We finally made it to Florida

If you know me, you know that hang gliding is truly a passion for me; and I am blessed to have a wife and family that support me and my flying. As long as I can remember, I have dreamed of flying. Almost 20 years ago I learned to fly paragliders at Point of the Mountain in Utah, and my life has never been the same since. While I have enough amazing memories from my paragliding days to fill another blog, I always wanted to fly hang gliders. Ever since I was a kid in the 70s (the crazy days of hang gliding) I have been drawn to this pure and simple form of flight. Anyways, I will spare you all of my childhood dreams of flying. Fast forward to last spring when I finally decided that I couldn't put my hang gliding dreams on hold any longer. Since that time I have received my H2 rating from Steve Wendt at Blue Sky http://www.blueskyhg.com/ and have logged well over a 100 flights at 5 different sights across the country. Last Thursday I checked off a big milestone in getting my H3 Intermediate rating.

We left Northern Virginia at 9:30pm on Thursday night and rolled into The Florida Ridge flight park in south central Florida at around 2:00pm on Friday. According to the GPS driving time from Vienna was estimated at 17 1/2 hours, so we made pretty good time. True to form, Erica and I were busy with work right up until we started packing, so once again we hit the road with no real game plan....... No big deal, it just adds to the adventure. After some quick introductions at the flight park and a tour of the facilities, it was time to figure out some accommodations. If you have ever been to The Florida Ridge, you know that it is basically in the middle of nowhere. Across the street from the flight park there is a little golf resort with a marina called The Glades, we figured we would start by checking there, as we had heard that they have a few cabins that they rent. Lucky for us, they had one available and 60 bucks a night seemed like a steal after confirming that the cabin would accommodate our family of five. As we drove through the resort and pulled up to the cabin, Erica (my wife) and I just started laughing. Our 10' x 20' cabin was just what we needed for a little quality family time. The panoramic picture below is the entire cabin. Erica and I are laying on the queen bed and the kids are sitting on the couch that folds into a queen bed.

Whether it is a short glide or an extended soaring flight, I truly love being in the air. One of my ambitions with hang gliding has been to fly cross country (XC) and participate in some race to goal competitions; which brings me here to The Florida Ridge to participate in The Team Challenge. This is a seven day event designed to give fledgling pilots with XC ambitions like myself, the opportunity to participate in a less formal competition, while being mentored by world class pilots. There is so much to learn here that it is truly a little intimidating to think that I will log my first XC attempt tomorrow.

For those of you that aren't hang glider pilots, an XC flight is a flight where your intent is to fly an extended distance from the location of your launch and either navigate and land at a specified goal (task), or to fly a designated course (task) that might return to the location that you launched from after passing through one or more designated way points. Without going into a lot of detail about the process, I would describe it as an aerial chess match where your intent is to complete your task and make it to goal as fast as you can. In the course of flying a task here in Florida, we will be flying over ranches, orchards, swamps, houses, golf courses, etc. If you should find that you have lost your lift and are not going to make goal, it is up to you to find a safe place to land and communicate your location for a retrieval........... 

I have started this blog to share my experiences here in Florida with anyone out there that may be interested in following my progress and those that may be interested in participating in an XC event like this. I will start off by saying that I am not a blogger and I don't intend to put a lot into my writing here. My intent is to give a daily account of my experiences and hopefully give you a feel for what an adventure this is going to be for me.