Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Retrieving my car after flying at Ellenville. I could easily have gotten a ride up, but I wanted to get my exercise for the day. Kind of screwed up the route, I think there's a better way to do this that doesn't involve quite so much steep climbing over rocks and throught laurel, but whatever.

Up to the Talcott launch, pulling my glider and harness on the cart. This was a breeze, particularly since Clint was pushing the other end of it. Hayden was available as well, but there was nothing left for him to carry.

Up to the Heublein Tower and back, In The Dim. Dragging the glider up to launch didn't seem like enough exercise to really count, so I went for a run after I flew. Dim enough that I used my keychain light for about the last five minutes.

Another trip up to NH and back on the Incubus, pretty solid effort the whole way. About four miles in I realized that I forgot my toolkit back at the house, but fortunately I didn't get a flat or anything.

A lap around Lake Shirley, In The (very) Dim. Extremely dim by the time I got back to the car, in fact, but not so bad when I started. I carried a flashlight that I turned on whenever a car came by, and after a while I noticed that it was becoming intermittent. I was figuring that either the batteries were getting low or the contacts were getting cruddy, but after a while I realized that what was actually happening was that it has several modes that it was cycling through as I was turning it off and on, and one of them is a SOS Morse code pattern. Temperature in the mid 60s F, and something between drizzle and fog, after a rainyish day, so everything was wet, and that's why I went out on the roads. Which I generally don't enjoy very much.

I'm soooo slow...

WBNE, 4.4 km. I whipped up a course through my favorite part of the map. Quite excellent. Three places where things didn't go perfectly: #1, where I started down one route choice, but things didn't look good in terms of the vegetation, so I turned around and went a different way. If I had looked at the map more closely, or gone down the trail a bit further, I would have realized that it wasn't so bad after all, but whatever. Kind of ferny for the first bit, and I hadn't paid attention when I was drawing up the course, so there were four stream crossings, but the river is pretty shallow right now. Second issue was on #2, where everything actually went fine, but about 80% of the way there I had to stop and make sure that what I was looking at matched what was on the map. When I was convinced that it was, I kept going. And then on #11, after climbing through a complex area, it got more bland near the control, and the control was on the other side of a patch of green that I had to work my way around. And the cliff was in a sneaky spot. Probably a good place for a control. I managed to finish up before it got hard to read the map.

Overnight temperature got down to 50 F.

C • 47F here when I got up. Br... 1

According to the website, Town Hall is open 8 AM to 4 PM. When you get there, the sign on the door says 10 AM to 2 PM.

Second try, and I didn't even need my mask, because the ballot deposit box was out on the sidewalk.

I finally managed to get my head around rear dismounting, at least partially -- I managed it for two of the four. Starting took a lot of tries today, though. I also noticed that I can manage to do wider left-hand turns by leaning, but the tighter right-hand turns are still skootching.

South Monoosnoc Hill, from Elm St. Same temperature as yesterday (70 F), but the dewpoint was about 25 degrees lower, so that was great. This area would have a lot of potential if there were anywhere to park.

Watch took forever to get lock. Time and distance corrected.

Little bit: started putting the smaller pieces of detritus into trash bags. Filled three so far, and what had looked like a herculean task maybe won't be so bad. I did find the nail puller that I had lost early in the demolition.