Deep Play

www.terminalx.com.br

www.abvl.com.br

Everything into one.

It isn´t easy to isolate my experiences into individual days; my mind doesn´t work that way. Here I am trying to remember what happened on this particular day, but everything that happened is related and is interacting with other things that happened on previous days. It is all one single flight.

Anyways, Nenê won the day, and a few top players were short.

Turnpoints, convergence lines, wind noise, and my screaming vario... all the elements were there. A tricky part came along though, and my buddy Guga and I flew the last 1/3 of the task together, until landing 6km short.

All was good, then all was bad. A cloud fell apart on us, then a long glide in some shade over shallow hills. We flew through the valleys of 200m hills and thermalled with urubus to stay in the air. It was slow going against the wind but we survived the last turnpoint between 200-400m above the ground.

We only had 10km to go and it was downwind... but no go. Made it half way there between 100-200m above the ground. We scanned the sky for birds, and the passing ground for landable fields.

Guga has a good eye for soaring birds. Not only does he spot them first, but he seems to recognize changes in the thermalling behaviour of a gaggle of urubus. He would often suddenly move over to another group of vultures, even though they were not climbing better, but were flying a little differently. Sure enough, their thermal would soon become stronger, and we were there when it happened.

At 100m above the ground, we were opposite each other in the turns, still zipped up, and completely focused. We had to scan constantly to keep track of the birds as they flew in and out of tiny patches of lift.

The final call came... it was over. Every last iota of lift had been lost and all we could do was straighten into the wind and flare into a small, sloped tapioca field.

We didn´t say anything for half an hour or so... we were both a little down. But at the same time I was high on hanggliding.

The last 20km were so freak´n cool. Being so low, in the boundary layer between earth and sky, where you are touching both simultaneously, is a place that I like to be.

It might have sounded like a stressful time, but the point is, it wasn´t. I was completely in the flow. Scanning for signs of lift and circling, gave me the feeling that I could see everything together. The most subtle clues became obvious directions. The slightest smell of smoke, earth, or orange blossom, caused me to react.

Bit of a downer for me for the comp, but you grow during the down times.

Way way fun.