Totally decked over during the drive, but a couple miles
past the bay bridge and *poof*, totally sunny skies.
Very glad I'd brought the sunscreen along, even though
I _knew_ I couldn't possibly need it
I was pretty happy to see this because I had a group
of nine people (frisbee and work crowd) heading out
to Highland for intro tandem flights. We'd been scrubbed
the previous day due to strong winds, so seeing the
sun out was just great.
Got there around 11:00. The group trickled in, and I
spend lots of time answering questions and taking photos.
But when Sunny yelled something like "set up!" during
one of his landing approaches, I figured I'd better stop
being social and go set up my glider
.A handful of other pilots were there : a couple of students
I haven't met yet; Carlos; Ellis, Marc Fink; Ric; Christian.
Small turnout.
I was up at base-500' three times on my first flight, and
snagged about 1:15 of airtime. Flew with Ellis and a sailplane
for a while, all working the same thermal and nearly co-altitude.
Marc F had a nice flight, and so did Ric on Christian's Millenium.
Some of the students had good flights earlier in the day, and
were able to stay up without varios. Pretty darn nice day!
I put it down and met up with some of the later arrivals in
my group. After everyone flew I took another flight around
6:00, and got to boar around in light lift for another
0:20 or so. A great way to end the day!
All the tandems went well, a few got to do some soaring,
one went a mile-high *and* went up with Ric in a sailplane,
and one of the group signed up for two more tandems. Woo-hoo!
--mark
