The day after the progression course was, in theory, supposed to be a rest day. But given that I had already missed 2 days of the progression course thanks to being ill.. again... there was no way I was going to accept that!
Thankfully, Mathieu (as helpful as ever) did his best to get my flying, and agreed to supervise me flying solo from Sarangkot. I had a nice flight along the ridge, bimbling through the thermal so clearly marked by all the other paragliders, and then headed out over the lake where I was received by David, who was running an SIV course (acrobatics, recognition and recovering from unusual flight situations etc).
So when I was received by David, I was told to turn left over the lake (which I promptly did) and then "Full spin, then backfly, then deploy reserve. GO!!". Which I promptly did not do. Though I had an excellent view of the guy over the lake who did exactly that...
Eventually David came on the radio for me and guided me for a landing at Maya Devi on the side of the lake, where I had landed with Richard many months ago. It was going fine, though on the approach there was a guy standing in the landing area waving at me so I aimed for him. I overshot, but then discovered that it was not David after all...
Maya Devi landing
One pilot returns from his successful reserve deployment, and then his equipment is laid out for drying. It was really interesting to see the SIV manoeuvres from both the ground and the sky - it will be a long time before I'm ready to do that though...
In the afternoon, Mathieu helped me achieve my ambition of thermalling properly in a paraglider. Which meant he strapped himself to me and we did a tandem flight - which, given how difficult the lift was to use on that day (it was December after all), was a very good thing to do. Also, it gave me lots of chance to photograph the beautiful scenery. So enjoy!
P1 was also running a cross-country or soaring course at the same time, for a Singaporean pilot (who I had a good chat to). I feel a little guilty that he couldn't give him his full attention...
We set off down the ridge towards Mandredhunga, didn't get very far though as the lift started to run out, and eventually went down to Maya Devi for a landing. It was a very, very good experience to fly with Mathieu on the back and it was so nice to be thermalling again! It is interesting that you can yell at the other pilots in the thermals, or hear their varios, and of course the open air experience is very good fun. I think we were in the air for about an hour.
Many thanks Mathieu for ensuring I had a productive 'rest day'!
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