You just never know!

[MadDog]

Saturday was a day for re- learning lessons….
Just as the smoke from the big chimneys at Hexham has no revelence to flying…so the conditions at the Hartside Café are only half the tale..

Just what were we doing, sitting in The Hartside café on a day like today?...only two days before the wind speed at Great Dunn fell had been ninety four miles an hour…..
Heigh Ho…
And yesterday a mere one hundred miles an hour….
A flimsy backdraught…a zephyr…Ideal for ground handling for an ace ground handler like myself….but for other mere mortals….well….well that can only be left to the imagination….
And we just sat there, gazing through the windows as the sleet and snow blew on past like it was on a horizontal Come Dancing show……
Looks like the site wizard had let us down this time….All that computerised Chrystal ball gazing had come to nought…looks like the leader has lost his way…..
I glanced at Brian….Goody Goody shone in his eyes….Get back to Julie soon now….Not too many points lost, perhaps the promise was still on……
I reached for the bucket of cold water and threw it over him….
Ron Don mumbled something about a regimental re-union at the Tradewind….which meant that he wanted to go home and watch the Grand Prix on the telly.
Did all this mean that Cinderella couldn’t go to the ball after all?
Gary’s hot chocolate cup smashed down on the table….and thirty-five hairy bikers trembled in their leather suits…..
Onward!......(and with a bit of luck ..Upward)
So there you go then….Decision taken…and off we went…minus the deserter….down the hill to Melmerby…with the skies getting brighter by the minute, and the entire world transforming almost back to summer…Why-ya-bugger….Who would have thought it?......
And the rest is history….two and a half hours later, Gary and Brian were still flying…and could have still been flying as the sun went down…
So what’s the lesson then?
You will never know if the hill is flyable if you don’t go there…and every chance that you have to fly in the winter, you should grab with open arms….well that’s the way that I see it.
So three happy men made their way home under a cloud less balmy evening sky getting darker with the distance, but brighter as a brilliant, perfectly formed half moon followed us all the way home….Perfect….and as I pulled up at the House… I could see Lady Devonshire stirring the Koi Lee noodles in the pan….
I’d forgotten that it was the butler’s night off!

Ron Don and his shadow, contemplating the bush where he was to meet his nemesis

[Fingers]

The eternal self dispute of optimisum and pesimisum, one minuet your up, the next your down. This is a great miss for me, bar the banter from a bunch of wonderful loverly loonatics.

[gary stenhouse]

its funny how the world can change with one simple flight, even a stolen moment of ridge soaring in the rain at moneylaws was still fantastic just being in the air. great right up john and keep on taken those happy pills as they made all the differance on saturday.

cheers gary

[brian day]

And a public appology from me as I doubted the weather god.
But I should have gone surfing on Sunday!
Who would believe that with the forecast Sunday was always going to be the better day, but turned out to be a day of banter in the Happy Bus.
Onward and upward, never turn back, the future always holds suprises, what's behind you is always predictable.