Niki Longshore writes:

Dino Day 1 = White knuckle grips and gnats.

I've never flown in conditions like this before. It was a real shocker to say
the least.

There is no doubt I am out of my comfort zone. This isn't the flatlands. I'm
scared, but I'm more determined to overcome.

I struggled to climb in the start cylinder, but I guess flying with an airspeed
at 60km will do that. I was simply scared to let the bar out.

Eventually, I left the second start gate 2,000 feet lower than everyone else
trying to motivate myself. The main gaggle of the second clock was just ahead,
but I wasn't really fussed to catch up to them. I was more focused on just
trying to breathe.

At one point I thought I could have been landing on top of the mountain range
with no great landing options and certainly no retrieve. I was too far inland
from the mountain edge to make it to valley fields. With the sink that I was
encountering, I knew there had to be something close by. A rocket-of-a-thermal
was just inland, and it got me back up in no time.

I flew alone, scared to find a thermal and even more scared to leave one. I'm
upset to admit it.

When I was finally 40km from goal for the 150km task, I had confidence. I
visualized the upcoming trigger points to get me to goal. It all worked, until
it didn't.

I got greedy and left a crappy climb even though I was 3,000' from the deck. It
just didn't make sense to stay. All the other thermals were so close together,
and I figured the trigger ahead would work, but it didn't.

I squeaked it out to the farthest field I could make it to, and had a downwind
landing. I think you know what happened. The good news is, the new hiking boots
saved my precious ankles. As far as the wind direction, I was landing into a
thermal so the apparent wind seemed "ok." After flying through the other side, I
immediately knew I messed up.

I landed on the other side of the river 30km from goal. I could see there was a
dirt road leading to the paddock, so I wasn't too concerned. If anything, I was
going to have to walk. But the good news was, Audray was able to get close
enough to me where all I had to endure was the marsh.

And the gnats. Those bloody gnats! Somehow they found shelter my ears and nearly
drove me insane. Good thing I found my face net from Forbes. It saved my sanity
today.

So, with that being said, Dino Day one is done and dusted. It was a good day for
learning, and a relief to hear other pilots had also felt the flogging was
relentless. I have to say thanks to Zac for encouraging me for tomorrow.

You can follow us live over the next six days. The competition is using
Flymaster for live tracking. I am also using Airtribune
http://airtribune.com/nikilongshore.