Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Winter doldrums

The bad news is I haven't flown for about 2 months.  The good news is that maybe I'll fly in the new year.

Harris Hill hosts a traditional New Year's day flying session to welcome the year and let us keep current (3 landings/takeoffs in 90 days).  I'm hoping the weather won't be nasty so I can sneak in a couple of flights.

I missed the Snowbird, the longest running contest in the country.  Every Thanksgiving, the club hosts the Snowbird, a fun-fly/contest day followed by a banquet.  I'm always out of town with family for the holiday, so I miss it each year.

The weather has been, true to form, generally miserable here in the Souther Tier of New York with leaden gray overcast days and cold nights.  We had a good 8" of snow the other day and even a short warming trend to 50 today didn't get the ground to show through.

I've kept active in the club as I was elected to the board of directors this fall and have taken on the task of evaluating the facilities and trying to help prioritize what we want to do and when.  I spent Saturday trudging through ankle and knee deep snow drifts up at Harris Hill and looking at the facilities.  The private gliders owned by our club members looked like they were hibernating inside their trailers, waiting for warmer weather to return.

The winter around here comes quickly, followed by Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But after that, it's a long slow climb to April before you can fly regularly again.

I guess I'll try to catch up on my backlog of Soaring magazines.