Tuesday Tripping

[NMERider]

Drove up from LA with XC buddy, Tavis (PG) then segued in Ventura to get Fast Eddy and make the meetup with Max earlier. The 4AM Vandenberg balloon had showed a decent layer of unstable air and the noon BAK40 model looked stellar. Several PGs were either sledding or struggling but I believe these may have been students. Little John boldly launched before noon and got nary a bump all the way down to Holy Hills and below only to be slowly resurrected. As he passed Eliminator launch altitude I hooked in and hucked off about noon. Made a beeline for the spine to RR which worked okay as I eventually tagged 4K briefly (GPS alt. Barometric was 3,843')). From there on in it became a scratch fest to just stay up. Mixed it up in bubbly thermals with John L, JR, Tavis, Zippy (tandem), Wolfi (Austrian comp pilot), Max, et al. Bailed from the hill East of the antennas with enough to get a nice glide out to sea for some more sweet shots in clear and sunny weather before landing by the rainbow where Max had picked us up. The other pilots all landed by Fess Parker until Steve N. back on his old Atos B went for the extended pizza run with extra anchovies. It was a good day to come out and big thanks to Max for schlepping so many wings up. The drive back to Long Beach took 4 hours.

Video: http://youtu.be/qhWkt0DvR8w