Cinco de Mayo at Ridgely

[Dan T]

A relative handful of us pilots flew Ridgely on Saturday the 5th of May, Cinco De Mayo.

Ellis led the way with a modest soaring flight and a landing on her feet. I believe this is the fist time she's attempted a stand land up landing since her surgery many months ago.

Mark Cavinaugh managed to launch just before it turned on and struggled to get a soaring flight that I will estimate at 30 minutes or so. Fortunately for me that made him available to retrieve me later in the day.

John Middleton launched next and showed us where the lift was. Sometime while John was specking out at 5,500 or so msl, Sonny pimped off of him during one of his numerous tandem flights and soared for what had to be at least 30 minutes without a vario in a tandem glider with a student!

I launched next and seeing John climbing towards the moon and this big fat heavy tandem glider climbing towards me me in the same area with no vario, the situation encouraged me to decide that it must be the place. It was. A gradual downwind drift took me to 4,300 msl and downwood towards Ric Niehouses house. (I don't know where Ric lives, but the thought was there.) Anyway after a couple hundred turns in choppy and sometimes aggressive lift I managed to make it about 11.4 miles North of the airfield. Mark Cavinaugh was gracious in rescuing me.

While I was waiting for Mark to pick me up, I walked to the local store and bought a sixpack of Yuenglings. The guy behind the counter had never heard of it, never sold it before and didn't a price for it on his price list. Gotta love the middle Eastern Shore. No he didn't give it to me.

Anyway I think Ric managed to fly home. Don't let him fool you he isn't lucky he's good. John probably had the highest elevation gain. I had a flight with a sweet aftertaste. The more I thoght about it ont he way home the better I liked it, even if it wasn't a record breaker.

I'm reminded of a Beach Boys song, Catch a Wave and You're Sitting on Top of the World. When we are flying we certainly are. We are all very fortunate to be able to do what we do.

Dan T

[silverwings]

For me it was one of the best thermally days I've had Ridgely but wasn't dressed for it with only a long sleeve tee shirt and biking gloves. I was dropped off in a nice thermal that kept going and I got to 5630 AGL which was probably the highest ever for me at the site but it was COLD so I left it and flew back to where I started. Got down to 2200 and got another nice thermal which started light but got better. Sunny and the tandem was sharing it for a while and Dan joined. Continued with this till 4400 when I left it early because of getting cold. Flew back to starting area and got down to 1800 when found another that was building and took this to 3100 when I left because of coldness. Flew around for a while but then started looking for down air and had to hunt for it. Landed after 1:40. Sure was an unexpected flight.

[Christian]

Great flights guys.. I got launched right after Rick but I got a slead ride. I cant complain sinced I ended up with over 5 hours total from Thursday through Saturday. I did get a nice half hour and 3500 over on the second flight but then the really gad stuff came in. Roudy approche and rain during break down.

Great flying with you all..

Christian

[Lauren Tjaden]

What a lovely post, Dan.
Lauren