Thanks to all those who have left positive comments about my blog.  I’ve never done any sort of writing before and I have to say that, weary, dirty and tired though I was at the end of each day I have thoroughly enjoyed tapping away on my laptop each evening.  It was a kind of release from the day and it’s nice to see that quite a few people have enjoyed reading my rantings.

I hope I’ve both managed to annoy and please people with various opinions and observations and that as many people disagree with me as agree.  It’s hard sometimes being a loud-mouth but I’d like to thank Bob for giving me an outlet and putting up with some of the harsher parts of my entries.  Thanks also to Charlie King who has been transferring my emails to the XC Mag website and has remained good-natured when I’ve subsequently complained about minor points of grammar or small mistakes in the layout when the text has been transferred between programs.

So, it’s off home tomorrow and back to Tignes in the French Alps (www.chaletchardons.com) where I live for some catching up on work and hopefully some skiing.  The sun should be out and the miserable months of December and January when it’s often minus 20 at night will have gone, meaning I can dig out the deck chairs and have some seriously long lunches at the mountain restaurants.  I think it will take a month or so to fully recover from the mental and physical stress of this event.

To show how it takes its toll I got on the scales this morning and found I’d lost 4 kilos over the course of the fortnight!  ‘Fatty Hayman’ will be coming back as merely ‘Tubby Hayman’.

Cheers everybody and thanks for taking the time to read my often incoherent ramblings.  I hope to do some more stuff for the magazine in the future should they be kind enough to print any of it.

To Team UK – Jamie, Russ, Wagga Watts, Kirsty, John the Air Marshal and Al, our Team Leader.  ‘Cheers guys.  It’s been emotional’

Mark H

Bye for now

As with most paragliding events there have been more than a fair share of reserve deployments, crashes, helicopter rescues, hospitalisations and, unfortunately, one fatality.  Only yesterday my team-mate Kirsty had to land to tend to a badly smashed up pilot who’d crashed not whilst racing but when his glider collapsed and irrecoverably cravatted at low altitude whilst he was coming in to land.  The sky was so full of rescue helicopters buzzing back and forth clearing up behind us that the task had to be cancelled.  Let’s not forget that each reserve deployment is a potential major accident or fatality and that if the person lands safely they are ‘there but for the grace of God’.  That, of course, is if the thing even deploys.  Many don’t and end up wrapped up in the lines with the paraglider or just fail to fill with air.  Great stories to tell in the bar till it all goes wrong.

I think this is appalling.  Other sports, sponsors and the public at large must look at this sad wreckage of people and equipment dangling from trees and being hauled off the mountain each day and think ‘My God, don’t these people realise how they come across to the rest of the World.  They are a joke’.

Sadly, I am forced in many ways to agree with them.

When I competed in both Motorsports and the Snowboarding World Championships you had to present yourself at scrutineering in the morning to have your kit and yourself checked for compliance with basic and common-sense safety requirements.  Sure it was a pain but more broadly the sports flourished once they’d got over their worrying ability to kill or maim their most talented participants in the early days.  With safety addressed it wasn’t long before mainstream recognition and money followed on.

In paragliding I’m not even required to use an approved crash helmet.  Some of the things perched on top of the heads of competitors here looked like they wouldn’t be strong enough to house a pot plant.  Similarly one of the only proven safety devices to work – airbag back protection – is not required to be a minimum thickness or density nor to conform to any sort of crash testing.  The winner of the event, Andy Aebi, was using a harness that looked like a flying sun lounger and would have offered about as much protection to his spine as an egg box.  Presumably he thinks he’ll never need it but, perhaps, he just puts it out of his head because doing without this essential piece of kit saves a significant amount of drag and, in the absence of rules to govern pilot behaviour, he has no choice but to ditch it if he wants the title at the end of the fortnight.

Then we come on to gliders.  These things we fly in competitions are not easy or forgiving but they are manageable in 99.9% of conditions.  However, increasing aspect ratios and the constant drive towards performance has constantly reduced the number and thickness of lines holding the whole structure together meaning cravats are becoming more and more common and harder and harder for all but the best pilots to deal with.  For 90% of the field here a huge blowout or collapse followed by a cravat just means going for the reserve handle straight away as there’s almost no chance we have the skill to recover a glider from this configuration.  Some pilots, like me, have to make constant compromises between how fast I want to fly and how much I don’t want to end up throwing my reserve.  In essence my flying speed is purely limited by how much risk I want to take of getting into a situation for which I have neither the skill nor the inclination to recover from.  In a very real way the fastest pilots here are those that accept the notion of ‘falling off’ once in a while.  I.e. they consciously push hard through rough air knowing that they may use the reserve parachute.  Far from being the ‘last chance’ that most of the flying community believe the reserve is for, it has become a crutch to allow faster and faster speeds and gliders with less and less passive safety to be flown.

So, what’s the answer?  Glider regulation in the form of Serial Classes or basic and essentially non-intrusive minimum stability tests for gliders?  Anti-cravat line layouts (possible and something I’ve discussed at length with designers)?  Maximum aspect ratios or other technical restrictions?  All have been discussed in the past but usually rejected because pilots and more importantly manufacturers dislike regulation, compliance and the restriction of what they consider to be part of the ‘freedom’ that flying brings to their lives.

I have to say one thing, though.  I saw the fatal accident from 50 metres away and I can tell all of you that had Stefan been flying a certified wing or one with reasonable aspect ratio he would be here now.  He could have steered away from the mountain from where he could have thrown a reserve or landed and that’s if the glider would even have got into this mess in the first place if it had been less pushed to the edge of the reasonable design envelope.  I have it on good authority that a decent crash helmet would have had a major effect on the outcome as well.

So, to come back to the title of this blog I want to ask this;

The Cold, Hard Truth.

Are the arguments put forward against any form of regulation for our sport worth the life of the pleasant and affable young man from a sleepy town in Switzerland who came to Mexico full of the vitality and promise that youth bestows and who won’t be going home again?

For me, the answer has to be ‘No.’

Fly safe and if you want to stay safe don’t become a competition pilot till we have some more sensible rules and gliders in place.

Mark H

I’ve just got back from the closing ceremony and need some kip so I’ll just report briefly here that Andy Aebi from Switzerland won the event to become World Champion and Elisa Houdry from France becomes the Female World Champion.
The Czech Republic won the Team event with us chaps from the UK coming a creditable 4th just behind Italy and Slovenia but well ahead of some of the ’superstar’ nations like France and Germany.  I think we can hold our heads reasonably high with this performance.

My team mates Russ, Jamie and Mark were 12th, 22nd and 91st whilst I came 48th.  Kirsty was 14th in the female event.

Today was a strange one to finish on with the first really stable conditions making it very rough and tumble in the early thermals only to be replaced with a complete lack of any lift on the first major crossing meaning about half the leaders landed.  This could have changed everything on the score board but the task was cancelled as 2 helicopters had to be called to deal with accidents.

I was involved in one of these when another pilot who was either over-stressed with the crowded thermal conditions or just being very aggressive decided to fly straight into me in a thermal.  With a whole gaggle of pilots on my right and nowhere to go I was forced to watch open mouthed as he flew into me from the left and the world went instantly grey.  Axis Mercury Grey to be exact.  Before I’d even thought of grabbing for the reserve handle I’d somehow managed to wriggle myself out of the fabric of his glider and came free with a loud bang and ripping of sail cloth and snapping lines.  After getting my glider flying again and checking for damage or broken kit (there wasn’t any) I looked over the side of my harness to see my assailant falling to Earth under a stricken and torn paraglider.  He threw his reserve but unfortunately fell from the tree he landed in and has been helicoptered to Mexico City but I’m told he’ll mend and it’s not very serious – a broken hip and leg, maybe.

Riding in the back of the retrieve truck in the late afternoon sun and watching the quiet, rural Mexican life go past it seemed odd to reflect on the turmoil, battle and fulfilment or dashing of dreams that had been going on in the sky above for the past two weeks.

But for now I must sleep, probably to dream about being wrapped up in a giant handkerchief and thrown down and down into the breathy green maw of the forest far below…

More tomorrow…

Mark H

The still smiling organisation and Brit team

Nick and Keith - North American culture at its finest

All in one piece and glad it's all over

Closing Ceremony

After walking for an hour to find a road during which I got fairly lost I grumpily presented myself for the GPS download, was rude to the Meet Director about the task setting, ate alone under a private black cloud at the taco van and am now sulking in my room and refusing all callers.
I’ll have to apologise to the affable Karel (the meet director) tomorrow for not being very nice even though I’m right as they set a task that didn’t really give enough time for everybody to have a fair attempt at finishing it.  If you got stuck, even for ten minutes, then there wasn’t enough day left to be able to get to goal.  This seems a shame in a competition where, in general, the organisation and task setting has been spot on.  I fear the reality of a fairly average day and limited daylight was forgotten in the pressure to set ever longer and more impressive tasks which look good on the press releases.

Oh, and to all the people who’ll say ‘wah wah wah you should have flown faster then’ I’ve got a couple of words for you.  Sod off!

A cup of tea has helped but I fear the only cure for my incredibly bad mood will be time, darkness and sleep.

To make matters worse I’d got fed up with waiting for the retrieve to turn up and so had set off on my own, leaving the other pilots in the field where we’d all landed together.  After getting lost several times, attacked by a multitude of different mongrel dogs, trying to take a short cut across a gulley only to find it full of water at the bottom and finally finding the main road the van that stopped to pick me up contained all the same pilots I’d abandoned an hour earlier.  The driver had evidently found them and they’d told him about ’some Pom’ (the other pilots were from the Australian and New Zealand Teams) who’d ‘gone off on walkabout’ and they’d then spent ages driving around looking for a sulky Brit pilot who was, at the time, trying to claw his way back out of a gully whilst fending off a pack of feral mutts.

So here I am.  Muddy, stung, mosquito bitten but, I suppose, ready to fight another day.

I bet Kat’s happy that I’m 8000 miles away tonight so she doesn’t have to listen to the moaning.

Mark H

Discussing the task

Keith McCullough shows off his best side

Crowded skies

For those reading this blog who think it must be a fantastic jolly to come away to nice country like Mexico to go flying for two weeks with all your mates I have to say  ‘yes, it is’, but it’s also a marathon of ups, downs and physical and mental exhaustion as well.

Here’s a typical task day.

7am – Wake up, check emails and reply to any that are important, check blog is up on the XC Mag site and note any comments left that might need replying to.  Check BBC website for any news and check weather for the day so I can be a pain in the organiser’s arse by asking difficult questions at the pilot’s briefing if I have, for example, a forecast for very strong winds and they are saying that they’re going to be very light.  When it comes to looking after my own safety I’ve always felt better finding out things for myself rather than relying on other people to do it for me.

8am – Down for breakfast and a cup of one of my private stash of Tetley Tea Bags.  As I predicted in a previous post there have been no more scrambled eggs or other treats since I managed to flood the first floor of the house trying to put the jacuzzi on so Bran Flakes and a stern look from the housekeeper are all we’re now given.

9am – The 15 minute walk from the house to the HQ is usually done at a run as Jamie almost always beats me to the loo in our place so the last few hundred metres to the safety of the Gent’s at the HQ are often rather urgent.  When we arrive we have to find our gliders and get them loaded on the trucks for the drive to launch.

10am – Arrival at launch and unpacking and preparation of gliders.  This is about the only part of the day when there’s a little time for relaxation so the English speaking teams often congregate for a bout of piss-taking and general banter involving base toilet humour and stereotypical jokes about the inadequacies of different nationalities.  The Eastern Europeans are the current butt of most of the jokes but this will move on quickly to whoever next displays any form of weakness.

10.30 – Pilot briefing and the revelation of today’s task is conducted in a cacophony of bleeping flight instruments as various glide computers and GPS’s are programmed.  At this point I normally lend my pen to somebody and never get it back again which I only realise once I’m airborne.

11.15 – Window open and pilots free to take off.  I usually try to get off about 45 minutes before the race start, which is normally at 12.45 so I don’t end up needing to pee for 4 hours.  I generally get the timing wrong as the queue moves quite slowly for launch meaning I’m often hassled and late by the time I take off.  I’ve now taken to carrying a small bottle that I can pee into in the launch queue using my pod harness as a makeshift toilet cubicle.  Genius!

Midday – Take Off!  Now is the time to get positioned for the race start and work out what the air is doing, thermal heights, thermal strengths and other technical stuff.  If all goes according to plan I should be at or around cloudbase in a good position at 1pm.  Surprisingly I’m quite good at this so usually I am.

13.00 – Race Start!  We’re off for the task

13.01 – I realise I need a pee and will have to wait for 4 more hours till we land to have one.

13.00 to 17.00 – Fly the task.  This involves being scared, elated, annoyed, physically bullied by the air, pleased and disappointed with decisions in fairly equal measure, fiddling with GPS’s and computers, peering into the distance to see what my rivals are doing, getting overheated when low and frozen stiff when high, lots of swearing when things don’t work and lots of yelling at other pilots in busy thermals.  Now and again (and it’s not often) I’ll get a few seconds to think ‘Wow!  What a beautiful view’ and take a deep lungful of high altitude air.

17.00 – Land in goal (hopefully) and after 5 hours in the air I get to enjoy a 5 minute wee as soon as my feet are on the ground.

18.00 – Get on the bus back to HQ which is usually filled to the brim with gliders and people meaning no place to sit.

19.00 – Arrive at HQ and download my GPS trace for the day ensuring the times and other stuff agree with what I have noted down myself.

20.00 – Go for some food.  I am, of course, now on first name terms with the man who runs the taco stall in the middle of town.  I normally at this point forget the unfortunate effects of too much chilli sauce the next morning and pile it on.

21.00 – Arrive home twelve and a half hours after we left.  Cup of tea and shower, put batteries on charge, download photos and do any chores like sewing up broken kit or washing underwear and socks.

22.00 – Write blog and answer any more emails from the day.

23.00 – Zzzzzzzzz

Multiply this schedule by 13 days of the competition and you have a fairly packed two weeks.

Don’t get me wrong this is a wonderful experience that I wouldn’t miss for the World but boy will I be knackered when I get back home…

Mark H

Mark Watts holding on to his most important possessions

Launch banter

The popular packed lunch girls

Now, I understand why we have to do these for sponsors and as a record of our participation in the event and, of course, I’m only too happy to pose for the cameras.  However, squeezing a portly 41 year old man into a white lycra top which would not look out of place in a gay club just isn’t dignified.

After a lot of hunting around in my paraglider kit I managed to find the team top buried in the back of my harness whilst all the others waited expectantly for the show to begin.  I, of course, had to strip all my other clothes off to even have a chance of wriggling into the lycra which seemed to be an excuse for at least half the other competitors to come over and pass unwanted comments about the size of my belly and how they had a ‘very nice friend called Miguel who’d just luuurve to meet you’.

‘Thanks you bunch of bastards’ I muttered from inside the top which not only wouldn’t fit over my belly but I’d discovered that I also couldn’t get my head out of the neck hole either.   After more thrashing about during which I managed to fall over my own paraglider bag I finally popped out the top and we were ready for the big photo session.

‘Hope you’ve got a wide angle lens’ chirped in Keith McCullough from Canada who still hasn’t forgiven me for referring to his team as ‘The American Team’ during the opening ceremony.

‘Mark, you are really at the bottom of fashion!’ added Yassen Sassov to the approval of the growing crowd of bored pilots who had sensed some good sport to be had at my expense.  You’ve no idea how bad it is getting a ribbing about your fashion sense from somebody who comes from Bulgaria.

‘Ve hav just like this in Russian man-love club’ sniggered Marina Olexina filming everything in Hi-Def video whilst the entire German Team were practically wetting themselves with laughter.  Perhaps it reminded them of Benny Hill or something.

Walking on to launch to more comments about ‘weather balloons’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty’ I must have looked like the Pied Piper with an ever growing throng of competitors trailing behind me clutching their cameras and desperate for an embarrassing shot of yours truly to paste onto their websites.

‘Don’t hold your stomach in, it just looks worse’ advised Russ Ogden, unhelpfully.  I tried some diversionary techniques of taking the piss out of Jamie Messenger who is so skinny that his top was flapping in the wind but I remained the centre of attention and everybody’s mirth.

5 minutes later it was all over at which point I discovered I couldn’t get the bloody thing off again but that’s another story.

So, here are the unsightly results and I’ll thank you all in advance for pointing out that it did, indeed, look worse holding my stomach in…

Mark H

The annoyingly long and hot launch queue

What a fine set of athletes

The team hot tub

Today was a typical example of the highs and lows you experience on a World Championship task which ended in a sort of a high – getting to goal – and a sort of low – doing it too slowly.

A roundup of my day:-

Low No. 1 – After another ill-advised trip to the taco stalls and far too much chilli sauce I was locked in the Gent’s just at the time that the queue for launch got very, very long and the conditions got difficult and inconsistent meaning the very long queue was also moving very slowly.

High No. 1 – Standing in the equatorial sunshine togged up for high altitude travel and with 30 kilos of kit hanging off your body can make your temper quite short, especially as you don’t want to be late for the race start.  Joakim Johansson lightens the mood when he tells us in his strong and deadpan Scandinavian accent that the ‘Swedish Team will not be scoring well today as my team mate is already hanging from a tree on the side of El Penon before I have even left the ground.’  Chuckles all round.

Low No. 2 – After finally taking off with only 23 minutes to go before the start the previoulsy boisterous and active air seems to have dozed off.  Nothing is bloody working and I can’t get high.  This eventually means I have to glide in low to the aptly named ‘Crazy Thermal’ to get my arse royally tanned by this snakey and unpleasant column of lifting air.  The ‘Swear-O-Meter’ is off the clock (unlike the vario which still refuses to go nuclear) and the upshot of all this messing about is that I miss the start and am not only getting my arse kicked but have to watch the entire field buggering off in a cloud of dust 500 metres above my head with little prospect of catching up.

High No. 2 – After getting tired of ‘Let’s Play Turning Our Gliders Inside Out’ I finally set off, Swear-O-Meter still set firmly at maximum and take the first turnpoints and climbs.  I’m now firmly at the back but as I’m about to go on glide I notice the leaders have pretty much gone the wrong way!  Excellent – they’ve all ‘gaggle dragged’ each other to the wrong mountain and I can go in a straight line towards the turnpoint by leap-frogging gliders below me.  Nice!

Low No. 3 – The air is miserably bouncy today meaning I’m unhappy and uncomfortable.  I’m not a particularly brave pilot and I freely admit to not much liking gliding fast in ‘fizzy’ air and wind shear.  The language is still not particularly pleasant inside my crash helmet.

High No. 3 – At the first turnpoint my ‘Leapfrog technique’ (otherwise known as pimping) has put me right at the front.  Lovely Jubbly!  On the glide to the second turnpoint halfway through the task I am joined by Andy Aebi (currently leading the comp) and other Superstar Pilots.  I’m feeling what’s known as ‘well chuffed’ with myself for catching up and allow myself a small smug grin.

Low No. 4 – On glide with the lead pack Jamie Messenger, my team mate, suddenly falls out of the sky for no reason at all.  It’s like one of those comedy moments when a trapdoor opens beneath somebody or they fall off a bar stool.  One second he’s in front of me and the next he’s just gone.  Peering gingerly over the edge of my harness I can see that he’s got it all under control 100 metres lower down but my ability to glide quickly in the choppy air has fallen faster than Jamie did.

High No. 4 – A deft move at the far turnpoint means we find the first real thermal to break the inversion and we pop out of it at 3500m and miles above the rest of the field.  World domination awaits as we commence gliding towards goal.

Low No. 5 – ‘Not so fast!’ says the Wind and Thermal God as I first miss an important thermal because I get it into my head that it’s 200 metres in front of where everyone else is climbing (it wasn’t) and that the day is so good that even if I’m wrong there’ll be another one on the glide (wrong again) and that the wind isn’t strong anyway (it was a gale low down).  This means on the important glide back to take off I end up just clearing an unlandable gulley and some power lines whilst watching the rest of the field who’s thermal I’d ignored get an incredibly lifty line and all spec out.  50 metres off the ground I can hear the Mexican children shouting up and even their dog barking as they run from one side of the field to the other trying to predict where I’ll land.

High No. 5 – Setting up to land there’s that feeling like someone’s about to set an earthquake off underneath you and then BANG! The thermal finds me and we’re off again in a rough and snotty climb.  Thoughts of the ribbing I will get from my team mates if I bomb out start to recede a little

Low No 6 – By the time I’ve regained enough height to think about moving on the whole rest of the field are gone.  For f*ck’s sake!

High No. 6 – After getting stuck almost every day at the Penon in the afternoon I finally make a good decision and connect straight away with the important last thermal before goal and shoot up to 3700m

Low No 7 – Gliding for goal I realise I’ve programmed the glide computer wrong and that I didn’t need to climb anywhere near as high as I have done to make goal – I’ve wasted loads of time.

High No. 7 – Massive sink near the final turnpoint puts lots of other pilots into what looks like quite a marginal position to make goal from.  ‘Lucky I programmed that glide computer wrong and took all that extra height in the last thermal’ I congratulate myself.

Low No. 8 – I’m desperately trying to get some speed into the glider but the air is unsettled and I keep having to let off the bar.  Finally I ‘have a word with myself’ and decide that the glider must be giving me more information than I’m used to and that it will stay open through a lot rougher air than I think it will.  I’m almost immediately rewarded by a full frontal blow-out.

High No. 8 – After getting control of the glider again I can see that I’m fairly comfortably in goal which is lucky as it is over a large and very wet looking lake.  A few minutes later I arrive – Hurrah!

Low No. 9 – Looking at the goal there are loads of gliders already there.  Curses!  Even worse when I arrive all my team mates are already there which means I’m last.

High No. 9 – All my team mates are already here!  Great for the team score against the other nations…

Low No. 10 – When the scores come out I won’t believe how slow I’ve flown and will spend the rest of the evening brooding about where it went wrong.

High No. 10 – When the scores come out I won’t believe how few points the people who landed at the point where I nearly did scored and I’ll spend all evening thinking about how well I did to climb out from so low and then make goal.

And so on, and so on…

And we have to deal with all this emotion every day.  I shall need a holiday to recover when we’ve finished.

Mark H

Making new friends at take off

Not the friendliest glide to do at low altitude. Goal is the small beach.

We found this out as we presented ourselves at 9am for the transport to launch.  At the team leader’s meeting earlier in the morning a request had been received from several teams to have another day of rest due to Stefan’s accident on Friday and to dedicate this in his memory.  In the event the Organisers decided to take us all to launch and to hold a ceremony there followed by a fly back to Valle de Bravo with flowers supplied to everyone so they could drop them over the place where he lost his life.

Most pilots took off clutching the flowers that the organisation had arranged to be delivered to take off and soon the sky was full of gliders making their way over to the infamous ‘Wall’ where the accident occurred.  Soon the sky was full of falling flowers as one competitor after another dropped them from cloudbase

Earlier at the ceremony Martin Scheel, the Swiss Team Manager, had said a few words about how sports like paragliding occasionally lead to a tragedy but that they enrich people’s lives, not only the participant’s lives but those of others who are inspired by the ideas they represent.  ‘For a certain type of person we must remember that the quality of life is more important than the quantity of life’, he said, ‘and Stefan in particular, and more generally pilots, live their lives in a way that gives much quality but sometimes shortens the quantity.  However the decision is one they make by their own choice.’

The meet director, Karel, then said a few words about how in Mexico people consider life to be like a theatre and that each person has a part to play in that theatre.  When somebody dies prematurely they have just completed their act earlier than expected and we should applaud their performance rather than stand by silently.  So we were all asked to show our appreciation of the act that Stefan played in the Theatre Of Life by applauding him for one minute to celebrate how he lived and inspired those around him in his short time here.

For a full minute the take off rang to the deafening clapping, whistles and cheering of over 200 people as the early morning sun filtered through the trees whispering in the first thermals of the chilly morning air…

Mark H

The ceremony at take off

Swiss team leader Martin Scheel and Meet Director Karel Freudenthal

Flowers ready to be dropped by pilots

In the British Team house we spent the morning dossing and chatting about wings and tactics all washed down with plenty of coffee and tea.  As the only one of the team to have had the foresight to bring a decent supply of Tetley Tea Bags with me I’ve been unusually popular with everybody at breakfast time.  I only brought enough to see me through the two weeks, however, so no amount of badgering me and talking about ‘team spirit’ or ‘all in it together’ has persuaded me to part with many of my limited stash.  I’ve also hidden them in my room so that neither Jamie nor Russ can stage a raid whilst I’m not in the house.  As we all know a true Englishman can’t survive without at least two cups of tea a day and I’m defending my supply to the death even if it gets me grumpy looks as the others have to drink either the local muck or flowery nonsense like ‘fruit tea’ or ‘raspberry tea’.  Yeuch…

We have a Jacuzzi in the house and we were hoping to have spent the afternoon in that (or at least I was) but it was cold when I went to investigate at 3pm.  I couldn’t find the landlord to get it put on so, undeterred, I dived into the nether regions of the machinery underneath it to see how to put the heater on so it would be warm for a nice soak by early evening.  Jamie had mentioned something about how it was easy to turn on so I pushed a few switches till things whirred a bit and hoped it would heat up.  Coming back for a check at 5pm it was still cold so I had another delve into the gubbins underneath and tried turning a few taps on and off.  I thought I’d wait a few minutes to see if any heat started soaking through the pipes when I suddenly noticed the level in the Jacuzzi had fallen quite significantly.  Turning everything off I quickly traced the pipes and discovered I’d managed to turn on the drainpipe and so was emptying it.  ‘Not to worry’ I thought and just filled it up again with the hosepipe lying next to it and hoped nobody would notice.

Coming down the stairs to go out this evening there seemed to be quite a bit of commotion going on and several people messing about with toolboxes.  ‘Hola!’ I waved to them, noticing to my horror a large flood across the entire first floor landing and lots of mops and buckets laying about.  I think I’ve discovered where the overflow pipes come out.  Lacking the ability to explain in Spanish what had happened I just did a runner to the taco stall and hoped it would all be sorted by the time I got back.

It wasn’t and I’m currently hiding in my room typing this whilst continued Spanish shouts of ‘inundacion’ and ‘agua’ come through the doors.  On later interrogation it turns out that ‘a Mexican bloke’ explained to Jamie how to turn it on and ‘mentioned something about taps though he didn’t actually show me which ones and I couldn’t understand his Spanish anyway’.  Nice work, young James.  At least it means that I can blame it on him if questioned whilst sipping my cup of tea and looking innocent.

It’s probably lucky that we’ll be out flying all day tomorrow when the owner’s wife returns.  I fear there may be no more scrambled eggs or other treats at breakfast time once she sees the mess.

Mark H

Russ and Jamie loafing about

Russ and Alijaz Valic discussing you know what

Yassen Sassov with patient friend

The results of the unfortunate jacuzzi incident

Stefan and the rest of the field were flying in a perfectly normal place where we fly every day and nobody was on the bar or pushing hard near the ground.  In fact we were all soaring a ridge a kilometre or so from take off trying to gain height a few minutes after the start of the task.

I saw Stefan coming towards me soaring the cliff face with a huge cravat in the glider.  He was managing to maintain his course and was working to try to get the cravat out as he was flying.  The conditions were, however, strongly thermic and after a couple of rotations caused by the glider getting pushed up on the open side by strong gusts, each time with near recoveries between, he impacted heavily in a gulley half way up the ridge.  We can’t be sure but we think he didn’t throw his reserve because he was in a very bad position to do so, with a cliff face and very high trees, not to mention strong thermal winds making it an unappealing prospect.  He probably also thought he could recover the glider.

Andre Rainsford from South Africa, Shane Hill from Australia and myself were all within 50 or so metres of the impact point and we tried to shout down but got no response.  We had all assessed the possibility of landing but in the very turbulent air near the ridge we were all fighting for control of our own gliders and none of us thought we had the necessary skill to get a glider into the only available tiny patch of bare rock a few metres from the cliff edge without putting ourselves into very serious danger and possibly creating another accident to deal with.  The trees here are 40 metres high and prone to breaking if landed in so even this was not an option.

Heli Eichholzer from Austria did finally manage a heroic landing nearby on a tiny opening to give assistance just as the ambulances arrived a few minutes after the accident.  He deserves the admiration of the entire flying community for demonstrating such amazing bravery and cool-headedness under extreme pressure and flying conditions.

The task continued and when we got to goal news was quick to spread that Stefan had died of his injuries, apparently sometime after being rescued though this is not confirmed at the present time.

Our thoughts must be with his family and team mates on this dreadful day.

Salut Stefan…

Mark H

After storming round in the lead gaggle all day it all went very wrong in the last 15k because we all got stuck and watched the chasing pack fly over our collective heads to take the glory and more importantly all the points.  By the time we’d got ourselves un-stuck we’d run out of time to get to goal and we all landed just short.  Cleverly not only had we managed to get stuck but all three of us who should have been scoring had managed to do it in exactly the same place.

Getting stuck on a competition task is about the second worse thing that can happen.  (Being just short of goal is probably the very worst).  After nearly 100km of flying at quite a brisk pace we were all looking forward to the final part of the race when our collective brains all seemed to go blank.  We’d all been low, we’d all got back up and only a fairly simple climb out from El Penon (the main flying site) separated us from Goal Glory.  Except it didn’t happen.  Why?

Flying a task well is a bit like playing Tetris when you’re getting each brick to fall nicely into place time after time.  As they are all falling into place so well there’s plenty of time to position the ones arriving at the top of the screen.  Get one out of place, however, and it all starts to come apart and quite quickly the things are arriving so fast that you just can’t make them fit and – GAME OVER!

Getting stuck is a bit like this.  You’ve been flying all day, making calculated decisions and occasionally taking a risk or two that’s paid off and things are going just perfectly.  I’ve noticed that you almost always get stuck in what should be an easy place and I think this happens because you can’t quite believe that you’ve had all that luck, all those good decisions and all those risky moves come off and now, here you are, on the simplest and easiest climb of the day and it’s not working.  Had it been a risky choice you’d just move on and assume it hadn’t worked but because it SHOULD work you stay there.  And stay there.  And stay there.  ‘Come on you git’ you keep saying, ‘it always bloody goes up here’.  10 minutes pass – ‘there must be cycle soon’ you mutter.  20 minutes – ‘for f*ck’s sake, come on!’.  30 minutes – ‘Unbelievable, f*cking unbelievable to get stuck here of all places’ you howl to the indifferent sky.

Finally you give up and go on a death glide to a really stupid place and ‘Bingo!’ it comes out and you’re on your way again, albeit last.

Writing all this down it seems so obvious so why can’t we work this out for ourselves in the sky?  I’m not sure but I think it is something to do with what I talked about earlier.  You’ve spent all day making good decisions, taking great gambles which keep paying off and, like a gambler, you just can’t accept that the easiest bet of your life is just not paying off so you throw good money after bad and keep betting on the same ’sure thing’ even when it’s not working.

The fact that three highly experienced team mates spent the best part of half an hour soaring a spur which was obviously heavily lee-side and dangerously rough whilst watching their almost certain Top 20 places slip away to become a bomb out probably tells you as much about the stubborn self belief and suspension of reality needed to be a good comp pilot than it does about our collective intelligence and ability to fly.  (I should explain that we were too low to go to where the other pilots were getting lift otherwise we’d have obviously just followed them)

It’s almost like you can see yourself making the bad decision as you do it but you do it anyway.  Worse, once you’ve done it you just can’t let go of it because you just CAN’T be wrong, not after all that great flying you’ve just done.

But as I said in yesterday’s blog – ‘tomorrow’s another day…’

Mark H

[Check this space for video clips, to be put up shortly]

Anyway we had another good task today which I’ll talk about in tomorrow’s blog along with how pilots plan their tactics for such a long event as this.

I did try to video the task today to give an idea of what it’s like to be in the thick of the action but as it was quite rough the soundtrack had a lot of swearing on it except for when I was saying something useful to explain what was going on when it only contained wind noise.  A bit of work needed on my videoing skills, I think.

In the meantime I’ve produced a quick ‘User’s Guide To World Championship Pilot Phrases’ so that you will all be able to read between the lines of the other pilots’ blogs and race reports.

Comp Pilot Translations

1 – How Was The Day?

‘I was a bit late into goal’ – I was so slow that I was thermalling by moonlight.

‘The conditions were really hard’ – I bombed out.

‘The flying is really tricky’ – I flew like shit and need something to blame other than my own incompetence.

‘I’m having an early night’ – I flew so badly that I’m going to sulk in my room on my own all evening.

‘Tomorrow’s another day’ – And it can’t be any worse than today was.

2 – The Task

‘What a stupid task!’ – I was too chicken to push enough speed bar on the into wind leg.

‘I was right at the front until…’ – I was at the back all day.

‘I had a great start but things didn’t work out after that’ – For once in my life I got a decent start and was so excited about it that I flew myself into the ground.

‘The retrieve took a long time to come’ – I landed so early that the retrieve vehicles were still up at launch.

‘I got stuck’ – I have no idea how to fly on my own and always mess it up once I have nobody to follow.

‘I took a bad line’ – I ignored the obvious line of cumulus clouds forming in front of me and sunk like a stone.

‘I took a really good line’ – I was cloud flying most of the way

‘Bob took a really good line’ – Bob was cloud flying but I’m not going to protest him because he took a photo of me doing the same thing.

3 – How Did You Feel?

‘I wasn’t feeling so good in the air’ – Me and my mates were drinking vodka in a lap-dancing club till 5am until our team manager came and found us.

‘I had quite a close moment in a busy thermal’ – I am currently on the run from the Russian Team who I spent all day cutting up and was then stupid enough to mouth off to their team leader about it in goal.

‘It was a little rough from time to time’ – I was shitting myself all day.

‘That area slowed me up a bit’ – I was so scared I had the brakes jammed on and was praying to God for my safe return to Earth

4 – The Glider

‘My glider can be a bit of a handful’ – I’m not good enough to fly my glider and should really be on a serial wing.

‘The trimming is not really finished on the glider’ – My glider is rubbish but the manufacturer gave it to me for free so I can’t slag it off.

‘My new glider is not so forgiving as the old one’ – I thought I was going to die and am now embarrassed that somebody saw my harness shaking after that big cravat.

5 – The Pilot’s Performance

‘I’m not sure they scored me right’ – I can’t have been THAT slow!!!  Where’s my other GPS?

‘You have to be really lucky here’ – I can’t work out how the top pilots always seem to get a thermal after each glide

‘I got unlucky’ – I’m not a top pilot.

‘The final glide was very deceptive’ – I pushed too hard and landed two fields short of goal.

‘I judged the goal glide perfectly’ – I was so low on final glide that I thought I was going to take out the power lines to the local town.

6 – The Goal

‘We need a windsock in goal’ – I landed downwind.

‘The goal area should be clear’ – I landed on top of the Red Bull tent

‘Can’t the marshals control the crowd’ – I landed on top of a group of onlookers.

‘They were not very friendly when I got to goal’ – I landed on top of the goal marshal.

‘The goal is pretty tight’ – I spun my wing getting into the goal field.

‘What a stupid f*cking goal’ – I spun my wing getting into the goal field AND landed in a pile of horse shit/thistles/barbed wire.

So, onto yesterday’s report from me which you should now be able to decipher.

“It was a difficult day and I was a little late in goal (which could have done with a windsock).  I was right at the front till I got stuck for a while in quite a rough place.  By halfway round I was thinking it was a bit of a stupid task but I manged to take a really good line to get me out of trouble.  After a close moment in a busy thermal and a few bad lines that slowed me up a bit I judged the goal glide perfectly into the fairly tight goal field.  After all that I’m not sure they’ve scored me right but I said to myself that ‘tomorrow’s another day’ and had an early night.”

Pilots – worse liars than politicians.

Mark H

Mark over Valle de Bravo

Over my shoulder at the start of a task

On the way back from goal with the Turkish and Macedonian teams

The goal glide.

Take today, for example.  The task was 92km over varied and challenging terrain with many options to get things wrong along the way.  Except at this level most pilots don’t get things wrong so pretty much the whole field managed almost the entire task.  A very significant minority fell just short of goal, however.  When non-competing pilots look at the score sheets they must think “how on earth would they fly that far then bomb out within walking distance of the goal field and lose 500 points and very probably the competition?  Surely it can’t have been worth the few extra points they’d have got for being 30 seconds faster?”

This is a very logical and in many ways correct analysis of what looks like a very basic error except, as with many things involving flying, it’s not that simple.

On today’s task there were two gaggles forming as we neared the point at which we’d go on final glide.  The lead gaggle were struggling quite low and about 3km further on than my gaggle who’d got a very strong core and were at cloudbase 1000m higher.  ‘Great’ I thought as we remorselessly began to reel them in.  At this point the lead gaggle had a few options.  They could wait for a cycle to come through (perhaps a long time) and watch us lot go over their heads and wipe out 4 hours of hard work in the process, they could go for goal and hope they’d find a thermal on the way or hope we’d come unstuck and get a crappy glide so we’d, in turn, need to find more lift.

In the event it was a mixture of all three but if you look at today’s scores and see a lot of extremely good pilots just short of goal this is why – if they hadn’t have gone when they did there was every reason for them to expect the second gaggle would overtake them.  Nothing puts more pressure on a pilot to start final gliding than when they’ve been in the lead for hours and a load of upstarts are about to steal their well deserved win.  So they took the risk and about a third paid a high price as they were a few fields short.

As it happens our gaggle hit 6-metre sink just as the lead gaggle whizzed off and we ended up all struggling for a low save ourselves.  At this point the correct action to take is to realise that you’re not going to win the task and to take a safe glide.  Except, as ever, it doesn’t work this way.

At the top of my last climb I really needed another 50 metres of height to have a 10 to 1 downwind glide, which should have been comfortable.  And could I find it?  Not on your bloody Nelly.

On a day where we’d experienced climbs of up to 7 m/s in very regular and nicely spaced cores why was there not a sniff when I needed a paltry extra 50 metres to assure the glide?  Believe me if it was there I’d have taken it but as with the leaders who were being hunted down by the second gaggle we could all now see the third gaggle in turn hunting us down and were forced into exactly the same decision.

So I, and the 6 or 7 pilots with me, resorted to the age old technique of swearing at the sky and hoping for the best going on glide needing 11 to 1 for goal over boggy and sinky ground with power lines and trees on the run to the goal field.  5 were just short and me and an Advance glider made the goal line by 20 metres and had just enough room for a low-level turn into wind.

On such small strokes of luck ride the outcomes of competitions.

And now I’m going to bed as in only 9 hours I will be on the bus and on my way back up to launch for another workout with the Valle de Bravo Thermal Monster.

I get the feeling we are all going to be very, very tired by the time the comp finishes…

Mark H

I’ve got nothing to moan about.

The first task of the World’s was run yesterday in glorious weather.  The organisation was perfect, the take off was in fantastic condition and the launch ordering system used to get everyone off quickly worked well and minimised queues.  The task was an intelligently set race with a lovely glide into the goal in Valle de Bravo, which was full of cheering crowds and pretty girls.  The retrieves for those that needed them were quick and if you made goal the ever friendly flight director J.C. gave you a massive high-5 and directed you to a beer and food tent if you were hungry or thirsty.  Download went smoothly, the computers didn’t crash and they’d laid on free coffee and Red Bull to sip whilst you waited.

Even Vittor, the unfortunate FAI Observer whose lift I stole at the airport when I arrived was smiling and in good humour which is unusual for hard-pressed volunteers at these events.

Team Leaders were standing around chatting to each other in the late afternoon sun rather than flicking through rule books looking for ways to be difficult.

Hell, even the weather is cooperating as the latest forecasts are for light winds and perfect flying conditions for the rest of the week, a huge improvement from two days ago.

This can’t be allowed to go on – I shall have nothing to write about…!

Mark H

To explain, at FAI comps (in fact any FAI sanctioned comps but they never check at smaller ones) you have to adhere to a rule stating that you must not carry more than 33kg in addition to your body weight.  This is presumably done for safety to ensure 45kg girls are not trying to take off and land with 50kg of lead in their harnesses.  However for the slightly ‘fuller’ man such as myself it does present a problem in that my kit already weighs around 28 kilos leaving me only 5 kilos max to play around with flying weights.  This applies to a lesser degree to pretty much anyone over about 80kg as they need bigger wings, reserves, harnesses and even flying boots which all add up.

Quite a few pilots had worked this out and were quaffing as much water as they could before registering.  Yassen Sassov looked like a Ninja Turtle his belly was so big whilst our own Jamie Messenger had somehow crammed nearly 4 litres into his distended gut and borrowed some huge flying boots which looked like they could have done the Apollo Moon Missions justice before he was weighed.  Other ruses included putting a lot of borrowed coins in pockets and heavy cameras slung over the shoulder and hopefully not noticed by the weigh-in staff.  I could only fit 2 litres in my already crowded stomach before nausea got the better of me but it added a useful 2kg to my ‘ballast allowance’ meaning I can now carry 4.5kg without fear of going over the limit.  Aside from anything else there are some places you could land around here where you might walk for several hours in the equatorial sunshine so the ability to carry 3 big bottles of water with you is quite a significant safety issue.

Anyway the loos have been abnormally busy since registration as we’ve all been pissing like water buffaloes since.  Ah, the glamorous life of a comp pilot…

On to the afternoon and it was time for the opening ceremony.  This was a splendid affair with Mexican marching bands, cheering crowds throwing rice and confetti at us and then, unfortunately a lot of boring speeches by various dignitaries in which the pilots remained uncharacteristically restrained.  We must all be getting old.

If the movie clips I’ve sent got through you can view them below. If not then you’ll just have to take my word for it! [You can find the videos below - ED]

It’s 11.30pm local time as I’m writing this and I desperately need to go to bed as we are tasking in the morning when the whole competition gets underway.  Everything’s checked and ready to go and there are just some batteries to charge and instruments to organise before morning.

Wish us all luck…

Cheers, Mark H

The first flight on the new glider was a bit ’sporty’ as my brain tried to remember how to control a modern comp wing (and a new one with very different reactions at that) 5 months after I was last in the sky.  I suspect many competitors will be in the same boat this week which may well keep the reserve packers busy.

The air was unpleasant lacking very much lift but with very strong ‘horizontal’ thermals ripping over and around obstacles.  On top of that I bombed out so by 5pm I was in a field, without water (which had been left at base during the arguments about leaving late) and with about a hundred small children who, as so often in less-developed countries, had appeared in incredible numbers as if by magic the moment I’d landed.  There was also a goat and a toothless old lady who kept trying to whip all the children with a stick every time they came near my glider.  Things were fine till her goat decided to try to eat the edge of the wing but a bit of ’shooing’ and some more whacking with her stick soon got that sorted.  I managed to flag down a passing truck and for 5$ the nice chap took me all the way home along with a few other unfortunates we picked up on the way.

Back in town the French Team van pulled over to see if I needed a lift to my house.  On the way up I learned that their bus had been broken in to the day before and Simon Issenhuth’s glider bag containing not only his flying kit but also his passport and personal papers had been taken.  The French Team manager put the word out and it didn’t take long before an unsavoury character had contacted the local school trying to sell a glider he’d “found” 40km from Valle “in a ditch by the side of the road”.  Yeah, right!

Via a local intermediary the chap was offered some money to bring the glider back ‘no questions asked’ but after considering the offer he requested drugs in exchange for it instead.  Not really wishing to get involved in trying to buy illicit drugs to trade for the return of the stolen glider the Team reluctantly contacted the Police and set up a meeting where the thief was arrested when he turned up and the glider recovered.  Hurrah!  Except the fun was only just beginning…

Once the Police had the glider it was taken to the Police Station for “safe keeping” and for “paperwork to be completed”.  The French Team manger presented himself at 2pm to retrieve the wing but only managed to finally get it back at 9pm after an afternoon of various and lengthy demands for a “contribution to the police fund” to facilitate a speedy outcome.  He refused and eventually got the glider but it is questionable whether the 7 hours he spent in the station were worth the 5 or 10 dollars it would have cost just to pay the bribe.

We all think it’s been pretty rough flying and I have to admit I’ve been quite uncomfortable so it was a small relief to run into Greg Blondeau (European Champion) who said he’s been ’shitting himself’ most of the time.  Yassen Sassov reported the ‘worst cravat he’s ever had’ whilst Anja Kroll, Anders Baerheim and our own Kirsty Cameron either came down on reserves or were in trees on Thursday, all without injury.  Apparently this run of weather is being influenced by a low pressure that is very unusual for the area at this time of year.

Unfortunately it looks like this is going to get worse.  I’ve just checked the long range forecast on the only site that seems to model this region accurately and it’s looking a bit breezy to say the least.  Are the weather demons that seem to bedevil all the World Championships stirring?  What concerns me from a safety point of view is that the organisation will be under terrific pressure to fly a task on Sunday for all the media and, believe me, you don’t need high winds over the back of the main launch to make this place any rougher.  Let’s hope if it is windy it will be very windy so there’ll be no question of holding a task, avoiding us all having to fly in rotor for an hour before it gets canned, probably with reserves and injuries to boot.  God I sound cynical!  I must have been doing this for too long…

http://weather.weatherbug.com/Mexico/Valle%20De%20Bravo-weather/local-forecast/detailed-forecast.html?zcode=z6286

Thursday night’s glider trimming went well (more outer arc, slow the tips a little, shorten the stab lines, flatten the centre chord with centre B’s and add 3kg of ballast), giving a much nicer ride when I tried the glider again yesterday.  I almost sounded like I knew what I was talking about then!

Oh, I think there’s registration and an opening ceremony today too so there’ll be no flying.

The old lady and the goat will just have to do without me.

Mark H

Now, this seemed a polite reply to what was, essentially, a long article taking the mickey out of the various people who decide the rules on our behalf but I thought he’d missed the point on two counts.

Firstly, whilst he points out that aviation law in the UK stipulates a 2g per litre blood alcohol limit he says nothing about why the FAI has then chosen 1g per litre.  So I ask again – if the pilot who flew me here on a 100 million dollar Airbus with 300 passengers’ safety riding on his decisions could have 2g per litre of blood alcohol, why will I only be allowed 1g in competition? I don’t follow the logic (if there is any and it’s not all done for political reasons – to set a good example – as I suspect).

Secondly, I truly believe that the people that sit on these committees just don’t understand the mentality of the pilots they are representing. Why is this?

To put it bluntly, top competition pilots in general and particularly competition paraglider pilots are just not normal. Does anybody think that leaping from a hill into angry conditions with your safety assured by 7 kilos of marginally stable sail cloth which at any moment could decide to stop flying, is normal? Let’s face it, most Olympic Athletes or indeed most competitive sports people do not run a very significant risk of death or serious injury each time they participate in their chosen sport. The only things that spring to mind are some forms of motor sport and a few ‘extreme’ sports. In spite of recent advances in equipment and organisation I rarely do a competition where somebody doesn’t ’smack in’, often with quite serious consequences. The fact that we, as pilots, accept this means we are not in any way a ‘normal’ cross section of the population at large. In fact we are pretty weird as far as I can see.

Now, people who accept extreme risk for the extreme rewards it gives to their sense of well being and sanity are often prone to other sorts of risk-taking behaviour. They often drink too much, take drugs, are loud and outspoken (now you know where I got it from) and in many cases not particularly likeable characters in every day social situations.

So the point I’m making is that the very top guys in a sport where the risk of death or disablement are so high are unlikely to conform to social norms. If they’ve survived the day they’re likely to drink, smoke or engage in other frowned upon behaviours. If they were unable to control these behaviours and were flying whilst unfit then Darwinian Forces would have removed them from the gene pool long before they’d amassed the thousands of hours flying necessary to be chosen for a National Team and compete in the World Championships.

So why the need for somebody running around with dope testing equipment? If it’s about ability to fly, nature would have already killed or disabled any pilot who was unable to function properly after drinking long before they ever got good enough to be here, and if it’s about setting a good example then we directly discriminate against the very type of character who is likely to be able to withstand the very high mental stresses involved in constantly cheating death from day to day.

None the less in the spirit of the rules I did give up drinking three weeks ago. We’ll see how long this lasts when I get my first asymmetric and cravat which I manage to stall out metres above the treetops. In fact just thinking about it makes me want to down a massive glug of brandy. Should I be so inclined (I’m not as I don’t like it) a nice large reefer might be the thing to calm my nerves. Only for a privileged few will yoga or transcendental meditation work. It is really hard to describe to people who haven’t experienced it how paragliding, particularly competition paragliding, can be so utterly terrifying and hugely rewarding all at the same time. But believe me, it can be really, really bloody scary. Drugs, whether they be in the form of alcohol or other less acceptable ones, help many to get their heads sorted after a big scare. Those who can’t get their heads around it just give up flying. It’s as simple as that.

This is where the resentment comes from when ‘dope testing’ or other forms of external policing are imposed upon people who have dedicated their lives to managing their mental processes in such an extreme and unforgiving environment. In short, as a group, we don’t like being told what to do because we feel we already know. Should any of the FAI Medical Commission beat me head to head on a task or even have the bottle to fly my glider I’d be much more inclined to listen to their advice.

So, do we want the best pilots in the World, along with all the emotional and mental baggage that comes with living on the edge? Or do we want those that best fit the clean-cut, blue blazer wearing profile the authorities would probably like to see?

I think this is an important question that we should all think about, not only in paragliding but also in the wider World.

Mark H

PS – Thanks for taking the time to reply, Peter. This blog is not in any way aimed personally at you, but at the general concept of what these rules represent.

On arrival in Mexico City the chap assigned to pick me up was waiting as planned outside baggage reclaim with a note with my name on it. He didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Spanish (the best I can manage is French with a Latino accent which, whilst better than nothing, is not significantly so) so after a round of handshakes and babbling without the slightest risk of understanding one another we were ready for the off.  At this point another pilot approached us and asked if we were going to Valle de Bravo. ‘Of course’, I said to what turned out to be ‘Danny’ from the Slovakian Team, and the driver seemed only too happy to be taking another person so we all departed and were soon on the Mexico City ring road speeding through the early morning traffic.

At this point the conversation turned to our various names.  ‘Jorge’ said the driver proffering his hand again. ‘Mark’ says I. ‘Danny’ said Danny shaking hands warmly with ‘Jorge’. ‘Danny?’ he says, puzzled and rustling in his pocket for a piece of paper. ‘Danny’, confirmed Danny. ‘You no Vittor?’ says the driver, looking a little perplexed. ‘No, Danny’ confirmed Danny. ‘Ah, problemo’ says our driver.

Ten minutes of phone calls and lots of comedy arm-waving Spanish later we had done a U-Turn and were speeding back towards the airport. To cut a long story short the driver was actually there to pick up Vittor (without whom the competition cannot go ahead) and not my good self as I’d thought. It seemed he’d been told to go and get the FAI Observer and to pick me up at the same time if I happened to be there. Ah! the penny drops… When Danny had approached us the driver assumed this was Vittor and off we’d gone leaving a confused and abandoned FAI Official stranded at the airport watching a fast disappearing car with paragliders sticking out of the boot. Ooops!

Anyway, after finding Vittor and proffering apologies we were all off again, grateful for a Spanish speaker to communicate with the driver. Well, he’s Portuguese but the languages seem close enough to communicate, certainly better than my attempts of French with a Spanish Accent.

Four hours later and we rocked up into Valle in warm winter sunshine. Alan, our helper in Valle, was waiting for me and we repaired to the British Team House. Home Sweet Home for the next 20 days. And what a beautiful place it is. Slap bang in the middle of Valle it is a little ‘Island’ in the midst of the town, with a nice garden, terraces to lounge around on, never ending coffee and broadband internet. In fact there’s very little reason to leave which is why I’m writing this blog at 1.45pm local time instead of being out flying. Rest and relaxation as they say…

We are actually off to fly this afternoon when I’ll get the chance to try out my new Ozone Mantra R09 (the black and white one as mentioned in a previous blog) and to try to sort out the flying weights and any last minute trimming that may be required. I’m still quite groggy from jet-lag and I flew 12 tasks here last year which is why I’m not too worried about getting hours in before the off. Just enough to blow the cobwebs away and shake down the glider will be perfect and then, hopefully, we’ll all be well rested and in the mood for when the comp gets going on Sunday.

Here’s a quick photo of the unsightly British Team on their balcony after a hard morning’s loafing about and eating. Needless to say I’ve spent much of it on the loo (in fact on Russ Ogden’s loo which has delighted me and irritated him) after heavily over-dosing on the super hot cactus and chilli sauce at the restaurant last night. Nothing much changes…

Mark H

Now I fully understand why airlines need to impose baggage limits on their customers. If they didn’t people would be buying cheap tickets and hauling all sorts of freight all over the world at very cheap prices. And they couldn’t have that, could they? In fact, up ’til around the early 90s you could approach courier companies and get them to buy you a ticket somewhere nice as long as you were prepared to give up some of your space to carry their packages and deliver them to somebody at the airport the other end. In practice this meant you took everything as normal and tried to blag your way onto the plane with about 50kg of luggage and, to be honest, 9 times out of 10 this worked.

This very system got me to Singapore about 15 years ago for a trip through South East Asia. I was so chuffed with the result that on the first night me and my mate quaffed both litres of duty free vodka we’d purchased at Heathrow and the ensuing party with a bunch of Aussie girls with whom we were sharing some sort of insalubrious accommodation got so out of hand that we all got banged up in Changi Prison for the next two weeks. But that’s another story…  Luckily the World Champs will never be in Singapore as I think I’m still not allowed back in for ‘Insulting His Excellency’s Pleasure’, as it said on my deportation documents.

Anyway, back to the packing. There was a time that a paraglider was a passport to easy travelling freedom around the World. Lightweight kit still is but you’re not going to be winning many tasks flying that, so it’s the full ‘Battle Tank’ of tube harness and associated gubbins that I’ll be hauling out today.

Iberia (who are not known for getting both passenger and luggage to the same continent with any great reliability) impose a quite generous 23kg times 2 for my flight and 8kg of hand luggage. I’m going to try and make that 23kg times one plus a sneakily heavy piece of hand luggage.

So the big bag first. Glider goes into a vacuum bag which makes it smaller. I have an extra large Sup Air back protector to replace the ‘egg box’ jobbie that came with my original harness and this gets rolled up to reduce size. Harness goes in with lightweight Extra Large Sup’Air reserve (checked for mice and fortunately clear) and helmet and the whole lot is shoved into my glider bag. Should be about 21kg though I’ve noticed the new glider is a bit heavier than the old one and so is the new Gin Race harness so perhaps more like 23kg and bang on the limit.

Now for the tricky bit. You’ve probably noticed I am travelling with no clothes or anything other than flying kit so far. In fact all my stuff for a two week stay travels either on my body (I wear it) or in my hand luggage.  This makes my hand luggage about 18kg and not acceptable. The way round this is to wear clothing with many, many pockets and to put radios, batteries, varios, cameras, chargers and all other paraphernalia in them. This gives a clunky jacket weighing about 8kg to tie around my waist. Into my trouser pockets go wallets, phones, paperwork, toiletries and anything else mildly heavy. Round my waist go any fleeces or warm clothes and I tie my flip-flops to my belt and wear my flying boots. This leaves my hand luggage with a laptop, 5 t-shirts, some underwear and some odds and ends in it. It also leaves it very light.

At check in the bulky paragliding bag will be in the weight range as will my hand luggage. I will offer to take the bag to ‘Outsize Luggage’ to be helpful to the check-in staff and on the way will craftily nip out of the terminal and find a quiet spot. There I can stuff all the heavy stuff I’ve been carrying back into my glider bag so I’m not really uncomfortable on the flight and re-pack my hand luggage with all the crap from my pockets. At ‘Outsize Baggage’ they don’t weigh the glider bag so it should all go on and as my hand luggage will have the correct sticker on it I should sail onto the plane without trouble.

Well, that’s how I’m hoping it will all work anyway. If I turn up in Mexico several hundred dollars poorer and swearing about excess baggage charges you’ll know I got rumbled.

Mark H

Disappointingly I have to report that, apart from the fact that it seems to have lines made out of something considerably thinner than a pair of Paris Hilton’s g-strings, it looks exactly like the old one.

Miffed at this discovery I folded it all up again only to find that I’d put the whole left hand side exactly above the piece of ground where we have our barbeques. The glider is white, of course, and the muck from the BBQ is a mixture of yellow burger fat mixed with powdered charcoal. It was also now all over the leading edge of the wing. Lovely.

Three hours, two sponges, a bottle of hand cleaning soap and more bad language than a meeting of the Profanity Club later and I’d managed to make the resulting mess merely ‘awful’ rather than ‘disastrous’. Of course the gloop had soaked in nicely and there was no removing it.

I’ve not worked out how to tell Dav at Ozone that the most advanced and high performance glider he’s ever made of which only one precious example exists in the whole world now looks like an oily rag and smells like a cheap cheeseburger. At least it’s only on one side, I suppose. And how am I going to get my competition numbers to stick to what now looks like high-tech grease-proof paper? Bollocks…

So, if you see any photos taken at the World’s and there’s a glider flying that looks a bit like an inflatable Dalmatian Dog don’t worry – It’s me. Perhaps I’ll pin a tail onto the back of my harness and paint a large black nose and some floppy ears on my crash helmet to complete the illusion. I can woof at people in thermals and pee against trees at take off. And there will almost certainly be a way of baiting the po-faced Swiss and French teams with my outfit as well. The idea’s growing on me…

Dalmatian Dog Boy. The new British Team Mascot…

Mark H