Edith's Saturday -- Pounding In

[Matthew]

Flew my PG a couple of weeks ago at the Pulpit. Four flights -- two extendos and two soaring slights.

Flew Edith's yesterday. Mixed bag. Tom and Krista and Dan and a couple of others flew early and got rained on and had to land. Tom C. went OTB and landed in Fort Valley. Round two was some more sleds and extendos. I tried hugging the ridge and heading south and couldn't get up and landed in this yard halfway down the ridge where I have landed before. Winds picked up a bit after I landed and a few, including Tom and Krista, got up again. But then had to land again because of rain showers.

Back at launch we waited for another small shower to pass. Ian launched his PG and had a sled. I went next and scratched my way up. A few others launched after me but couldn't get up in the light narrow lift band. I was up for about 45 minutes before it started to get easy to stay up and the next batch launched. All got up at least for a while. Tom C and Rick from Hawaii and I were up till sunset-- maxing out at 700 over launch. Flew for 3 hrs and 17 minutes. As I was coming into land I messed up my approach and stalled a wing tip on a turn. Not sure what caused it. Maybe being too close to the trees and rotor. Anyway-- I pounded in hard. I was standing there looking at my wing and dazed. I kept looking around for Karen and wondering where Karen was. Then I slowly remembered that she had an accident. And it took forever for the pieces to come together to remember what happened And it was so horrible. Then Tom and a few other pilots came over to see if I was OK and I faked it as best as I could. But I'm still reeling from it. Every day without her is so, so awful. Every night not holding her in my arms. Every morning waking up without her. I'm not sure if I'll be able to fly again.

Matthew

[markc]

I'm really glad that you are ok Matthew, you must have taken a pretty damn hard hit. Maybe time for another helmet....

Second thing, you've got to know that every pilot in our community is feeling for you. If there's anything that we can do to help out, you will be flooded with offers to do so. Like, maybe there are particularly bad times during the week? And so maybe we could make sure that you've got something going on at those times?

Very sorry to hear how yesterday ended, sounds like it was a really nice flight until that point.

MarkC

[Ward Odenwald]

"Second thing, you've got to know that every pilot in our community is feeling for you. If there's anything that we can do to help out, you will be flooded with offers to do so."

Mark is so RIGHT! If there is anything we could do to help during the tough times, please, please reach out!

Ward

[jyoder111]

So glad your crash wasn't worse! Sounds like it was a close thing and you got rung pretty hard. Be on the lookout tonight for concussion/head injury symptoms just to sure.

I can't imagine how hard it must be. Ditto on what Mark said.

Jesse

[dbodner]

I still haven't made it back in the air. I dipped my toe in the pool by driving for the Highland Challenge a couple of times. That was fun, but I'm still ambivalent about my future. We'll see.

[silverwings]

Matthew, it was great to hear that you got flying again but extremely saddening hearing about your hard landing and the effects. We all feel for you and the loss of Karen. We miss your company flying and socially.

[markc]

I'm still ambivalent about my future.

Yeah. Hear you on that one Dave.

With all the crashes and worse of the past couple years... Experienced either indirectly or directly... I'm really having a tough time staying positive. Going through the motions, hitting the training hill, working out, blah-blah-blah. But just four high-flights in nearly a year, and the fun-o-meter needle doesn't seem to be even quivering.

Makes me wonder how the active pilots from the "bad old days" of HG have managed to pull it off, and stay engaged, given circumstances there were even tougher.

Maybe it's just a time thing... Gotta let it play out.

[markc]

Oh crap.

I just hijacked a thread with my whining. Not cool, inappropriate, WTHWIT?

Happened to talk with Matthew and he wasn't reporting any concussion symptoms the day after. And in fact, he decided to stick with a gymnastics class that very day.

Now that's pretty hard-core, and way more than just going through the motions. Good for you dude!

/whining-off/

[Richard Hays]

(( hugs ))