A good way to finish the year.

China is already sending its greetings. I am still on the paragliding site near the beach in Chile. Just got a great 2 hours flight. Sometimes life is hard,...but not today ! :-)

Then we celebrated new year, starting at 11 pm with a great dinner, then at 12am with the fireworks over Valparaiso and then party until 6am : What a night !

Unfortunately, the video of the fireworks gives a poor impression of the 15 simultaneous fireworks around Valparaiso bay.

Invited to a birthday.

That was super !

Last night in iquique

Iquique is defenetely a premium paragliding destination. Whe met great people: paulina, masha, cristian... It was already time to catch the plane. Too soon. But now we are in vina del mar. Another paradise on earth!

End of day 3... Or is it?

When i posted yesterday, i was far from imaginating that it was not the end of the day. It actually finished at 4am after a good party :-) so i will just say :end of flying day 3. One hour flight in the morning with landing on the beach after flying above the city. Magic! I put one picture here. But the best was still to come... 3 hours of dune of Palo Buce ,soaring in the best possible place: re-magic :-) we also met great fun people:masha and Paulina.Masha had her 1st flight today. I took videos and will post them when i am back.

This is a video of Palo Buce:

End of day two.

Two flights today. One of 1h45 min in thermal and dynamics. That was a great baptism for my new wing. Lively but safe. The second flight was very short. Conditions were not good. But we landed next to the place of philippe. A swiss guy who moved here 21 years ago, settled, founded a familly with 5 kids and created a little paradise for pilots. Next time we will think to stay there. Arturo made a great take off !

Serious stuff starting :-)

Arturo ready to go. We met christian a local guy who picked us up and drove us to...

Arturo kitting

We just arrived, dropped the bags and rushed to catch the evening wind in the sand dune.

Welcome to:

Landing in Dallas on Christmas day

No pictures from this, as all electronics devices had to be switched off. But that was worth a night view. So many house with christmas lights outside. Defenetly not environmental friendly, but surely very pretty !

On the way to chile...

What is on the way to Chile, via Dallas ? Grand canyon ! It is as amazing from the air than when we visited with Christophe few months ago.

A lot of flying lately

As most of you know, I love paragliding ... Really...
But lately, flying was not really an option : The weather is not so good, my wing went to repair (I made a hole in it and I figured out that maybe it was not a good idea to fly with it), and my new wing has not arrived yet from Germany. I thus had to look for alternatives. It came from Arnel and Nova and few of their base jumper friends who sold us the idea to pay a visit to the site of IFLYSFBAY. Here is a little taste of what you can do there :-) Last Thursday we went with with the whole team of Top Gun :


See Olivier : This was his 1st session.

What a day !!! discovering Napa and Sonoma in a Cub

Yesterday, Paul had the great idea to take me for my first flight in a powered plane. Here are just few pictures. It was amazing !!!



Paul brought his Cub from Texas few weeks ago by flying it across the country. More about his adventure at wwww.adventurecub.com.




Thanks a lot Paul.


We took off from a small air field in Napa valley, flew for about 45 minutes in the wine area, flew over the Nascar circuit, and landed in the sonoma Airfield. After a good lunch we flew back and PAul gave me my first flying lesson : It is far from being as easy as it seems :-) But what a blast : We finally did a touch and go and concluded the day with cleaning parts of that fantastic machine. I must say, I got positively impressed how fun this was.












Isn't that cool ?

The apple break

Fortunatly we found a pub. Olivier is getting excited about the Ipod touch... Let see if we can do business.

Harris on Van Ness

The place to get the best porter steak.

3 hours of great flying...

Unexpected great conditions today. I flew the Uturn Obsession and decided to order it. It will be a great wing for the next 3 years.

The taste of childhood in Europe and US

Can u tell me what your childhood taste like? Mine definitely tasted Nutella. After a long debate i agreed a comparison test. The conclusion is without doubt that taste is cultural ! Most us contestant went for peanut butter. I praise NUTELLA ! :-)

Sky diving in an aquarium ...

The deed is done ...
So much fun, but hard to recognise who is who :-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slawek2006/sets/72157602643603464/show/

Nice sunset in pacifica

It was so warm today ! Not to depress my friends from northen europe... But autumn here is awesome!

For the one who like pink ...

One of the Pilot is also into the car business. Here in the US, you sometime cross the path of such machines ...

Shiggy could not resist and has to jump behind the wheel...

There are also a lot of old European car that are perfectly restaured : Old Mercedes 280 Coupe,.. 911 porshes, .. Old beatles. I even saw a 2CV Citroen in perfect condition : how cool is that in SF !

4 riders in the autumn sun...

Erik, Christophe, Arnel and the one taking the picture. That was a incredible weather today. Not good for flying, but perfect for riding : A good meal at Alice's restaurant and a coffee in Saratoga.

Anatole in La Palma : Incredible view

Did you know that Canary islands are good spot to paraglide. Here is the proof from my good friend Anatole

New recruit in the office.

No 65 year old limitation in the usa...

Paul did it...

From Texas to San Francisco, in a Cub.

Visit Paul's pages on www.adventurecub.com . Nice job Paul. I could not make it to your arrival but I am sure it was a blast.

Back in the office : scary !

Halloween is coming the office has been filled with creatures.

Weak wind at musel rock.

I tried twice... Twice landed on the beach. I still have hope and its not so bad to spend sunday afternoon facing the pacific, in the sun with good friends. Oh ! Wind picking up ! I'm goin...

On the road 66.

We took a a turm to take some fuel, and there it was: the mitic road 66. Funnilly it made a bigger impression on me than i thought. A road that can take me all the way to the west or to the east if i just choose to do so. We turned left to los angeles:back to vegas

850km in a day to see grand canyon

A long but fantastic drive across the west. Incredible views, good talks and lots of laughing:-) ...

From the eiffel tower...

The view on las vegas is stuning.

Vegas... Here we come !

You are going to vegas, baby !

This is the welcoming note when booking a hotel in vegas. This is a picture of denny's menu. Our first stop on the way to vegas, baby !

Arturo on the way back from Potatoe hill

Once again, we woke up early and droveto potatoe. I had A pro design wing in the trunk that wanted to try... Did not like it ... But we had 2 flights and th second one was good. Despite a half collapse very well recovered :-) Nothing to worry ma'am.

After work flight

Yesterday, after a long day at work, started very early. I needed to empty my head. Nothing better than a 1H flight at the dump. After I landed, I shot this video including a pilot I was flying with (no idea who that was) and Hussein, who took off just before I landed. You can also see couple of radio guided planes making acrobatics between the paragliders... Fun and beautiful scenery. Music from the Beautiful South: Perfect 10.

Another day at Potatoe Hill

We tried a new way today : leaving in the morning abd back in the afternoon..
Here is the whole team before take off.


Arturo(Chile), Arnel(Philippines), Shaun(USA), Mike(USA), Erik(Norway) and in the front Dave(USA) and Shiggy(Japan). That was a great day today. The conditions at Potato are becoming more shallow but are still very strong. {probably it will be better and better as the autumn comes. We left at 6am this morning, On site at 9h30. Take off at 11h00 and return in SF at 6pm. Certainly a good formula for thermal flights during one day.


Here is after 1 or 2 flights depending on the pilot :-)

In the back, you can see the take off of Potato Hill.

Shaun was the star of the day.

I took the decision to renew my equipment. I am going to look for another wing and harness. I have now been flying with this one for a while. Time to change. If you are interested to get an Epsilon 4 Advance and a comfortable Airbulle harness with Full Airbag, let me know ... (yes, this is an ad).

Two nice pictures taken by Dave in Hat Creek

It is quite rare to get pictures from the front in paragliding. Fortunately Dave had his camera with him when flying.


This one is the same picture but centered ...

Sonoma wing days: Thermaling at Potatoe Hill

What a great weekend ! Friday was bit hectic to finalize the work of the week, get some laundry done to have some underwear for the weekend and pull myself together after paying the taxes (who said that taxes were lower in US than in Europe ? Not in California Kof Kof ! :-)
So Christophe and I decided that we would leave very early Saturday morning to head to Potato Hill (2h45 north from SF) Timing as exactly right : We met Craig who left the day before to enjoy a quite night of sleep (it would have be if he had not chosen the camp ground with the hunter and their very numerous and noisy dogs :-(

Here we are, the three of us, listening to the briefing for the competition of the annual Sonoma wing event. Mixed paragliders and handgliders... But the conditions are strong so we head to the takeoff as soon as we can. Craig did a real good flight. Both Christophe and I confess that we were not too relax on that 1st day. But there goes the first day in spending the afternoon in the lake and at the great BBQ organized after the competition. We are then back in the campground (another one, with no dog, and very hunter)

We have our comfort :



In the morning, we need a good breakfast and this is the great thing to travel with Craig : he is the best organised camper I know.




The team work to make that omelet was pure art !




Day 2 of flying was much better for Christophe and me. We were getting the rhythm. But as I have been posting way too much paragliding pictures, here are some different views of our activities in the afternoon. Isn't that a great place ?

The method is simple:

1 : test the water:



2 investigate that there are no danger in the neighborhood




3: relax and enjoy even if it is pretty chilly.




On the way back, we decided to take the long way down, back to SF.



The full team


Thanks to the the two twins for the great time, great flying and great plans for the next weekends to come....