Victoria Favourites

Victoria, BC, is a beautiful city. Andrew and I stopped by to attend a concert that his sister, Clare, was singing in. She's part of the Victoria Freedom Gospel Choir and the concert was very good!

We spent a couple days wandering and visiting some of our favourite spots.

Colourful houseboats and dramatic skies at Fisherman's Wharf.

Transportation by water taxi.

Spring flowers and walking around the harbour trails.

Watching the harbour activity as we walk. A whale watching boat, a float plane and a water taxi.

Coffee and a delicious snack at Fol Epi Organic Bakery at Dockside Green.

Lunch at Rebar . . . (great vegetarian options!)

. . . and testing out a new local cider.

Visiting the locals at Beacon Hill Park

The Lookout hill at Beacon Hill Park (have to remember this photo for Canada Day!)

Walking along the ocean paths below Dallas Road.

These cliffs at Dallas Road are soarable (i.e. paragliding) in the right conditions but with a wooden fence at the top of the cliff, a walkway and so many pedestrians, it seems a bit sketchy! 

Driving out to Sea Cider and visiting some other nearby wineries. 

Andrew got some excellent photos during our wanderings, especially of all the spring flowers and the birds bathing.  

Flying Woodside

After two long days of driving, our first stop was FlyBC Paragliding near Chilliwack (or, as Ms. Google pronounces it, "Chili Whack"). 

Within minutes of arriving, we jumped in a truck with one of the locals and headed up to Mt. Woodside launch. It was cloudy so we weren't expecting much but it was surprisingly thermic and Andrew and I both had great flights. It was the first time Andrew flew his new wing (an Ozone Geo 5) so he was pretty happy for an hour and a half in the air. 

It was still cloudy the next day and no thermals but we managed to get in three sled rides (basically just going from launch straight to landing) of about 10 minutes each. It was very busy as Jim had both students and an instructors' course going on. Nothing like being stuffed in a van with 13 guys and 14 wings to remind me that I'm in yet another male dominated sport! 

Despite the clouds and the haze in the distance, the scenery in the Fraser Valley is always gorgeous! 

FlyBC HQ

The bulls eye LZ is right and lower third of the photo.

Andrew and his new wing!

The typical boot and view shot!

Getting closer to the LZ.

They're not looking at me! I happened to be standing by the wind sock and they're watching it, waiting for a good cycle of wind. Very light so most people were doing forward launches.

Run, run, run!

Andrew setting up for landing.

Vegas Fun

Climbing

I love climbing at Red Rocks! But gale force winds the first couple days that made us stop and just hang on until the gusts went by were making me question my judgement. Day three was the charm!  While it was still a little cool in the morning, we had a fantastic afternoon of climbing in the warm sunshine.

Looking down the rappel line.

Typical bum shot when the belayer is trying to take photos of the climber.

Springs Preserve

It's hard to believe this place is in the middle of Las Vegas, not far from the strip. It's one of our favourite places to go, either in the morning before we head to out to climb or on a rest day. We always get a membership both to support their initiatives and so that we can get early admission before the general public arrives. We were the only ones there on this morning. So quiet and relaxing. 

Andrew enjoys the photography opportunities. 

The cactus garden.

The butterfly garden was out of season but I liked this colourful entrance wall.

Flying

This is the first time we've been back to Vegas area since taking up paragliding. So Jean Ridge was a new spot for us. The conditions weren't spectacular (a few difficult-to-stay-in thermals but no steady wind required for soaring) but we did get several short flights of 4 - 18 minutes. The ridge is about a mile long so if conditions were "on" it would be awesome!!

It's a 20 minute hike from the bottom of the ridge and, thankfully, the road in was doable in our Prius. There's also a road to the top but a 4x4 is definitely needed for that. Sort of humorous that one of the dirt bikers we encountered was more impressed by the fact we got there in the Prius than he was by the fact we were flying off the ridge.

In addition to the dirt bikers, there are a ton of ATV's and people out shooting guns. We learned that it's one of the few areas near Vegas where there's enough room for people to do long-range (i.e. a mile +) practice. We'd wondered why there were rocks near the road in with paint on them but they were markers for the shooters. One morning we arrived just a couple minutes ahead of a couple shooters and they weren't too impressed that they had to find another location.

We didn't have any success contacting the local paragliding club but luckily this is a site that doesn't require membership, etc. It was definitely fun to be able to come here on our own and not worry about needing a retrieve vehicle. We'll no doubt be back!

View from Jean Ridge mid-launch.

Andrew at the top of Jean Ridge, waiting for a good wind cycle before launching.

Me, just after launch. Screenshot of video taken by Andrew. 

Andrew coming in for landing.

Patrick, a pilot from Utah (left) and Andrew (right).

Me, just after launching. Photo from video taken by Patrick.

Santa Barbara

Even though we knew there was little chance of flying at Santa Barbara due to the torrential rainfall, we really like the area and the people we've met so decided to stop in for the long weekend.

In addition to visiting some of our paragliding friends, we went to some of our favourite places and some new places that will be added to our favourites!

The Santa Barbara Roasting Company is a great local coffee spot and always filled with local, colourful characters. The staff (and presumably owners/managers) appear to be friendly to the homeless -- of which there is a large population here. It's great to see. (The friendliness, not the homelessness.)

But what first caught our attention when we visited here for the first time many years ago, is their logo. What's more funky and cool than a coffee bean in board shorts, sipping a coffee and soaking up the sun while sitting in a beach chair?  :-)

Favourite eating places we made return trips to are The Lark and Mesa Verde.

Those who follow Andrew's or my blog know that we never pass up an opportunity to go to a zoo or aquarium. Santa Barbara has one of the best small zoos and getting a membership not only supports the zoo and the animals but also means that you can get in an hour earlier than the general public. We wandered in peace and quiet and spoke to a couple of the zoo keepers while seeing only one other member. It was great!! I took a bit of video and Andrew of course took lots of photos. (Will put link to his post when done.)

We had never been to the Botanic Garden (surprisingly!) and it is a very nice one! Andrew got some great photos. Only part of the Garden was open due to the rainstorm the day before. One of the staff members stated the stream running through the property had not had that much water in over seven years! The storm brought a lot of debris and wiped out part of a bridge railing.

A battered fence and trying to clear some of the storm debris.

More water than this stream has seen in a long, long time!

Beautiful old tree.

The top of this cactus looks like a person with arms outspread and one leg in the air. 

We searched Google for "things to do on a rainy day in Santa Barbara" and the #1 thing was to tour the courthouse. Really??? But we stopped by and the architecture is fabulous! And the view from the top of the tower was spectacular.

We happened to stop by a soaring site we've flown before called Bates near Carpenteria and, while there were gliders in the air when we arrived, it wasn't really "on." A few of the experienced locals were staying up for a bit and able to come back and top land but most people were essentially taking sled rides to the beach and walking back up or had someone to drive around to the beach parking lot to pick them up. Andrew and I got our wings out but, by the time we did, it was almost too light to even kite, let along get a decent flight. Plus, the rain quickly coming in from the north discouraged us.

Pilots getting some height when we first arrived . . . 

Rain in the distance soon after.

 Can't wait to get back here when the weather is better!

Flying at Marshall

We only had a couple days in the San Bernardino area as potential flying days. We knew some rainy weather was headed this way.

As we drove around this suburb of Los Angeles and battled other cars for lane space on the massive freeways and dodged from one lane to the other trying to make sure we were in the right one for various turnoffs, I wondered why on earth paragliding makes me nervous at times. There's way less white knuckling involved than on these roads!

Anyway, I digress . . .

We'd emailed a couple local pilots/instructors trying to get some info on the flying and got a response from one who advised that conditions should be fine around 2 p.m. and to meet at the landing zone at that time. We were there well ahead of time. A couple other visiting pilots were there and gave us some information on their previous experience here.

Through binoculars we could see the windsock at the main launch. It was blowing in exactly the wrong direction but the forecast was for the wind to turn around. The other two people soon left. We waited a couple more hours, the wind was still completely the wrong direction and no one else was around. We eventually left too . . . only to find out that the wind changed direction (180 degrees -- are you kidding me!?!?!) and several pilots flew and had great flights. Grrrr . . . frustrating to say the least!

One very cool thing though . . . we watched a coyote skirt the edge of the landing zone. Of course, we carefully tried to get closer for some photos but he calmly wandered off until we couldn't see him any more.

The next day, despite conditions not looking overly positive at first, we both had great flights! There was absolutely no wind in the LZ and a student pilot who had come to practice his kiting generously offered to drive us up to the launch site. 

I found the air right off launch to be a bit bumpier than I'm comfortable with but there's lots of altitude here so I headed out further from the terrain and happily cruised around for a while before landing. 

Andrew had his longest flight yet and managed a couple low saves for a great flight! 

I somehow messed up starting my GoPro and got no video of this flight! 

The rain storm that came in was one of the worst in a very long time and 5 people were killed. We were fortunate to get ahead of it that afternoon/evening by driving to Ventura. The following day, the drive to Santa Barbara was very slow due to continued heavy rain and traffic backed up as a result of a tree fallen down over highway 101. Now crews are busy with cleanup.