Diving into the Black Hole

Today's Australian Observation:

Trolley vs the Shopping Cart

I get a lot of enjoyment from the small language differences between the USA and Australia. In Australia, the shopping cart is called a "trolley".

All the wheels on a trolley turn independently, which comes in handy when you are in a hurry - you can push a trolley down the isle with one hand while deftly passing shoppers and their stalled trollies. Meanwhile, you can use the other hand to load up on jars of vegemite, cans of dog food, or baked beans.

You have to be a weight lifter to keep an American shopping cart going in a straight line - this is because at least one wheel on every shopping cart in the US is frozen up. Sometimes it is easier to drag the shopping cart down the isle rather than push it.

Trollies are silent as they roll down the isles of the market. If you can get a US shopping cart to roll, it makes a really loud metalic clanking noise which pulses in time with the flat spots on the wheels.

Finally, the Australian trolley is 3/4 the size of the American shopping cart - Americans eat more I guess.

Lets get back to Paragliding:

To my mates back home, every flight report so far has been picture perfect - straight to base right off launch, 1000+ up over every spine, etc. But Aussie pilots reading my posts are probably yawning because the flying here hasn't even been good yet ...

So in my quest to be "fair and balanced", I feel obligated to tell the truth, good or bad, and the truth is that I SUNK OUT YESTERDAY. But not just an ordinary sink out, this was a spectacular gravity enhanced dive-bomb straight down to the LZ. Here are some theories about what happened:

First, it was too windy. Just as we rounded the last corner while driving to launch, a vehicle loaded with hang gliders was driving Down, so we stopped and chatted with them and they said it was too windy/gusty for them. See, now I have established that it really was too windy for paragliders after all.

Second, Brian Webb took the last thermal of the day straight to base just 5 minutes before I launched.

Third, the wind was playing tricks on my glider. While I was kicking tree tops in the bowl, my glider would go from fully inflated to about 5 psi in half a second, dangling floppily out in front of me. Then a micro second later, it was very inflated, but quite a bit behind me... I also noticed the glider refused to go forward, but instead wanted to do a side-slipping "yo yo" type manuever.

I managed to lurch my way out of the bowl and on to what is known as the "Emily" spine. Way below launch by now, and wondering if I was going to make the LZ, suddenly my glider felt like it was made out of steel and the LZ was a large super-magnet. The vario was making a moaning, barfing sound as my steel glider was being sucked straight down into some black hole....

Meanwhile, Brian was just a white speck in the sky on his comp glider, and already a good way around a nice triangle task he was flying... maybe my problem is that I need a wing like this one?