Friday, March 9, 2012

Alamagordo

Long story short I left Texas for a few reasons, business wasn't happening fast enough, though I think it will pick up eventually, just not on a timescale that worked for me. I also missed my west coast friends and mountains too. And not wanting to jinx anything a certain female too ;)

And so it was a week ago I headed back west. About 5 hours later I ran out of gas! A strong headwind killed my range and I went 60 miles without seeing a gas station. Fortunately I just needed 61miles. Phew! One mile is so much better than Two, and even with a short walk I was picked u by a friendly Sheriff, and given a ride, what luck!

But enough of that, I was lucky enough to fly a couple of days in Alamagordo on the way through New Mexico. It has caught my eye before, but weather and schedule hadn't worked out. Lucky this time, it is February after all.
 Dry canyon is the launch name, the site and a few others are administered by Rio Grande Soaring Association. RGSA I was very lucky to get a ride up with Dave C. Thank you ! I got to fly with both him and Lee B. It had been a while for me, and I happily twirled around for two and a half hours between 5k and 9k.
The next day, I met up with Robin, the current president. The opportunity to give a local student a Tandem that had volunteered to drive came up. I couldn't not do it!
 I swapped out all my flying gear for tandem stuff. Up we went. Such a fun day! Sharing the dream of flight really is a great thing.
 Shamek got a good 10 mins at the controls, then we had a pretty long glide into a headwind to make the LZ. We made it with 20ft after 2 miles? Landing in even knee high cactus isn't fun, so I was happy to make the manicured grass field.
What a great site and club ! Thank you RGSA :)

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