Day 3

 No flying today as rain was forecast, (and duly arrived) at about midday.
So here is a video of what it looks like out the
window, taken on one of the practice days.



Today we took advantage of the day off to go for a bit of an exploration in the hills by car.

The scenery sort of speaks for itself.










Yesterday's task was a moderate 250km affair, made a bit easier by the presence of enough breeze to make the ridges work. 11th place, not too bad but still out of the points.

Graham
5 June

Day 2

Not much to report. It was pretty rubbish weather, I got stuck low for half an hour after the first turn. With grand prix scoring once you realise you are the only one left there is not much point in pushing hard so I just wandered around the valley for a while and came home.

Pete did well, sixth for the day.

Graham
3 June

Experiment Update

Some data updates for the beer lovers out there.


So here is the beer that we'ed actually go out and purchase to drink.

 For those who are observant there is a "ring in" if you pick it.
Graham thought that it would be important to have a reference sample and so
contraband beer was smuggled in to assist with the experiment.

The group below are the beer that we would drink but not go out and buy it.

And there is a new punter that has fallen foul and been relegated to the "black plate".
Not as far down as the one on the far right and so we drank it but wouldn't do
it again if it could be avoided.

Mark

Just Stuff

There is one product we have
discovered is no trouble to find
in any country so far!
If you need a cleaning product
we always look for "Pink S**t".
It is packaged the same in every
country we've visited, just look
for the pink container.

Graham and I both thought this might
just make a good gliding car.











But unfortunately when we had
a look round the back it became
apparent we could not fit a tow bar!











I really don't know how I feel about a pizza with a heap of chocolate on it.

When navigating in the volvo I get to see 2 nav screens.
The main one in the panel center and another pops up between the speedo and tacko which has a lot of helpful info on it with out moving your eyes too far off the road ahead.

Locals don't have their own
"wheelie bins"
There are communal ones along
the street.









Mark

Day 1

Grid on day 1.

 An interesting day. As the grid assembled the weather looked to be cooking up nicely. The forecast was for "some over development later." I managed to score some time penalty at the start; everything was fine 500 metres from the line but I ran into some strong lift and was a bit slow to do anything about it as I was concentrating on all the gliders just outside my window.

The flight was OK, one or two transitions across the blue were a bit slow as I didn't connect with climbs at the right time so I was 15 mins or so off the pace. The last 40km were under the "over development." In fact it was a full blooded thunderstorm. I got hailed on but no damage apart from a few trashed tapes. Pete Temple lost a fair bit of paint around his canopy. Fortunately it was clear in the vicinity of the airfield so we were able to get in and have the gliders covered before all the weather arrived.

Possibly more of the same tomorrow. I'll have to work out how to go a bit faster.

Same view as above, 3 hours later

Graham
2 June

The Experiment

We conducted an experiment during our last adventure, “French Letters”(trip to Sisteron, France).

 It was to discover the best French beer that we could find.

We are pleased to announce a new experiment has begun to find the best Spanish beer.
Actually it’s been going for awhile!

 

Rules are simple.

Each sample is tasted and given a place in the lineup, best to the left and then so on to worst on the right.

The samples are divided into three groupings. In the middle we have - samples that we would happily drink but not pay money for. On the left is the group that we’d happily pay money for and also drink. And then there’s that group placed on the right that “don’t cut the mustard” and we would not subject ourselves to sample these again! If offered in friendship any excuse to avoid this sample would be put forward.

Unfortunately beer from a glass cannot be presented and so a few samples are missing and cannot be graded.

So in our humble opinion the beer that appears furthest left is the best sample that we have tasted.

 

Below - If you notice hard right there is one punter that has unfortunately made it into the "don't cut it" group. It doesn't very often happen but this sample was discarded to the sink drain.

Updates to this experiment will be ongoing.

Mark

Final Practice day

A pleasant enough day for the final practice although they did send us into some fairly wild and woolly country. This was in the principality of Andorra, high in the Pyrenees mountains. There is nowhere to land in here. We were warned to turn our phones off as Andorra has no agreements with foreign telcos; if you fly over it and your phone downloads an email or something we were told to expect a 50 Euro bill.

The opening ceremony was held after flying tonight. Amongst the speeches and local entertainment was this human pyramid building which is apparently a thing in this region. The kids on the top look about 9 years old and seemed very proud of themselves afterwards.

It would probably be illegal in Australia.

First contest day tomorrow. So far I've managed to get into strife by getting low. It is just not an option around here, it doesn't work down low. So tomorrow I will be doing whatever it takes to stay high. I think that is the right tactic. We shall see.

Graham
1 June.