The forecast was shocking. Today was the first of a three day weekend and the weather looked good for each day. I double checked the weather to ensure I was reading the forecast for New England. Yep, still looks good. A long-predicted cold front was beginning to wash out around the Massachusetts coast line but the National Weather Service was still promising cool dry weather to the north. It was still warm and humid when I left home for Ascutney. Once I was on the road, I gave Rodger a call. He said the sky was cloudy to the north of Keene. Uh? That wasn't supposed to be there. I talked a little later with Greg and he said the satellite picture showed clouds all across western New York and southern Canada. I guess I was being setup again by another forecast gone bad. Rodger decided to head to Morningside and "hang out", Greg decided to skip the day, and I went straight to Ascutney to hopefully join up with some other optimists. I arrived at the base at 11 but no one else was around. I thought about driving up, hiking out my gear, hiking back, driving down, and then riding up with the late comers. Nah, too much work. I tried to convince Rodger and Dave to quickly head over, but they weren't taking the bait. Finally Greg called and said he had changed his mind and would be at the mountain around noon. Like clockwork, about a dozen pilots showed up within 5 minutes of noon.
It was good seeing a large turnout at the mountain again. We also had a lot of hikers sharing the walk out and launch. I setup as quickly as possible and launched right after Jake. It wasn't too difficult to climb to cloudbase but I fell into the usual routine lately of "waiting to leave as a group". Flying as a group can be fun, but it can also severely limit the ground you can cover. The group can only progress at the speed of the slowest pilot. Also the group suffers every error of every pilot. For example, if a pilot misses a climb, the entire group is delayed by one climb. I prefer flying with people headed in a general direction knowing that we will sync up several times during the flight. However, the social pressure to "join in" is hard to resist.
We headed down wind towards Morningside bouncing under several nice clouds. However, it soon became apparent that the sky was quickly drying out. There was a nice line of clouds to the southeast, but that meant flying over restricted landing areas with a rising terrain. The entire gaggle, me included, hovered over Claremont trying to decide where to go. East and south looked very blue, southeast looked like a folded carpet of trees. The group finally decided to head down the river. Dave and I took off that way while the rest of the gang circled in very light lift. We made it to Charlestown before turning back. I had a nice line and turned back when I still had about 4800 feet. Why did I turn back? It wasn't the comfort of landing at Morningside. So it must have been to rejoin the group. I lost more altitude on the return trip and came in way below the gang just as they left. I then returned to Charlestown arriving there low. Duh. I knew better than to turn back. Group suck got me.
I ended up working some shifty lift coming off a farm tucked back in a shallow valley with Shawn before finally landing. I landed near a driveway and walked the glider to a shade tree. We were soon greeted by the landowner that was not pleased to see us. We quickly broke down and carried our equipment off the premises. We did however, buy 8 quarts of strawberries that we snacked on for the rest of the day. Julie picked us up and then Tim and Laura gave us a ride back to our vehicles at the mountain. The rest of the gang basically got one more climb and glide before settling down in the valley. I guess the cool dry air finally arrived. Too bad we didn't get started an hour or two earlier.
I decided at the end of the day to avoid my natural tendency to "hang with the group" just to be with the group. There are days when flying with a group is smart and fun if the group is moving at a reasonable pace and is not afraid to temporarily leave stragglers behind.
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