zzzz....

I figured I would write before I lay in bed thinking about what I should write. Today was very challenging, I thought the other days were, but only to be proved that there were more challenging ones out there. We had a reasonable start, with a long glide, SS and I, (looking back on it once on the ground, should have started early) played the start-gate roulette game and waited a little. The pack started and we did reasonable good. SS got out infront and we played catch-up with him for most of the day. Again he called out climbs for me, which did once get me ontop of the gaggle. The 1st turn was soft, but not as bad as the rest of the legs. We got into the second turn without too much pucker factor as the day began to improve. Then we had a huge hole to cross, only broken by .5knt thermals in the middle. SS found a climb that got him a little higher than me, and he thought he could make the next set of clouds. I was lower, and also made it to the clouds. I finally made it to a good field, engine master on, and 2 seconds to engine start when the left wing felt something. .1knts.....and it was the best .1knt thermal i have ever had. Eventually it turned into .2, and I climbed 100ft....I was soo high now. Eventually it turned into 4knts, after an upwind center with some help from KS. By this time SS had over run me again but he was at cloudbase, he still had water and I was dry. Then flying the feather around was not as good. It climbed well. I made it into the third turn as the gaggle I was with was lower and entering. So we were doing really well, SS especially. With another huge deviaion we made it to one cloud street that ran 45 off course line. I took it south until I got a good climb. However that never came to be and I nearly ran into Romania before giving up. So turned back on course and floated to a little over 1000ft and started the engine and came home.

The pisser is that the guys that made it home, I was with at the cloud street, we were all deviating together. They must have started their glide while I choose to climb more under the clouds..that never worked...grrrrr.

Still top 10!!!

With a few more days of flying....hopefully more than a few.

goodnight