Drowning in Snow

So I think I have found my utopia. It's right here, in Whistler and I never want to leave! But seriously this place is amazing, for oh so many reasons.

Reason #1.
The snowboarding. Obviously. There is SO much mileage on the mountains here it is incredible! There is always somewhere new to go, somewhere where the powder is untracked and somewhere where the chair lift lines don't exist. There are incredible glades if you want to play in the trees, wide open bowls if you want some steeps and powder, groomed runs if you decide to be a boring tourist and every kind of backcountry and natural trails and conditions imaginable. What more could a girl ask for? Oh yeah and they've got demos at the top of the mountain so you can try out any board that your little heart desires. I rode a GNU B-Pro the other day and absolutely loved it. If I can come up with the money there may be a new snowboard in the future... Oh and did I mention that the double black runs here are the best things ever? Like trees, pitches, cliffs and all the good stuff. So much fun.

Reason #2

The scenery. This place is absolutely stunning. Even the drive here was gorgeous! There is something about the mountains that just can't be beat. Wether it be completely cloudy and only a few mountains poke through, or its a rare blue sky day and you can see for miles, it is incredible what surrounds you here. You are literally enclosed by mountains here, nestled into a valley with their tall protecting silhouettes towering over you. There just aren't words for how beautiful this place is so I'll try and show it through pictures...

High on life

Rare token blue sky day

Reason #3

The vibe. This place has the typical ski hill feel and atmosphere but on steroids. Every store and bar has ski racks outside of it, and it is completely acceptable to go anywhere in town in complete ski gear. I love it. Seriously snow pants and plaid shirts are basically the uniform, and the beer is all local and the taps never run dry. The people are all so chill and laid back, they just want to have a good time and lay down some fresh tracks. You could pretty much sit down at any table and strike up a conversation about anything skiing, snowboarding, outdoor or beer related and it would be completely fine. So easy to make new friends! This is also a common occurrence on gondolas and chair lifts. Everyone us just so refreshingly friendly, wether it be saying thank you to the bus driver or helping a little kid to carry his skis, the whistlerites have got it down. Even the shops and the bars manage to carry the same feel. There are so many awesomely unique ski and snowboard stores, each with that small town and personalized feel. They make up for all the overpriced brand name stores, but those are easy to just walk past! To sum it up, it's a village full of people who just love to ski/snowboard/be outside which is just the best of combinations. 

And that is where the list will have to end tonight because it is getting late and I plan to be on the first gondola up at 8:30 tomorrow morning. So bed time for me! But I will do a post on all the areas of the mountain that I've tackled and what they're all about, and add to that list as well :) Seriously can I please never leave here?

Whistler Adventures

      Oh hey there blog world how’s it going? Long time no chat. I guess that’s what happens when school takes over you life and you don’t have time to travel right... I mean as entertaining as my daily bus commutes are downtown, I don’t think anyone actually wants to read about them. That being said it is now reading week, a wonderful week of freedom that they give to us university students right in February to go do something fun for a week. It’s a beautiful thing. And for the moment I will try and forget about that fact that I have 4 midterms and a paper due the week I get back, because that is besides the point. So what to do with a week off from school in the middle of the winter? Why go out west and snowboard of course. Whistler here I come!

See out in central Canada we have these funny little hills that we like to call mountains and ski down. However once you have been to anything remotely big and interesting, seen real powder and carved some fresh tracks down a double black diamond they almost completely loose their appeal. So then you are left itching to go out to western Canada, to Colorado or Utah, to the Alps or even to South America to get some good true skiing and snowboarding every year! And I have been lucky enough to get to act on that itch this year and head out to Whistler for 5 days of incredible snowboarding. I may be just a tad excited.

I was in Whistler the winter before last and I have to say it is a wonderful place. The entire town is a ski village, and there is hundreds of kilometers of every kind of trail and off-trail kind of riding you can image at your fingertips. Or ski tips should I say. I do have to admit that it is pretty Hollywood and touristy though, but hey that’s what happens when you turn a sleep ski town into an olympic village. It’s popularity has given it ratings higher than some would say it deserves, but if you look past the souvenir shops, the tourists on rental skis and the amateurs taking on runs way too difficult from there you find an incredible world of skiing and snowboarding. Going a little bit off the beaten trail will land you in fresh powder, untouched lines to hit, and wide open snow bowls to play in. You just have to know where to go, or be willing to go on a few adventures to find out! It is definitely worth your while to do so. 

Sitting on this plane writing this I want nothing more than to have a board strapped to my feat and be headed up the mountain rather than the sky. Don’t get me wrong I love to fly, I find it quite relaxing actually, but this has been such a long time coming that I just want to be there already! Though I have to say that the drive from Vancouver is absolutely breathtaking, taking you along the coast line and then plunging you into the heart of the mountains; it is some of the most beautiful scenery especially covered in a blanket of snow. And by blanket I mean a very very thick one, upwards of 500cm at the mountain already and still going strong. Sitting here writing this has also lead me to one very obvious conclusion:

I love snowboarding. And while this is nothing new or surprising, every time I go somewhere good to ride I get this giddy feeling like I’m a 5 year old getting let loose in Disney Land. There is nothing like the feeling of tearing down a mountain, wind blasting in your face and snow flying everywhere, just on the edge of control but never loosing it. You forget about the rest of the world and it’s just you, your board and the snow. It’s challenging and adrenaline inducing (if you so the serious stuff), but it is so incredibly calming and peaceful at the same time. Something about it completely clears my head and can, without fail, put a massive dopey smile on my face at the end of every day out. I don’t think I would ever be able to hang up my board and call it quits unless my body demands it because I just love it way too much. And I think that’s why I enjoy teaching it so much for that matter. There is nothing like watching someones eyes light up when it clicks with them, they figure out that one thing that was holding them back or learn how to stop catching that edge. That look when you see that they’re about to become as addicted and happy with it as you are. And that look makes all the long days, frustrating students and cold chairlift rides worth it more than a thousand times over. Because no matter how bad you think it gets you are still doing something you love and you get to share that passion with other people. 

Looking out the window I can see the flatlands of Saskatchewan disappearing behind us and the majestic Rocky Mountains rising up beneath the scattered clouds. I have to say it’s my favorite part of the flight, it is just so darn beautiful. And exciting because that means we’re getting closer! Another handy thing about ski trips is usually by the end of the day you are so wiped that you come home and sit around for a bit and just recuperate before you can do anything else, perfect blog time! So this should be a week of funny stories about epic falls (hopefully not too many but they are inevitable), tons of pictures of snow and more of me rambling about how much I love snowboarding. Have to say I’m pretty excited about getting to do this again, I actually quite enjoy blogging and sharing my adventures with whoever happens to be reading this :) 

Wanderlust

So waiting for class to start, and of course what does my mind start to do? Go through the running list of places I want to go and things I want to see around the world. Apparently I like to live with my head in the clouds, which is totally fine until I trip and fall off the sidewalk because I wasn't paying attention,  not that that happened... But someday, when I'm all old and wrinkled like a prune, I want to be able to look at photos of all of those places on my list and say yeah I took that one and yes I was there. Everyone always says to live life without regrets, and I think the biggest regret I could ever have it to not see the world and experience the wonderful things it has to offer. Now I know I may not like every place I go to, or enjoy everything I have to do to get there, bust hey life isn't perfect, shit happens, and I can deal with that. It's all worth it in the end.

So life kind of went as planned, and I got a job at the beginning of the month. Job means money, money means food and hydro. We like money. But money also means travelling. Somehow I have ended up having a million trips I want to go on just this winter with people, so if I want to be able to go on even one of those, this job needs to start soon. Don't you wish money trees actually existed? Travelling sure is expensive... first world problems right here. The thing is though that I don't really care if I stay in a hostel sharing a bunk room with 10 other people to save some money, or eat in a tiny hole in the wall place because it's all I can afford, because those are usually where you meet the best people and get the yummiest food. Don't get me wrong, 5 star hotels and restaurants and wonderful, but I want to experience the culture of places and live like I'm from there, and that's not how you do it. Another thing I've thought about a lot lately is who I would travel with. Tour groups are out of the question, been there and did that in France and it was terrible. 2 hours in the Louvre but 6 hours to shop? You've got to be kidding me. Art history nerd inside of me was so mad about that. Don't get me wrong, that trip was amazing, but I cannot handle having me entire trip planned out for me hour by hour and being forced to so some things and not having time to do others. 

Travelling with a friend, or a small group, I think would probably be one of the best ways to go about it. That way you never end up alone in a bad situation or strange place, but you also have the company and the fun of people you know around. the problem though is if your travel personalities don't match, it's not going to be pretty. And that traveling with a group might stop you from making new friends wherever you go because you don't "need" to. For every pro there's always a con... which brings me to travelling alone. Now I know it can be very dangerous in some places, which is why some places I would only ever go with other people, but almost any first world country you go to you can get away with being by yourself, and I think that might be the way to go. You never have to change what you want to do to fit with other people, you can take as long or as short as you want in a single place, and you can alter your plans in a heartbeat without having to run it by people. That's one of my big things when I travel, I hate having everything planned out. I am totally fine flying into somewhere and maybe having a hotel booked for the first night when I fly in and then nothing after that. It's just a blank canvas for me to do anything, go anywhere or see whatever I want. And yeah it backfired sometimes and you end up driving until 3am because you can't find a hotel, but hey, it's an adventure. And I love adventures. Just incase that wasn't already clear. I'm pretty much willing to try everything once in life to see what it's all about, I mean you'll never truly know what you think about something until you experience it right. 

The funny thing though is that as much as I hate having an entire trip planned out, my life right now is the complete opposite and if I want to travel somewhere I have to completely organize my schedule around it. I feel like I'm two different people sometimes, the super organized and time scheduled university student and the crazy adventure loving girl who just wants to see the world. Both lives are fun don't get me wrong, but I wish I could spend a little bit more time on adventure and a little less being a hermit student studying for 5 midterms in one week (not cool professors, not cool). So for now I can just look ahead at the travelling opportunities I have in the near future and that gets me through the crazy over-scheduled weeks now. More to come on these ramblings... I feel like this is a fairly productive way to procrastinate...even though that's an oxymoron. Oh well!

Looking Back

So somehow it is the middle of September, and I have no idea where the time has gone. So much for that detailed post going day by day through the last week of the contest...my memory is unfortunately not that good! I can't believe the in a week from today I will already have been home for a month-that is absolutely insane to me. It's already starting to feel like Uvalde was a dream, a really realistic incredibly fun and life changing dream. Saying it was one of the best months of my life would be an understatement.

It amazes me how much I learned at the worlds about such a variety of things. First off; pretty sure my knowledge about gliders doubled. And I like to think I already had a pretty big knowledge base going into this. Not only did I get to see all of the new gliders and technologies (the Concordia is stunning!) but I learned so much about contest flying and cross-country flying just by sitting through all of the meetings and conversations! And of course the end of day flight analysis. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised at this, I mean I completely immersed myself in the gliding world for a month straight but man do I ever know a lot more now. Second, I learned a lot about myself. Putting yourself in so many different situations like that from high-stress to sleep deprived and working all day every day for a month you definitely learn a lot about your limits, personality and coping mechanisms. For example, I can sleep through any alarm when it goes off at 6am and I'm already sleep deprived no matter how loud it is. From this I also learned that I can get ready and out to the door in 5 minutes if I need to. I also learned that when the engine light is orange you can drive, but when it's red you have to stop. That last one is complete sarcasm, but for all you Canadian team members who were down there you will understand why that is funny! I also learned that I am pretty good at smiling and pushing through sleepiness and exhaustion. I may not be the most coherent or be very good at putting sentences together, but I can still get things done efficiently and effectively. I have also become quite a proficient power-napper, and happily got a few minutes of sleep many times waiting for the grid to launch, waiting for the pilots to land and after a shower before dinner. I love naps. On a more serious note though, I learned that when put in a stressful situation I'm pretty good at staying calm and working through it logically. I'm also pretty decent at diffusing stressful situations, usually by cracking some terrible joke or awkward comment but hey whatever works. I also reinforced my love for adventure and travel. I live for those random excursions that end up being the best moments of a trip, but more so I live for going to new places and seeing new things. Which is why now I don't say I hope to travel the world some day, I say I will travel the world :)

Had to write in the dust on the Jeep's dashboard...

People have a way of touching your life in ways that you would never expect. There are so many people that I might in Uvalde, from there and from around the world, that have impacted my life and I will never forget. There are the countless friends I made that can make me laugh in a split second, go on midnight ice cream adventures with, drive donuts around the airport with, play intense frisbee games with, learn about guns with, take lunch breaks with, watch airplane movies with, hide in cars from the dust with, have life chats with and of course fly planes with. These are the people that I hope will always be in my life, the ones that I'll stay in touch with and visit whenever I can because they each have a place in my heart. There is the completely unexpected person who walked into my near the end of the contest and changed everything that I would fly to the other side of the world in a heartbeat to see. Somehow in a week together we managed to have an insane amount of adventures and so many laughs that my cheeks were permanently sore. There are the incredible pilots from around the world that I was fortunate enough to meet that inspire me to chase my dreams and do what I love. They made me remember why you should never do something halfway, if you're going to do it put in your everything and you will succeed. It was also such a honour to meet them, after all they are the legends that I have heard stories about since I was a little kid! And now some of them know me by name, some have even had life talks over a beer with me... it is unreal now looking back at some of the people that  got to talk to every day like it was normal. Then there is the Canadian Team, my family for the month but more importantly my support system for the month. They were there with a funny story when I needed cheering up, water when I looked like I was about to pass out, company when I was alone, knowledge when I had questions and a car when I needed a ride (another joke for them). While my relationship with each pilot and crew member is different, they are each one that I will cherish for the rest of my life because without them none of this would have happened.

I have to take a moment to say thank you to Nick and Christine. They not only let me help them everyday but they voluntarily put up with me for three weeks straight! It was an honour to be able to be crew for them and I am so thankful to have had that opportunity. I have to say, it was really awesome being able to help the people that I have grown up around at our gliding club-I still remember being a little kid and being completely is awe of the two of them! From breakfast at the Kettle every morning to hiding from the dust in the ac of the car, to the infamous retrieve it sure was a month of fun adventure and countless memories. Go ST!!

So things that stand out to me from the last week of the contest:
-The flying of course! As per typical Uvalde, the weather was amazing. They had insanely long flights, +500km and crazy speeds. They came up with a really cool statistic at the last meeting; if you add together the distances of everyones flights you could make it to the moon and back and still have some km's left over, how cool is that :D The weather held up until the closing ceremonies too which was great, it did get a little stormy looking a few days but like usual it all bypassed Uvalde. It's a little storage, it will rain 20 miles away but it never rains there...
-The international party night! More like the international booze night though... There was about 14 teams that set up table in the big tent at the airport on the Tuesday night and had food/booze from their countries set up for people to try. Everyone had a great time touring around the table and checking out what people ad brought which was a pretty big variety. You had everything from Belgian beer to Italian pasta to beer and Macdonalds (American table...stereotypes!). But I think people had the most fun trying whatever kind of alcohol was being served at each table, and boy was there a whole life of different things. What was great about that night though was how it really brought everyone together and people from different teams were all brought together to hang out and talk. Everywhere you looked countries were mixing with each other and great friendships were being made. Quite a successful night!
-The mid-air collision. When Ed called me that afternoon to ask me to go back to the field because their had been an accident I actually felt my heart stop. It had been something that everyone was afraid of happening, and was every teams worst nightmare. Thankfully though both pilots were okay (not so much the planes but that's alright) and neither of them was a Canadian. The 15m class task was cancelled for the day so they all came home and I think I can speak for all the crew that we were very happy to have them coming home and land. What really struck a chord with me was at the morning meeting the next day and the two pilots involved had a good talk and were shaking hands and hugging-there was no hard feelings and they were both just happy to be there in one piece. It was very powerful.
-The last pilots meeting. Everyone has this strange mix of sad and happy going on that you could feel the minute you walked into the room. Sad because this was it, it was all ending and everyone had been having such a good time, happy though because everyone was starting to get really tired and exhausted from so much heat, flying and constantly being on the go.

Team Canada table

-The final party, also known as the Farewell Fiesta! What a night, those pilots (and crew) sure know how to party when there's no more flying! It was a great night and a chance to have one last hoorah before everyone would be leaving the nest day. What really hit me was the difference between this party and the opening party: first, everyone has massive smiles plastered on their faces, second, everyone was mixing and talking with other teams. The opening party had been fun but everyone pretty much stuck to the crowd of people they knew (mostly their own team), whereas this time it was a jumble of countries and teams all over the place. It was great to see how everyone had branched out and made such good friends with the others! It was really like everyone just came together, bonded by this once-in-a-lifetime experience. I ended up closing out the night with some of the Australian, South African and Austrian teams who I gave up trying to keep up with after the third round of shots was brought to the table... I think it's a pilot thing to have an impressively high alcohol tolerance. It was a definitely one of the best nights though and I had a blast!
-The closing ceremonies. Most notably, it rained. Yes, it RAINED in Uvalde! Shock. The locals were ecstatic because they were in a stage 4 drought at this point and us foreigners didn't care because we didn't have to fly. It was a bit of a bummer though because everything was set up outside so we had to put up with a drizzle through the entire ceremony. Most notably was the flyover from the P-51, Waco, Pawnee and Cub right in the middle of the prayer again (you boys have impeccable timing). Prizes were awarded to pilots with Cheshire cat size grins, team photos were taken, belt buckles handed out (I wanted one SO bad-they were gorgeous!) and many hugs goodbye were given. It was actually so sad saying goodbye to everyone because the majority of the people I still have no idea when I will see again. Poland 2014 everyone? Our team was all leaving that day too so I had to say be to them swell because I wasn't headed out until the next day! Sad Sonia.

Rain, pilots&crew and the flag circle

-Driving out of Uvalde. I knew it was going to be hard to leave, but I never imagined it would be that hard. Poor Edward had to deal with me crying most of the car ride to San Antonio...what a trooper. I was leaving behind what had become my home over the past month, friends that had gotten so used to having in my everyday life and a town and airport that I had grown to love. It really felt like I was leaving home, which has never happened to me before. Normally I'm sad to leave a vacation spot but this was different. Everything we drove by I tried to memorize because I don't know when I'll see any of it next, I don't want to loose my mental picture of that special little town. Having an entire day to wait at the airport didn't help the sadness either, my flight didn't leave until 6 and we got into San Antonio at 9:30. I lost it when the plane took off too...poor guy sitting next to me didn't know what to do. It was in that instant that I really hit me that it was all over, that I was really leaving. The trip home was a bit of an adventure too, Chicago has massive thunderstorms which delayed all the flights so we left at 1:30am instead of 11:30. Oh and it was freeeeeezing cold! After being in 45 degrees for a month (which actually felt normal by the end of it), 20 is a major shock to your system. I'm not ashamed to say I wore jeans and hoodies around the first few days I was home because I couldn't handle the cold.

Looking back and writing things down it's hitting me all over again what an incredible month that was. So many memories, friendships and adventures that I will cherish for the rest of my life. And 1200 pictures just incase I forget anything...ahem. The one thing that I think is hilarious is that I only have 1 picture with myself in it, and maybe 20 that have people in them. Typical me. I really need to stop doing that though, I have no pictures of all these incredible people that came into my life! So frustrating. Oh well I guess that just means I'll have to see them again soon so we can take pictures :) I have crazy amounts of airplane and sky photos though, go figure! So here's to the 32nd Annual World Gliding Championships-soemthing I will never forget and always hold close to my heart.

Updates soon to come!

Howdy ya'll (yep I'm bringing Texas speak back to Ottawa with me)! Just wanted to update that yes, I will be doing a big post on the second half of the contest, and yes it will be soon. I want to write something decent and it's taking me quite a bit longer then planned, but I'l have it up tomorrow or the day after. Hope all of you who travelled long ways home had a had a safe trip, I had a wonderful time meeting all of you!

America's Most Wanted

So I've heard all of these stories about how serious the law enforcement is in the States, especially in Texas, but I never expected to actually come into contact with it... I have however come into very close contact with said enforcement twice since I've been here, both times within about 12 hours of each other. Go figure right? But not to worry, it turned out well both times because no, I was not doing anything crazy illegal or dumb. Just bad timing and luck on my part apparently!

Thursday Night:
So one thing about me when I travel, is that I'm terrified of loosing my passport. I never want to have to be that person stuck in a foreign country with a stolen passport going what the heck do I do know! So I try to always leave my passport tucked away safe somewhere, and I definitely don't carry it around on my on a daily basis because I know I'd leave it somewhere by accident. Apparently I should rethink this when driving around Southern Texas though... It all started with Stuart (crewing for the Australian team) and I decided to get out of town and away from the light pollution to check out the stars because they're pretty incredible down here. So we drove maybe 30 miles out of town (a little bit further then we thought we had), pulled up next to a ranch in the middle of no where and hopped out to do some star gazing. And wow were they ever beautiful! You could clearly see hundreds of them, and even a huge part of the milky way, absolutely incredible. It's easy to get lost in the sky when it looks like that and it got kind of late so we headed back, and it was about 10 miles out of Uvalde that we hit trouble. Because that area is fairly close to the border, they have these border patrol checkpoints set up aroud on main highways and roads that everyone has to stop through, usually it only take a minute or two. Actually we had gone through one on the way to retrieve Nick and had no problems! I had totally forgotten there was one on this side of the road back into town and it was a bit or a surprise to be turning off into it all of a sudden. It was past midnight at this point though and the checkpoint was completely empty, so all attention was on us. This is the wonderful start that the conversation took:
Boarder guard: Citizenship?
Us: Canadian and Australian
Guard: Passports please
Us: *pregnant pause* We don't have them on us, they're back in Uvalde. We just drove out of town to look at stars!
Guard: You need to have your passports on you. I'm going to need you to pull over off to the left please.
Oh good. So over we pull, he takes our ID's and heads inside with them. Meanwhile there was two other guards standing around while a third one and a dog sniffed around the car (thank goodness there was nothing interesting for the dog!). The two asked us what we were doing here (weird combination in Uvalde right?) so we started explaining about the World's and what our part there was. Turns out both of them had heard about what was going on an were really interested in it! We had a good chat with them about gliding and how it works, what the contest was all about and how long we had been there for. They were really friendly and relaxed which made it a little bit better, but then the third one came back out walking with quite a purpose. Turns out they don't enjoy having to look up ID and did a whole background check on us and where he had travelled...impressive how easily and quickly they have access to all of that. Then there was a whole bunch of talk about records being unclear and having to dig through stuff in files, which was followed by some sentence involving the word "deported". Bad bad word. I mean we both love our own countries but we'd like to go back out of free will thank you! He didn't really seem to have grounds to do that though, but he did give us a huge talking to about not having our passports and all that jazz, making sure it was clear that we knew how easy it would be to get shipped home. It was pretty nerve wracking that's for sure! Finally we got the ID's back and were sent on our way (with waves and byes from the other two guards) and off we went. Never been so happy to see the sign for Uvalde! I mean I love a good adventure but not that much of one. So note to self, if I'm ever back in that part of Texas, bring a passport with you the minute you head out of town. It did give us a pretty funny story for the next day at the field though that for sure.

Friday morning:
On my way back to the house after the meeting I was passing a car that was swerving a bit and making me nervous to drive behind, but I made the mistake of accelerating a little bit over the 50mph speed limit. Within about 10 seconds of getting in front of this guy there was a cop behind me with its lights flashing, oh yay! Not so much. So I pull over in the church parking lot, and I'm sweating bullets because I don't have my passport on me. Cop comes over and tells me I was going 54 in a 50, I try and explain why but he's not having it. Takes my license, and goes to pull up the vehicle registration and all that good stuff. Turns out I had actually accidentally given him my health card by mistake instead of my drivers license (same pocket of my wallet, my bad), but he didn't realize that until about 5 minutes later when he came back and was curious about us driving with "a health permit"... I quickly corrected my mistake and he seemed relieved that it made much more sense now. That was just the start though, because apparently he noticed that the little registration sticker on the front windshield was expired. Bad news bears. I should have checked that, but I never even thought of it! Another lesson learned. So I was in trouble, because that means the car is technically illegally driving around, and in theory he could have impounded the car or taken me in. Thankfully he asked an open ended question that let me explain about the gliding contest and why I was here, which seemed to warm him up a little. I may have played the poor innocent canadian girl card a little bit too... hey I need to be arrested like a need a hole in the head. After much talking and deliberating on his part he decided to let me off with a warning on my "speeding", and let me go as long as I promised to go straight home (which was like 6 blocks away). Which I realize was really lucky! Man was I ever happy to drive away. He did make it very clear though that "they'd be around so I had better not be driving the car until it was sorted out", just incase I felt like being a crazy idiot and testing my luck after that... Not happening. So straight home I went! So note to self, never go over the speed limit, even by a little, and alway always check every date on a car before you drive it. No more cops please!

So now if you see by face on America's Most Wanted you'll know why. Let's just hope they don't have some red x on my name when I try to get through customs today to get home! Funny jokes right... I'd like them to stay as jokes though, I've had enough law excitement for one trip.

The Retrieve

Okay so I finally have the time to sit down and actually write about Fridays adventure. I kept hearing about all of these crazy retrieves that people have here in Texas, and now I finally have one on my own! Though I would be lying if I was this positive about it the whole time it was happening...

So Friday looked like a great flying day, but there was a threat of thunderstorms to the North (storms almost always come down from the hill country). And boy did we ever start seeing those thunderstorms as of about 5pm, and they just kept getting darker, closer, and getting more lightening. The 15m class was the last to start, and Nick had started on the later side, so he ended up getting chased down south by the storm and couldn't make it back through, hence the land out. The same thing happened to quite a few of the guys who started later on in the afternoon; they all got cut off by these massive storms rolling through. Ironically though, while they got an inch of rain up in the North, not a drop of rain hit Uvalde and the surrounding area. And so it was at about 8pm that the phone rang and we got the spot tracker message that Nick had landed out about 35 miles outside of Cotulla. He said he had landed right nest to the El Caballero ranch airstrip ("caballero" being the Spanish word for "cowboy")For those of you who don't know Texas, Cotulla is a very small town to the south of Uvalde kind of in the middle of no where, so 35 miles outside of there is very much the middle of no where. It was going to be an interesting retrieve that's for sure because it was about a 3 hour drive one way. Because we knew it was going to be a difficult retrieve and we don't really know Texas, Christina and I enlisted Conrad to come with us, which would end up being a saving grace! He will probably run away screaming if I ever ask him to help with something again though...

It was about 8:15 when we finally left the field, trailer rolling and GPS programmed with the coordinates and headed off South. And I know better then to blindly trust a GPS (technology often fails me...) so I had pulled out a good old fashioned road map and checked to make sure that it was sending us to the right place, which it was. Good right? Nope. While Conrad had a nice nap in the back, I dozed off for a bit too and somewhere along way the GPS coordinates got changed to ones across the border in Mexico. So it started sending us to Mexico. And know when we figured it out? When we were in Laredo, about 50 feet from the border crossing and the GPS was telling us to go through. Yep that was not our finest moment. We finally got the trailer turned around and in a parking lot thanks to Conrad's excellent trailer backing up skills (for lack of a better term) because we had been stuck on a one way entry into the border crossing. I was trying to reprogram the GPS to the proper coordinates but it kept saying we had to go to Mexico, so we put it on a time out and punched the coordinates into the GPS on Conrad's iPhone, which thankfully knew where we needed to go. Good news! Bad news; we had gone over an hour to far south. So our nice little detour down to Laredo had just added 2 hours to our already long trip, it was going to be a good night.

Eventually we made it to Catulla, and headed out into the wild to track down Nick. It was really spooky to be driving around there because there is nothing other then a few oil drill camps and the odd ranch; it's completely silent and pitch black other then the few lights from those places. We started getting close to Nick at about 12:45am, but we were starting to have to drive on little back dirt roads through ranches to get to him. Thankfully the first to gates we needed to get through we open, but our luck ended there. It got to a point where every single road we went down ended in a massive padlocked gate, and we were just driving around in circles. Insert Conrad's trailer driving skills again because making a 3 point turn on a single lane dirt road in Texas bush with a 20 foot trailer is not exactly a walk in the park. It was so frustrating because we had Nicks coordinates, and we could see them on the iPhone on google earth, but we couldn't get to them. We tried all the roads we could to get to him but we couldn't get through. And you don't want to be cutting the locks on gates in Texas that's for sure.

Meanwhile poor Nick had been sitting in his glider for hours, alone and in the dark with God only knows what roaming around in the fields. We got a message from him at one point that scorpions were circling the glider, just incase it wasn't already exciting enough. At this point we had been driving around for so long trying to find him that we were running out of ideas, and realized it was time to call back to Uvalde for help. It was about 2am at this point, and we were down to less then a quarter tank of gas (that last has station we passed 40 miles back? yeah we should have stopped at it). Fortunately our ID badges had numbers to contact the contest headquarters on and we got through to a fellow Canadian  Brian Millner who would help us get out of this pickle. We also had support coming from Ed who we had been keeping up to date and was waiting up for us to reach Nick. A phone call from Headquaters to the Uvalde Sheriff got them in contact with the Sheriff of the area that we were in, who managed to get in touch with the ranch owner of El Caballero (who's gate we needed to get through). All this took a while though and we had gotten to a point where we couldn't afford to waste gas driving around, so we stopped and got out to look at the stars. Because we were so far away from any light pollution, it was so clear that you could clearly see hundreds of stars, the milky way and even a handful of shooting stars! Okay well I only saw one shooting star, but Conrad sure saw a bunch. It was a nice little break from the stress of the whole ordeal to just lay down on the hood of the car and get lost in the sky for a minute. Then thankfully I got a phone call from the ranch owner saying he was sending his son and a ranch hand to open the gate for us! He just had to call their phone enough to wake them up because it was almost 3am at this point...

I don't think any of us had ever been so happy to see a set of car headlights coming at us on the other side of a gate before. And plus it had gotten a little spooky sitting in the pitch black in front of the gate for a bit waiting for them to show up, all those opening scenes of horror movies start to play through our mind. I almost had a heart attack when some kind of little animal scurried across the roof of the car, much to Conrad and Christine's amusement. I startle easily on a good day but stick me in that kind of situation and I'll jump a foot in the air at anything. Oopsies? So the ranchers son and ranch hand lead us back into the ranch and to the airstrip, which just like he said, Nick was on the other side of the fence from in a soft field. Seeing Nick and the glider come out of the darkness was such a massive relief at that point, we finally found him! Ironically enough he hadn't landed at the airstrip because he was afraid of getting stuck behind a locked gate... the airstrip gate itself wasn't locked but the ranch gate sure was... What are the chances? We got the glider de-rigged and back in the box in record time, and thankfully didn't have to unhitch the car to use it's headlights because the ranchers stayed and shone their truck lights on the glider and trailer for us. They were such good sports about the whole thing, especially considering we had woken them up at 3am. All said and done it was just before 4am when we finally pulled out and started the drive back home. And we did have enough gas to make it back to Catulla and the nearest gas station! We did not however have an American Visa card to be able to pay at the pump (the station was long closed for the night), so it was Conrad to the rescue (again!) with his american credit card. Since everyone else had driven at that point, I volunteered to drive the 2 and a half hours back to Uvalde, but man I sure could have used to tooth picks to keep my eyes open. But we made it back all safe and sound, just as the sun was coming up at about 6:15. People were starting their days, and even coming to rig their gliders, just as we were getting home and wanting to go to bed... It was a pretty sunrise though, even though it was the second one I had seen in one day because I had been up at 6:30am the past morning! I took a picture of the clock in the kitchen when we got home, it was 6:25 I believe, but I can't seem to find it. I had completely forgotten to take any picture of the revive until then! Which I'm actually quite sad about. But I've got the story so I don't mind not having pictures quite as much. And so we went to take a brief nap before having to get up and going back to the airport for flying that say, the rooster going off at the house next door that I usually wake up to actually lulled me to sleep...

And so there it is, my crazy Texas retrieve! The rest of the story about what Saturday was like after all that will be included in my sum up of contest days 6-10 that I'll put up either tonight or tomorrow. And I'll be cleaning, cooking and helping with anything I can for the rest of my time here to try and make this up to Conrad, because while he was an invaluable help, I owe him big time for getting him into this adventure! Oh and I forgot to put in before, just as we we leaving he and Christine went out to check something on the trailer and low and behold there was a rattle snake curled up, head up, right there next to them. Scary right? We had just been walking all over the place there in really dim lighting taking the plane apart... Nick and I were both quite happy to have been in the car.