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Flight Articles from Saturday, 4/1/06 (in order of posting time stamp)
[Tony De Groot] [Hansford] [Jimmy Z] [Bob Ramey] [Bob Anderson] [John Lyon] [Terry Taggart]

John Lyon (aka JAH)
Saturday, 4/1/06

Eliminator to low save over Parma to Santa Ynez Peak to East Beach

After reading Bob Ramey's post I feel compelled to respond.  Bob I didn't mean to make you feel depressed.  I guess I just wasn't thinking.  The old survival thing had kicked in and I was operating on instinct otherwise I surely would have joined you for a sunny afternoon and some good conversation in the park.  BUT since I did have a great flight I'll recount it for Tony.  You may stop reading here if you like.

After a terrible launch (thanks Guy for the heads up) I scratched my way down to Parma where I decided to get serious about the whole staying in the air thing.  Like Bob I was trying not to get depressed at reports on the radio of white outs, cloud base and down range boogie.  I could already hear Tony asking me in an overly nice voice, So what happened John, I thought that Lightspeed worked better than that?  Shoot, my poofie little Falcon took me right up.  So I got hold of myself (not what you're thinkin Double D)  I just said I'm staying in the air right here over Parma, all day if necessary, even if I don't leave Parma I'm going to fly as many hours as those guys in the mountains, the hell with cloudbase.

It seemed like quite a while that I flew around like that.  Time moves slowly when you're so low.  Anyway the day started changing, the ground started getting smaller, I awoke from my concentration trance and looked around.  I drifted with one from the monastery up the middle of the canyon to the power lines/road cut area then dove into the tit knob to surprise Scotty.  We slowly climbed to tit height and headed to Cathedral for a nice climb to cloudbase.  Dove from there to the VOR without turning.  Spun up to cloud base then to Painted Cave.  The last and only other time I had crossed San Marcos Pass was last year with Hammer and EJ.  As I headed across I was thinking of EJ off my left wing like last time.  Stopped to climb at the first thermal and saw everybody from the early crew heading back.  Scotty pulled into that one and we headed off on a glide west.  That was a fun glide Scotty. I slid off to the South side of the ridge top though, wrong move!  Stay over the top next time.  Watched Scotty move ahead and above.  The flight back was almost mellow, maybe four climbs to west bowl where I headed out to the beach for a nice beach landing and a chat with a friendly little wuffo.  But that's a story for another day!!