Anyway, I flew here New Year Eve leaving just before midnight which was pretty cool for a New Years Eve (not to mention I was in first class
) and got to OZ on the second of Janurary. Moyes was kind enough to arrange for me to be picked up at the airport and then taken to the factory to re-assemble my short-packed glider and do some fine tuning - nice place and very very nice helpful people at Moyes. After getting all sorted out at Moyes I hooked up with Jim Prahl from Quest, we got a car, made a rack, and were off to pick Andreas Ohlsson up at the airport - we then drove 8 or 9 hours to Mt. Beauty.
We have now been in Mt. Beauty for 2 days getting gear together and a lay of the land.
Today I had a great flight winding though a maze of valleys and making my way to the airstrip next to the house we rented - the flight covered about 60k and was really really fun - its a mixture of mountain and cloud flying.
I have already gotten a wealth of information from Andreas and the other pilots and I am really excited about how much I will probably learn from the experience.
We have wireless where I am staying and I am out on the deck looking over the valley we flew through today and across the street in the two-story fig tree there are about 20 pink cockatoo birds squawking. Its really neat.
If you are interested I will be trying to update my blog at http://glidexc.blogspot.com on a regular basis with pics and storys...
Its summer here and the flying is really nice; there are about 10 different launches here to choose from based on the conditions and today cloud base was around 8k.
Good times.
PS - Yesterday just after I landed three Kangaroos came out of the woods to watch me break down... its really interesting.