Airborne is Back

Well, it was not one of the best days ever, but since I was working during the best days last week, I thought I would at least stab a vein. Kalei camped with the Girl Scouts at Kahana this weekend, and I was on breakdown duty. It was not hard to get me to go up early, as the numbers looked somewhat flyable.

I started to hike, and the King and Logan were already in flight, calling it tolerable to scratch that itch.

When I arrived at launch, Harvey was trying to dodge the 20 mph cycles and grab a light one. He grabbed one, and made it look easy, as the Legend, Ken Berry, arrived on launch. Today it was strong! Proof of that was that Ken did not go to high launch. This made me a little nervous, knowing that Ken preferred the nuking high winds of the upper launches. I started thinking: hmmm, I have never seen Ken go from a lower launch, but he was stopping at this one, where I was laying out.

Scrappy showed up, and we saw Maui Doug hiking up the north ridge, but we weren't sure why. I picked my cycles, and had a great looking launch, but about 2 seconds into it, a gust came and gave me quite a good frontal wedgie. I kicked into my leg cover and off I went, making it look easy to the pilots on deck.

I flew just long enough to realize that these gusts were not my cup of tea, and landed just before Alex and Logan, in case they needed some aid for their landing.

They landed fine, but apparently I am not as loud as I used to be. I shouted at Alex to kite it forward, but he did not hear me, and he giftwrapped the dreaded tree in the middle of the LZ. But as only Alex could do, he kited it right back out of the tree, and balled it up.

Maui Doug and Airborne soared the skies for a bit, and even they found it was not that epic, but it was still good to be in the air.

So the wind dummies were: Alex and Logan, Harvey, Sidehill, Scrappy, Airborne, and Maui Doug. Also, Skydive Mike was trying to get a speed wing to work, but it wasn't actually quite windy enough for such a tiny wing. The smart pilots were: JD, who hiked down, and the real smart pilot, One-Eye, who showed up in time for post flight beverages. Duck, another smart one, showed up after I left.

I wrote this story mostly to welcome back Airborne, one of the earliest of the Flying Monkey Pride. He is now living back here, and will be flying any chance he gets. Remember, just because he likes high launch, doesn't mean it's for everyone.

I hope all our new pilots get to fly with Ken "Airborne" Berry. It may not be this week, but hopefully, someday, if Ginny would just straighten out this weather pattern …

It will be Time to Fly Get the Cobwebs off your Gear and Go !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!