Flying the North Side

I flew the North Side this evening on my Paraglider, and Linda took a bunch of photos. I'm still experimenting on how to upload photos. The first group of photos are in reverse order with the later ones at the top and the earlier ones below the later ones. There are two groups of photos, and each group is in reverse order. Captions for photos are below the pertinent photo(s). It was a good evening on the North Side for me.


Linda was able to get 3 shots of Dude and I close to each other. I talked to Dude afterwards, and I think he was a little tense on a couple of the passes we made. He was able to stay up almost as long as I did, and he also was able to top land. At one point, he was within 50 feet of having enough altitude to bench up. I lacked about 100 feet ever getting enough altitude to feel comfortable enough to move back to bench up. There were quite a few people who did bench up, but they launched about twenty minutes before I did, and the lift was starting to fall off a little by the time I launched. There were also quite a few people who sank out and landed in the water treatment plant LZ.
The "house thermal" in front of the HG launch was really cooking this evening most of the time.
Here is a photo showing my excellent form pulling my wing up getting ready to launch.

The below photos are in reverse order, with last being at the top and the earliest of this group being at the bottom. Yes, I really was that low, and yes, I really did get back up above the ridge, and top land.
The order is reversed on this group of photos. My smile is so much ear to ear here, you can't see much curve on it. This was after I top landed. There were a bunch of people who sank out.
I never did quite get high enough to feel comfortable to move back to bench up, but it was close.
There were times traffic was a little thick.
I was actually getting back up here.
I really did get this low. Linda said my wing never got below the ridge, but I knew there were a couple of times I really got low. When I would hit some good lift, I'd check traffic, and if it was where I could make a couple of turns to pick up a little altitude, I did. It was a good evening for me on the North side.