It's about 100miles away so it took me a bit more then an hour to get there. Not much of a view or much to see on the way there really until I got up there. Anyways my reason for driving up there was to get some honeycomb material to use to build a snowboard (see post below) and it was cheaper to drive up there and get it rather than shipping it.. cause it wassss 4'x8'. So I get up there and have them cut it down a bit since it wont even fit in my car. The wind was blowing and the honeycomb will crack if you bend it so I had to keep walking back behind my car with it to get away from the wind as a gust would come :\. I finally get it in my car and I had asked the guy that sold my the honeycomb how much the glider rides cost since I saw a few signs as I got to the airport, and he told me which building to goto to see about it.
So I head up to what looks like a two story house with some antennas which seemed a little strange to me. Inside a find a paper about the rides/flights that they offer which range from $90 - $140. Since I figure I'll only be doing this once I splurge and pick the $140 which is labeled as - the best. I pay for it and the lady tells me the pilot should be along in 10 minutes so I grab an orange juice since I hadn't eaten and wander around looking at the posters. My pilot Paul shows up and we head off and un-tie the plane and push it off onto the runway. I jump in the cockpit and Paul tells me about the controls and indicators and what not to touch.
Which is a two levers on each side of me.. one opens the canopy and one jettisons the canopy so ya didn't want to touch either one of those. So Paul goes through and checks the whole plane and the controls and the tow plane pilot hooks up the tow line and Paul jumps in. He tells me if I have the feeling to grab onto anything grab onto my harness instead of something horrible like one of the fun levers. So the tow plane starts going and jerks us a bit and soon enough were off the ground and going in circles to reach 9000' (and we were at 4000'). We reach altitude and Paul tells me to pull the release handle for the line and I'm busy taking pictures so it takes me a minute and he was wondering why there was such a long pause. We turn hard the right and the tow plane to the left to get us away from each other and off we go gliding around. Paul flies for just a little while before he lets me fly it just straight and level and then he demonstrates a turn. Which wasn't gradual at all and smooshed me into my seat a bit but was damn fun :D. So we do a few turns together and I get to do one on my own and Paul genuinely sounds surprised that I pulled it off nicely which made me feel good :D.
We cruise around a little bit longer doing about 60mph and then start getting ready to land so I get off the controls completely and we gather up some speed. We're doing about 90mph or so now and circling around the airport getting lower and lower and now he's got us lined up for the landing. I'm having a great time but thinking shouldn't I be at least a little bit scared here? We glide above the tiny 10' or so wide runway before the wheels touch down and slow down until the plane tilts over to one side and we stop :D. We get out and put the plane back and I thank Paul and head back homeeeee.
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