Athlete • Speaker • Guide 
Athlete • Speaker • Guide Date: 19th February 2007
Turns out I did better than I thought the last comp day, doing OK in this comp. Scoring here is a bit of a mess, the server system isn’t working, so no real scores but I’m doing OK overall. Chrigel is winning for sure, but beyond that it’s fairly open. I didn’t have the best flight yesterday, ended up being overly conservative about a big cloud and landing pretty far out. Nice to land somewhere totally peaceful, then have a bit of an adventure hike out to a farmhouse. Found the ranch owner, Grant, and a couple of hands gearing up to fix fences. I didn’t have anything else to do and one of them was heading into a town in a few hours, so I spent the afternoon fixing fences and driving around the ranch with them. I didn’t fly well, but the afternoon sure was fun–people here are really good. Very well travelled too, these guys had been all over the world, fun to talk about Oz and the world while bouncing around. Got to chase some sheep around too, nice to have a sort of “normal” day of it after all the travel and flying. Sometimes the best part about flying is not the flying but the random stuff that happens on the ground. Saw lots of wallaroos and kangaroos, they’re like deer here (they even jup in front of cars too, all the vehicles here have ‘roo bars up front for a reason). Thanks to Grant and Steve for the lesson in fence technique and the ride into town, hope to see these guys in Canada one day.
Not sure how everybody did yesterday, but all safe. Today doesn’t look stellar, but we’ll see, you never know. A lot of the World’s pilots are showing up, the energy level is rising for sure. Me, I’m thrashed after flying over 25 hours this week but psyched to get it on today. The biggest thing to remember here is sunscreeen–two coats in the morning, one in flight, same with the lips. If I lived here I’d have to get a genetic mutation toward some aboriginal coloring, I’m way too damn white to survive.
Woke up in the middle of the night last night because a couple of possums had decided to stage an Ultimate Fighting Championship on the roof of our trailer. Not sure who won, but they are noisy beasts when irate. Off up the hill now.
Posted in: Blog
Flying therapy?
How’s the elbow, mine feels better after flying but my therapy sessions are much shorter then yours.
Don’t scare the locals too much with that Northern Hemisphere skin tone.
Steve Forslund
I think the sunburn is partly due to the Antarctic ozone hole (biggest on record this year). I’ve been able to get away with one coat of sunburn cream the last couple of summers but this year is back to what it was like in 2000.
Michael Dufty
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