Today was a 58k task composed of two out and returns – one to the southeast and one the southwest.

Goal was back here in town, almost which is nice for the organization, spectators, public participation, etc and for us too. There was some discussion early on about weather the advantages of having goal in town would outweigh one big disadvantage: it would require doing a final glide over a big, fast, mean river. Landing in it would be disastrous. Today anyway, we had a pretty good compromise. The actual goal was safely on the course line side of the river. They called it a “virtual” goal because there was no goal line, no marshals, no people, no party, just a point on the GPS. What that meant was that the race ended there but they wanted to encourage everyone to not land there but instead cross the river and land in the city. It worked out pretty well, except that the virtual goal they picked was in a bit of a swamp which Josh got to discover when he landed there (not too bad really, his glider stayed dry anyway.)

A first today: for most of the last third of the task almost the whole US Team was flying together! Lots of teams seem to stay together but the US rarely does. Sometimes flying separately works well - eggs in different baskets – but regardless racing along within site of each other for an hour as we neared the end of the task was really fun.

Another first: we had at least occasional strong climbs all day. I should probably qualify that by saying that I’m considering anything over 300 feet per minute as solidly on the strong side. That was a treat after a couple of days of circling in zeros and 10 or 20 feet per minute climbs. The highlight was on the way to goal, approaching the lee side of the mountain and flying straight in lift for two and a half kilometers. Yeah!

There were lots in goal today including Josh and I in reasonable time ~ 2 ½ hours. Len and Kari were short by a few hundred meters. Hard to guess how today’s results will affect the US standing. We’ll know soon.

Eric