Manilla, Sydney and home May17- June 2

Arriving back at the River Gums cabin in Manilla felt a little like coming home.  We soon settled back into our routine of flying in the afternoon and dinners at the Royal Pub.  Nothing like their beer battered flathead.

Beer-battered Flathead.  Yum!

We are now into late fall.  It’s a great time for teaching and Godfrey is busy with classes.  The weather is so consistent and conditions so good they can get students up to a P2 rating in a week.

Ridge soaring with Godfrey's students

For cross country flying it is not the best time of year.  The days are shorter and the sun is not as hot so it takes longer for things to heat up and the window for flying is considerably reduced.  Two to three hours of peak thermals.  Still it was lots of fun.  I managed a number of 25K flights.  That is just a good climb from launch and then one more once you are away from launch. 

Washed and waxed

We washed and waxed the Jackaroo.  We are storing it at River Gums for next year.  No 100k XC flight means we have to come back in 2013. 

Wednesday May 30^th was my last available day to fly.  One of my flying buddies managed to get a great climb up over the back from the east launch and could have gone west quickly.  But he probably figured that if I didn’t go Mary Beth would not be available to retrieve him so he headed back to the mountain.  It took me ten to 15 minutes to find the thermal to take me up but I managed to get a good climb out from launch just as he was coming back.  I headed west and found some reasonable lift and one good thermal before running out of altitude and thermal triggers at the gap just short of Bogabri.  25k in one hour and 16 minutes.  I just need to put four of these together next year.

Here I am Mary Beth!

On Thursday, Dave from River Gums drove us to the train station in Tamworth. We opted for a train ride to Sydney with a day of site-seeing before flying back on Saturday.  Taking the train was much less expensive than flying and we had booked a room at a hotel near the airport in Sydney so we just needed to change trains at the central station in Sydney and get the train to the airport.

One thing that we thought we could skate on but turned out not to be the case was the allowable baggage weights on the train. For some reason they only allow 20 kilos per bag on checked bags on the train as opposed to the 23k on airlines.  At the train station in Tamworth we had to take items out of our 4our checked bags and put them in my glider pack which I carried on the train.

The train ride to Sydney was quite pleasant.  Once we got to Sydney things got a little hectic getting tickets and finding the correct track to board the train from Central Station to the Airport while pulling our wheeled suitcases and me with my glider pack. 

Still smiling on the train to the airport

We made it to the airport OK but the directions for the short ten minute walk to the hotel were a little vague and pulling the bags on a hot muggy evening left us a little short on patience with each other.  I wanted to give up and take a taxi but Mary Beth was determined.  We made it to the hotel OK with no backtracking and we were still speaking to each other.  But just barely.

We had been to Sydney before so we didn’t have a big list of things to do.  I wanted to go up in the tower of the harbor bridge and get a Sydney Hard Rock Café T-shirt.  Mary Beth wanted to shop.  All these things were accomplished.  I got my T-shirt and Mary Beth had another Black Opal.

View from the bridge tower

Climbing up in the tower and walking all day put some strain on Mary Beth’s knee but she persevered.  We ended the day with a nice dinner at one of the restaurants in Darling Harbor. Alcohol and Advil seems to do wonders.

Darling Harbor at dusk

We managed to find our way back to the train station and the airport with only a couple of glitches.  We thought we would take a shortcut through a parking structure in getting from Darling back to the nearest train station.  We ended up trapped and had to J-walk across a busy street.  Continuing on to the station Mary Beth tripped and face planted on the sidewalk cutting her finger.  More Advil back at the hotel.

Saturday, things at the airport went smoothly.  I had expected a long line and a wait when I presented the paragliding harness to the tax refund office at the airport.  There was no line and the inspector didn’t even want to see the  harness.  We had lots of time to spare.

The flight back with Qantas was on an A380.  I like them because they are much quieter than the 747s.  All I can say about the flight was that it was long and there were lots of movie choices.  Just none of them good.

We had lots of time in LAX before the flight to Portland and it was a good thing.  Things started out well.  Mary Beth’s cane got us special treatment and instead of waiting in line for 20 minutes at immigration we were whisked through the air crew line.  After picking up the bags we went to where the Alaska Airlines terminal used to be last year only to find out they had moved.  We managed to get on a bus to the right terminal and made the flight easily.  Mary Beth got a ten minute wait for a female TSA employee to do full body search thanks to her artificial knee and cane.  Still plenty of time for the flight.

Finally we arrived back in Portland.  Emily picked us up outside baggage claim and the long day was over.  Great to be home.

Australia 2012 trip statistics:

117	Days traveling
42	Days doing things other than flying
16	Days lost due to weather
59	Days flying
79%	of days available to fly were "flyable"
66.70	Total hours in the air
91	Total flights
83k	Longest XC
392k	Total XC I bothered to record

More pictures on Picasa