awesome season opener!

[Aaron]

thanks to mitch, eagle and mecerdes for rallyin us bums up the hill for a perfect season kick off. people were floatin all around and mitch and cormac on tandem. saw mitch BOOMING out moonbound on second tandem around 1:30ish. beautiful mellow low cloudbase day for the first half. floated out front as it was a bit over developed from skyport to vor in gorgeous titty smooth conditions topping around 2900 with buoyant glides glued to the clouds. cloudbase was a couple hundred lower past westbowl. had to pee real bad so landed on vor trail just above lowest rockpile as that is where cloudbase was. re-launch looked much much better from the air,oops. flat, pungee and bushy, like chicks in the 70s, so cleared a little runway of pungees but couldnt hike higher to steeper stuff cause it was in the clouds. still sucked after clearing but only option other then walking down. took a few pull ups to get snag free and ran down the hill thru the bushes on east side, lost a flip flop and never got far off the ground. stopped abrubtly in a ten foot high bushtree and my glider draped over it on steepish east face. spent the next hour plus with the saw cutting down the bushtree as glider was velcroed in. i was telling the tree how i felt the whole time, but i dont think it helped any. at one point a branch broke under me and i stabbed a sweet hole thru my glider with the saw. it was a bit exhausting on the steep hillside. finally got everything to the top and found my flip flop. took another thirty minutes to sort lines and get glider bush free. saw hole seemed pretty small. set up a little higher this time and had a different approach of running straight down (south) the shallow trail that way if i didnt get airborne it wasnt that big of a deal and if i failed a few times i was going to hike higher to steeper ground. first pull up tripped on a rock and fell on my butt. set all up again and barely got off barreling thru bushes and scraping the heck out of my legs as i charged down the flat trail with warrior yell. super spent and stoked to be airborne. now the air was cracking and screamslapped to cloudbase with nw wind spilling over. trying to get back to my car at parma was an ass kicker, i was spent and the hole in my glider was a bit in my head and the air was messin with my emotions. i need more mitch/truax/hammer mental fortitude in my life as they would have flown to fillmore after that. all the big lzs were on the sunline which was crackin and rowdy so went and landed at robbins in the shade for a nice walk out. ubered back to parma. good times on season opener! hands up freaks!

[cortfly]

Holy crap, next time just pee before you take off, for gawd sake..

[Slowneasy]

Think I'll just pee in my pants

[gracecab]

I was going to say you were making lemonaid out of lemons, but i'm trying to change my black and white assesment of flying to rather than 'it's a good day' or. 'its a bad day' to ... this is the conditions, is it safe, and if so do i want to fly, then make a good flight for myself. I've had fun doing no wind sledder laps at Bates before, such is the nature of free flight, we get silly enjoyment out of so little, so when we can stay up for an extra 10 minutes it's like heaven off earth.

just going over these old flight reports gets my blood going. appreciate your stoke amigo... hoppefully we can infect more folks this season to post, to share their expieriences and knowledge of the air ... the more the merrier.

[sd]

Fabulous article Aaron!!. Fun humor, but the issues are real. I popped my ankle out the side of my right leg in 2005 forcing a landing to pee. Good to see you found your missing “flip flop”. Might have been a painful hike barefoot? I took the liberty of archiving your article at: http://paraglide.net/log/amigo/aaron_laplante/2016_09-05_vor_bushwhack_re-launch.htm