Sunday 29.11.2015 – Last practice day
Hmm…it wasn’t easy night for me. Got up at 3 o’clock because of some minor stomach problems. I know exactly why that happened – no, it wasn’t yesterday’s pizza. It’s always the same when I am travelling in hot conditions. I keep testing how much water I have to drink, and usually I test it by not drinking enough, of course problems will occur from that. My mother wouldn’t like these news, since she reminded me that I should remember to drink even I wasn’t thirsty. Usually she tells me to wear woolen socks, but not this time :-)
Flying day
Fortunately my problems were easy to fix, and that was drinking water. I talked with Lisa (safety officer) about Hydralyte. I realized that we drank that at Uvalde as well, that was year 2012. We recommended to our field runners/marshalls Wille and Wellu to drink that or something similar, since they are running a lot, so water isn’t usually enough to replace all the salts which you lose when you are sweating. Same thing goes for every one of you here.
Safety committee was announced today, that means that one pilot is chosen from each class, usually steward belongs to the committee as well. Pilots are: Boyd (USA) from Club class and Martin (CZE) from Standard class.
While I was editing and publishing my stories and wondering about the secrets of our competition website, Benjamin (FRA team captain) came to sit with me and it sounded like he was swearing, but as it was French it didn’t sound that bad, it was more like “tobedomedoomeedooo”. I asked him what was wrong, he told me that he was swearing because he would like to go far away (in the forest) and yell. I tried to teach him some strong Finnish swear words so he could relieve his agony on strong RRR’s and PPPRRRSSS’, but he was more concentrated on the documents. I’m not sure if it’s ok to tell why he was filling out the forms, so I will leave it out.
Towings started at 12:30 from RWY 22, sky was blue with some high cloud. Temperature was +24 C already in the morning, it felt like it would be a hot day. It was a warm day in the end, temperature was more than 30 degrees, but like I said before, it doesn’t feel that bad at all.
In the afternoon I went catch some photos of the landings. On my way there I saw that one of the German team glider was towed by a car but they had stopped. I didn’t actually notice the reason until I came back, at that point the glider was still at the same place but there was a trailer in front of it. I tried to look for the damages, it wasn’t that easy to spot: they had a flat tire.
The menu at the airfield was tonight “Tasmanian salmon” but as I felt like walking or being a little bit active before the dinner, I managed to hook up with the Swiss team and got a ride from them to the hotel. My original plan was to take my things to the hotel, then walk back to the airfield and have dinner there, since walking to the town from the airfield with my full back bag, camera, computer didn’t sound like a great idea.
Swiss team
Swiss team is always very helpful, and they are easy to approach as well. I don’t mean that other teams wouldn’t be like that. It just somehow happens that we are at the same place at the same time with them, nothing else. Did you know that Roger’s (Frei) brother Reto came to Helsinki because of his work and we had dinner with him. It was great! I’ve only seen on facebook “JWGC people” meeting each other around the world, but that doesn’t usually happen to me.
Swiss team told that they were supposed to have dinner with their ambassador. They were supposed to meet at the local RSL club. It sounded great, unfortunately I forgot to ask why they would meet him, I mean was the meeting just because of the Swiss team is here or something else. I don’t think that the Finnish ambassador would do that – or should we tell them that we’re here. Finnish Independence day is 6th December, perhaps there would be a party? Hmm, I assume we have to make the party happen ourselves instead.
Mario (SUI) told that they flew the B task today, which was the same as Club class A task –hopefully I got this right. He told me almost the same thing as our Finnish team: they didn’t go to the second turn point because there was middle cloud, and they didn’t want to get in trouble.
Dinner time
I had dinner at Imperial with Pete, I was already walking to the airfield, but I got bitten by “lazy bug” on my way and called Pete what he was going to do. He said he was having dinner at the Imperial Beer garden, obviously he was brave enough to try the place after our colorful report. I had Caesar salad with chicken and it was great, fresh and tasty. You should go there. We sat on one of those high tables with Pete and on the background was the longest table of the restaurant. First on that table was sitting the Danish team again. And while they we’re eating, I followed the German team going here and there and how they we’re doing laundry. Or it looked like the laundry had left to their female crew member, whose name I would write here, but I don’t know it, sorry. When Danish team left, German team conquered the table.
Monday isn’t flying day, there won’t be briefing either, so this blog will be pretty quiet tomorrow. Opening ceremony will take place at the parks in Narromine, we are supposed to be there at 18.00. There will be some snacks, band, dj’s, VIP’s etc. Official program will last about an hour or so, if I understood it right. I will be there posting things to facebook, Sean (Young) will take the official photos. I might take my camera anyway there.
But before that, I am looking forward for tomorrow morning, I hope I am able to sleep later than six in the morning. I’ve always woke up at that time because sun is shining on my face. I have curtains, but those are quite thin. I have three beds, one double bed and one normal bed. I took one sheet from the normal bed, since I am not using that. I hung that on the curtain pole, let’s see does that help.
Few cultural differences: There is extra sheet in the bed, because here they have a sheet covering the mattress, other sheet under the duvet and duvet with normal duvet cover. So to me, there’s extra sheet in the bed. That’s handy if weather is too hot to sleep under duvet.
And for me and the Finnish readers, polo shirt is the same which our Gliding team uses nowadays (= pikeepaita).