Wah Hoo! damn fine weekend mate, up Glarghshta way, a little hooning in the trikes on Saturday (overcast, dead calm, not a bump in the sky) and a little more hooning  in various kites aerotowing on Sunday (clear, calm, sunny, few bubbles at midday). Watching JR (who weighs 130 kg) doing consecutive meteoric loops in his new topless was truly impressive - dive over VNE, then yahoo and straight over the top, managing not to stop on top on any of these. It was so calm you could hear him yahooing from 2000' agl. Now that's test flying. Mad Matt, who usually flies an F18, was also getting upside down, and towing up in Tascha's topless. I oscillated to 90 deg on one or two tows, providing much amusement for the others. Half a dozen guys discovered inland aerobatics yesterday. 

   Tasch didn't have a great day - she had to watch me trying to destroy her kite on multiple occasions and this was after I'd casually mentioned the death of a top Yank HG pilot. It was a week ago and I thought she'd heard - turned out he was a good friend of hers. (In the pursuit of drag reduction, he had attached his parachute bridle to his shoulder strap instead of running it up his harness support line to the carabiner. When his topless inverted and broke, he deployed his chute and the bridle line wrapped around his neck.) This is shortly after another friend of hers, Eric Poulet (you recall I mentioned Eric the Chook?) launched off a cliff without his harness being clipped into the glider, now he's Eric the half a chook. The Europeans and Yanks have this bad habit of swanning around launch wearing the harness like a fashion accessory, which is why they often have matching harnesses, sails and flight suits (and cars), and why every year they kill themselves by launching unclipped. In Australia, it's taught that the harness belongs in the glider and nowhere else. 

  Pete had a good time going up in the Buzzard. I took him for a wander around the Gloucester valley and later we had a sunset flight with Kev and Tasch at our wingtip while the sun sank below the Barringtons. He had to keep his arm stumps pointing forward so the sleeves of my XXL ski jacket didn't get in the way of the prop but other than that, no probs. We stopped at Stroud for dinner on the way back. The waitress didn't see us carry Pete into the cafe and with him sitting at the table with the ski jacket on, she didn't realise his limbless state. When I picked him up and carried him back out to the Subie afterwards, she was suitably gobsmacked. We explained that he never ate his greens. 

.... 
                                           Al. 

She said she knew a man who had trouble after he lost his arm and he had them go dig it up and sure enough it was covered with ants. They brushed it off real good, wrapped it in a clean white sheet and put it back--end of problem. I didn't have the heart to tell her my leg was probably cremated. 
JimMc 
From: "Amputee Information Network" <Amp-L@hoffman.mgen.pitt.edu> 

Pete's going back to Prince Henry at Little Bay late October 98 to have his new legs fitted up. He's making reasonable progress with Dragon Dictate.
Russell 17/10/98.

The guilt - the guilt! No updates to this site for nearly 9 months. 

For those of you who may have been wondering, Pete's made good progress, and is in 
variously good spirits. He has new legs, but is not yet driving or flying. He has a new house 
fitted out with some of the stuff he requires. Recently I emailed him that the glider for him was now available, a marvellous thing called a Millenium. Then some poor bugger crashed one and killed himself, which put a damper on everyone's spirits.
Russell, July '99

    Goodsir, I must protest, you mistake me. There is no guilt involved, just the innocent wonder at the consistent malice of Huey in striking down those around me. Billo, CMac, PPP, Anna, Roscoe...the list goes on. The next victim is as surprised as the last when it happens. Indeed my time will come - it is a source of true amazement to me that I am intact and functional (as much as I ever was), just as CMac, if he were of such a mind, could reasonably shake his fist at the sky at such outrageous fortune.

    And that inverted bowl we call the sky,
    whereunder, crawling, cooped, we live and die,
    Lift not your hand to it - for it
    rolls on as impotent as thou or I.

      Make that thou, for the Darwin awards technically go to those who improve the common human genome by removing their own DNA from it before passing it on. Don't know about you, but I take the phone off the hook every Father's Day, just in case.
     Al.

(CMac had just been informed he had leukemia - Oct '99)