Niki Longshore writes:

Status Update: I am the team Hooligan driver now as our wonderful
Madam Hooliganette Judi needs a break I would love to be in the air racing,
but I do not have a parachute or a harness. My parachute was blown into the
barbed wire fence minutes after I landed, and my Tenax harness has bad juju all
over it. It never fit quite right anyway. Good thing Gecko Girl won a new Moyes
harness

I have also been trying to thank each and every one of you personally for your
kindness. I am overwhelmed, and the messages keep coming.

Anyway, here’s a breakdown and update for anyone interested. I will try not to
be repeatitive.

The tumble: It was instant; blink of an eye. Everyone who saw couldn’t believe
it either. Sure we were racing through some turbulent air, but this was a
mystery.

The pitch over was so abrupt and with so much force. I felt like I was being
sucked towards the ground at 100 mph. The only thing I could do was keep the
base bar pulled in with my knuckles turning a brighter shade of white. I could
feel and hear my glider explode as I fell forward through the control frame. The
base bar ripped out of my hands, and I fell into the sail. I dangled around as
the glider started spinning, in disbelief of what had happened. “Not good,” I
thought. The rest you already know what happened...

Instruments: All of my instruments stopped tracking about 10 km before the fall.
The tracks for my 6030, Airtribune, and SPOT tracker all paused and stopped
recording. My Digifly broke away from its mount and tether so it is long gone.
We all would have been interested to see what the track looked like on the
computer, but I have no data! Also very mysterious, I would say.

SOS: Even more mysterious was the absence of EMS upon sending an SOS. I was able
to pull out my SPOT tracker to send an SOS as I was spiraling down. Emergency
services were never informed yet my primary contact still received the SOS
message. I pay for the extra GEOS search and rescue services so it was a real
disappointment to see it did not work. I am in contact with SPOT now to see what
went wrong. I’ll post an update when I find out what happened. So far they are
giving me a free upgrade for 2.5 minute tracking opposed to 10.

Conditions: It’s Forbes, baby. We come here for these conditions! I did feel a
bit scared on practice day and I flew very conservatively exiting the thermals,
gliding no more than 80kph in between thermals, and keeping VG 3/4 or less. I
talked to the boys afterwards who did not feel it was rough, so that night I had
a cup of concrete to harden up. (Insert Chopper emoji here). Yeww! Get it intya.

Confidence: I grew more confident each day as I adapted to the hardcore air. The
concrete was doing me good. On the day of the tumble I was gliding over 90 kph
to catch up to Jonny and Attila and ditch the gaggle behind. I kept my VG mostly
at 3/4, sometimes in the red. When I pulled away from the gaggle, I was in the
red when I tumbled.

Luck: It’s a race. We all charge, we all fly fast, and we all have white
knuckles when it gets gnarly. Guy and Vic both had some scary experiences close
to the ground on practice day and one of the tasks. Vic did an unintended loop
as he was on final glide approaching the LZ on practice day. Guy got pitched
really bad and thought he was going to tail slide low to the ground as well on
task 2. I was unlucky to tumble, but very lucky everything else unfolded as it
did.

Mystery: It was a very mysterious day! From the air I hit, to my instruments not
working, EMS never being notified, and simply how I arrived back to earth
without injury. There are no explanations. Again, I am so happy to be here. Plus
I have a really cool story to tell when I’m old and gray and still flying hang
gliders

Conclusion: As for now I am enjoying the competition as a driver, I am enjoying
my Hooligan family, and the beautiful people in our sport. I also had a chat
with the legend himself. After falling from the sky 5 times, Bill said “Walk the
earth for a while and enjoy it. You can still learn from the ground.” Thank you
Bill Moyes, you are a legend.

Like I said before, I would love to be racing in the sky, especially since I had
started off so well in the comp, but I am happy to drive for my team, The
Hooligans. I feel good and I am very, very happy.