the window to see the launch on Bald hill. Bliss. there were also some adorable dogs who lived at the bunker, i wanted to adopt them and take them home with me. Tobias and Chica were Rhodesian Ridgebacks and Chica decided that my swag was much more comfortable to sleep in than her bed. I am hopeless when it comes to animals, especially dogs.

This is becoming an awfully long "quick update"!!

So it's past midnight, i'm gonna skim through the rest. After Stanwell i headed to Manilla for the NSW state comps where i drove for Paul Barry, Brod Osborne, James Lowe and Joel Mckay. All Queensland boys. Paul, Brod and James are all from the north coast, and Joel is a local boy who cannot organise himself to save his life, so i found him a team, let him sleep in my spare bed and made his lunches. I actually ended up making sandwiches for quite a few people that week.. there wasnt a decent sandwich shop in town, so i used a whole loaf every day making sandwiches. Manilla is awesome because most people stay at the Royal hotel, which is where the breifing is in the mornings, and the presentation night, so it was all very communal and fun. This little social butterfly had much fun flitting around chatting to everyone! Overall a great comp where we flew everyday and had a great time.

I thought that Manilla was the end of my comp season but on the last day i was to be proven wrong. Jonas and Curt convinced me that i must go to Dalby to drive for them once more. But before they headed out there they wanted to spend a week driving around flying different sites. So i headed to my new home of Canungra for two weeks before flying back down to Sydney to take the boys on a flying tour of NSW. Added to our group was Ollie and joining us up at Dalby would be Tony once again. We spent a few days in Newcastle with Conrad and Anousha, flying the stockton dunes and other local sites before heading out to Manilla and eventually arriving at Dalby where we had more bad weather and only three valid tasks. Windy windy!! But when we were not flying, the organisers found us other things to do, like Shooting out at the Gun club which was very interesting.. I also started my ultralite training with a short flight in the Drifter! I really need to get back out there and keep working at that!

So i guess that brings me back to Canungra. I've been here the best part of three months now, and i gotta say.. looking for a job in a recession sucks. But i'll keep plugging at it and hopefully something will eventuate. in the meantime, i have an awful lot of free time to fly... and the weather is awful!! damn!!