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[Amigo] > [Sharon's flight index]
Sharon Sweeney First flight. I hadn’t been to Pine Mountain in a while. There were two dead pine tree branches sitting on launch, claiming the land. Tom moved them as I dressed in warm winter clothes, expecting serious cold. We had to gear up appropriately in sequence or we would have over heated before we launched. Tom was rather overjoyed that his winter wear had been near the car air conditioner and they were cool. The sky kept getting more over cast from the high clouds. We decided to launch rather than wait for any blue hole. Tom Pipkin arrived and casually sat down on launch. He elected to wait. He thought we would flush. We launched. We flushed. I imagined Tom P. up on launch thinking – oh yea, told you guys. SD knew right away it was a no go. He didn’t go left, didn’t try the pines to the right, just headed out with the drift. We went to half moon. I thought we were going to land on this beautiful grass. SD informed me it wasn’t grass and opted for the road. Funny how things look from the air when actually the landing is all brush and stickers. Eddie kindly drove down to get us. It was sunny and hot. We had to get out of the winter duds or die. We ended up staying a while and got Tom P. after he flew out for the second launch. Tom P. had a bit more success than we did but we all ended up in the ride up the hill. Second flight- Terry Taggart launched after we arrived at launch. We also launched and headed East with the wind at our back toward Haddock. We didn’t find anything exciting so we headed back upwind and in the shade. Tom P. and Terry were trying to get some woman to change her frequency on the radio. They could hear someone and thought it was me on the radio. Tom P. finally spotted us coming back his way. He spotted us a terrific thermal out front. He and the thermal drifted back toward us and away we went. I thought it was a low shut down sky and I was glad we could continue. We climbed to 9500 and went over the back. We watched Tom P. head out for his car. I believe he landed at the Sand Pile. We proceeded over the back and caught a thermal near the Ranch. We were trying to hear Eddie transmit Terry’s position as he was in front of us. I never heard Terry on the radio all day. Eddie transmitted all day. By this time we flew over to the Badlands. Eddie was approaching us by car and was very low on gas. I didn’t like being low near the jagged rocks and uneven terrain. We were going to have to land at Dry Canyon. Tom decided to try to catch something in the Badlands. The whole area looks dry, hot, bleached by the sun and totally inhospitable. We were heading toward a jagged rock and suddenly it felt like we were falling out of the sky. From my perspective I felt like I got jerked to the right and weightless going down. I couldn’t sense anything like an inflated wing overhead. I was watching the ground coming up, not the wing. We fell long enough for me to “comment” on the situation. Then it all happened again only toward the left. When we stopped going down, I was looking toward Dry Canyon as a refuge. However, Tom informed me that the only way to go was up. Our position was not OK. We were low, and in the Badlands. We needed altitude to be able to get to a good landing spot. I didn’t want to go up because the thermal was so rough but I hung on and quit shaking and complaining. Even I know that altitude is your friend. Eddie said he would have like to have had that visual back on video. I was happy not to have repeated it. No instant replays for me. We got higher and kept on going across the Badlands. After arriving in Lockwood Valley, we reached another time where we felt we were going to land. Tom squeaked out another save by going downwind to find a landing spot. It was a good strategy because we started going up and ended up at Frasier Mountain climbing high. We reached 13,500 I believe and went on glide to the cement plant. It was intriguing to leave the mountains and head for the flatlands. Tom warned me that we would be low on the deck and it could get a bit shaky. It was such a fun experience to be paragliding outside of the mountains. We angled toward the right to get to the circle wheat fields. I had always thought everyone headed to the Tehachapi Mountains right away. There wasn’t much wind in comparison to the usual and it was from the opposite usual direction. But that was to be the end of our flight. We didn’t catch anything. A very nice young man named Elvis came to greet us and Eddie was also there immediately. Elvis thought he might go paragliding someday. He indicated that it was OK to land on the property that we did. We went over a few miles to pick up Terry Taggart. There are pictures of the reunion. He landed on the outer skirts of Edwards Air Force Base. The MP was very polite and even posed for the photos. Long ride back home but very pleasant in Terry’s air conditioned van.
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