John Scott (aka South Side)

Sunday, 8/7/05
Pine to Jawbone Canyon
~ 90 miles

Spanked

...by the PGs. Great job guys.

Worried about getting shut down by the OD in Antelope early, Tony and I opted to go to Plowshares instead of Pine.  We were hoping to break The Axman's 110 mile FW record to Palmdale.  However, when we got there at 9:00 it was 87 degrees at launch.  If anything it looked like it would turn out to be your typical take 3 hours to fly 30 miles Plowshares day.  We threw in the towel in about 5 minutes and B-lined it for Pine.  Got there in time to give Sundowner and Hansford a ride up the hill.  They had been riding on the summit road on Bo Criss's rear bumber.

The Santa Barbara HG crew were just pulling there gliders off of their truck when we arrived.  So despite the detour Tony and I were set up and ready to go with everyone else (of course, you guys cheat in that regard).

Due to some minor equipment problems I was the last HG off of launch.  Climbed to 11k and then headed straight to Haddock.  Crossed over Reyes and looked ahead and saw a PG going OTB from Haddock, what looked to me to be way low.  I thought to my self that I hope this guy knows what he's doing because I'm coming to join him.  We were now deep in the chute and if we weren't floundering we weren't dialing into anything either.  And as if we weren't in a critical position already the PG pilot heads NE deeper into the badlands.  Where was this guy going?  Maybe I'm getting old, but I wasn't going to follow him this time.  BUT, a minute or two later I see him cranking and banking.  I headed right to him and climbed out to cloudbase.  Turns out I wasn't following some seasoned pilot, it was Hansford, a newbie.  Oh, well.

From there it was over to the south side of Grade Valley and then over to Frazier.  From Frazier to just west of Quail Lake where some clouds were starting to form.  Up to 10k in some pretty ratty stuff and then out to a cloud street just east of Neenach that was running SW to NE toward Mojave.  I got down to 3500 just below the street before finally hooking in to something that put be back in the ballgame.  Back to 9500 just NW of Fairmont Butte.  From there I tried to follow the cloud street to Mojave.  But I was back down to 4200 just west of the motorcycle track.  Ended up bobbing between 4200 and 5000 until things opened up just SW of Mohave.  Unfortunately, at that point my radio started to go dead.  I could hear that Hammer was throwing in the towel at Jawbone Canyon and that Tony was getting low at Inyokern, but I couldn't transmit.

North of Mojave I was getting rained on and there were even stronger downpours over the Tehachapi Mountains just to the north of my position.  With no radio contact and bad weather ahead I decided to put it down next to Hammer.  Well, I got there and I couldn't get down.  After a number of minutes of trying I gave up and headed NE along the road that leads to Garlock until I could find some sink to spiral down in, exactly 90 miles from launch.  In hindsight I could have gotten my 100 miler in but I'm comfortable with my decision to land when I did.

Great flying everyone.

John

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