X-PYR DAY 2 /EN/

At 5 in the morning the alarm clock rings and Kubko like a sleepy ghost boils some water so he can pour it on some dried food, while I’m drinking Redbull. The wind is so bloody strong that it’s almost breaking the trees. Damn weather forecast, it wasn’t supposed to be like this!

It’s dark as the inside of a horse and besides the howling wind you can’t hear anything. Are the beasts in Spain lazy, too? Or? I’m struggling through already mentioned combination of ferns and prickles, and as the time passes I’m pretty sure that today I won’t fly… fly like normal people do. Unless I would really compete, you know, like really, which means blood, sweat and tears. Maybe a kilometre ahead of me I see Garin (a French guy) fighting with the ferns as well, but according to the livetracking he jacked in and continues along the contour line. No wonder as my tiny body is almost taken away by the wind. Well, it’s useless… So empty handed I follow in Garin’s footsteps. As the road is descending, at the end of the ridge, the wind becomes a little more, but really just a little more bearable, which means 10-12 m/s… well that could be somehow managed. I see Garin stamping on the asphalt below me… well, I’ll wipe his eyes!

The deadly combination of ferns and prickles makes it really difficult to take off, but I’ve found a small spot, where it could be possible. I unpack my staff; I damn check everything, especially the speed and let’s hope. For what? This is not the first time, and it’s highly probable that not even the last time, when I wish just for one thing while taking off… that I guessed it correctly, which actually mans that I can handle that. TRACK

I pull the A lines, jump something like 20 m backwards until Avax is above my head and it pulls me upwards and full speed. It takes ma upwards, but I stay on the same spot. But Avax doesn’t let me down, I just turn slightly, crabbing a bit and there we go. Wind helped me a bit and later it got a bit weaker in the lee that the hills created in front of me so I managed to fly few kilometres. After the landing near the road, I feel quite shaky, not for the first time and not for the last time. But the good thing is I don’t have to walk! That is something also Maurer told me at the Bornes. Leapfrogs will spare you for the critical situations when you really need to run and move up a gear. Of course I’m not as good the Champion… but only repetition and constant improvement makes the master.

Until the guys from the support vehicle catch up with me, I’m already ascending another hill… even though the wind is so strong again that it’s beating the tress as if they were made of paper. Well, hopefully it will weaken, I think. Once again, I’m running out of water, I’m drying out from the scorching sun and a mountain is towering ahead of me. At last I find a watering place and another “Drydissey” (odyssey of thirsty) is over. Even the wind is getting a bit weaker and it reaches reasonable values so that it allows me to fly forward. In a sec I’m ready and let’s go, or better let’s fly. I soared few kilometres and landed in the well-known combination (prickles, prickles and once more prickles and two withered ferns just to confuse me) so I struggle with untangling the lines for at least 15 minutes in a 35° slope and air temperature of the same value. I need to get out of the bushes as quickly as possible, today in regular trousers and thus no more scratches today!

TRACK

Support feeds me underneath a beautiful plane tree with a view of nice green hills around and of course of the ubiquitous end products of the cow or horse metabolism as the final touches of the atmosphere, however the perception is a bit stronger that I would wish…

After a failed attempt to fly down the hill I continue into the saddle in the direction of the TP2 two-thousand meter high mountain Orhi. It blows a bit in the saddle, I try to climb as high as possible, I even pass a vulture party – sitting on a rock and croaking at one another. But as I unpack my Avax, they take wing and show me a superb thermal, a climb a bit, then once again but it doesn’t allow me to fly forward with headwind, but it spared my legs few km of asphalt and speeded up. In the heat I shuffle towards the next take off since the mountains here are pretty high but the valleys are pretty shallow as well, like screenplays of some of our soap operas or sitcoms. There’s no good place for take off. I have to pass few more kilometres until I find a suitable spot. And then, finally, let’s fly. Poof, and I’m in heaven… climbing pretty high and I continue and see beautiful views of TP2.

Breath-taking views, really, mountains like hell far ahead of me also rocks… and me… flying above all of this. TRACK

But I have to land since the speed is tangled in the main harness and the other end isn’t attached very well. Well, never mind, I land in front of some tourists, everything is done in 10 seconds and let’s fly again. I climb maybe 3000 m and fly farther. I landed maybe at 6 or something like that. It wasn’t that good, I could have done it differently, but now it doesn’t matter. Important is that I was able to flee, with two or three more pilots, and leave the main “peloton” behind as they’re kept on the ground far before the TP2. We sleep in magical surrounding.

The first three guys (Maurer, Durogati and Mayer) are ahead of us pretty much. Now, looking backwards, I would rather run like the wind and followed them to reach my last today’s take off spot and not spare my feet. Well, in our country we have a saying “after a battle everyone is a general”… but I will remember that!

Some statistics: walked 25 km, climbed 2570 m of elevation (walking), flown 43 km