As the long weekend approached so did the rain. The charts were dominated by several low pressure systems across the country. Phil Schroder warned us to pack umbrellas and people from all over the place were pulling out of heading down to Bright.
Keen on a long weekend away Ed, Liz, Deb and I head down to Victoria anyway. We were resigned to a wet holiday but held out hope that we could get a few tows in with the guys from Airborne that would be in town.
Saturday morning, as expected, we woke to rain on the roof and cloud base well below ridge height. After a quick detour past the airport a consensus was easily reached that this would be the perfect day to visit a couple of wineries in the district.
For self proclaimed non wine drinkers Liz and Ed certainly went through a few reds. Ed and I drowned our earth-bound sorrows and as the girls lived it up on the gourmet food. There are certainly worst places to be stuck on a rainy day.
There were plenty of flying type people in town for the long weekend and most of us descended on the Alpine hotel that night to compare wineries.
There was some interesting stories being told by the guys that decided to fly trikes down from Tumut. Not really suitable for regurgitating here but worth asking about should you run into one of the guys.
Sunday, ended up pretty much the same but Stuie and I managed to sneak a slightly damp tow in the rain. This was the first time I had landed with a totally soaked glider and I was surprised by how well it still handled - lucky as there was still quite a crowd watching from the dry hanger.
So here we were, half way through the four day event. Though the rain was supposed to ease off the ground would still be very wet which would dampen any thermal activity. Weather had been very cruel to us so far so we were not the hopeful for any great flights over the next couple of days.
“Sehr optimistisch”, as Jorg would say, was required, and Ed and I would reap the rewards of a bit of positive thinking over the following two days. More on that tomorrow.
