What a weekend that was.

Me and Raquel went to San Diego on Friday to reunite and fly with an old friend of mine....John Ryan...which I hadn't seen in over 3 decades. Someone told him that they thought I had died....haha. So you can imagine his shock when he received my first email a couple of months ago.

John was a co-founder of Torrey Pines Glider Port but no longer owns it. He also founded The Hang Gliding Center in San Diego which later burned down. I got John into Hang Gliding back in the late 70s when I invited him to take lessons with me at KHK. He was hooked and very quickly became a prominent figure in Hang Gliding and was the first to fly a paraglider in that region as well. He says that in the early 80s, all of the sites around there were packed with pilots (~ 40 pilots at each site) and there were tons of students eager to learn. At any one time there could be literally hundreds of hang glider pilots in the air if you combined all the sites in the area together. In the late 90's the sport died. He went from having lots of students to almost none in a very short period of time. He's about the only HG instructor in the area left and rarely teaches anyone to fly. He mostly does PG tandems and sometimes HG tandems. He's now a Geography professor in some of the local universities/colleges.

Friday afternoon me and him flew Blossom for almost 2 hours. It was surreal flying with him again after 3 decades. Blossom is a great place to fly for both HGs and PGs. There were probably ~10 PGs in the air and 3 HGs. A little crowded for my taste but there's a huge ridge about a mile or two away that you can fly to to get much higher with great air. So that's where me and John flew to. John claims that Blossom is the best place in the world to fly. He says it's rarely not flyable there. If you Google Earth "Quail Canyon Rd, El Cajon, CA", you'll see the launch mountain and then the big ridge a mile north from there is El Cap.

On Saturday I flew Blossom again and got an extended sled ride. Some of the PGs did the same although a couple of the PGs were able to soar.

On Sunday we went to Torrey and John gave me and Raquel free tandem paragliding flights. Raquel was really scared at first but she calmed down and did good. We met some other real talent there including a guy that holds the world record 52 HG loops in a row. John Heiman I believe his name was?

On Monday we headed back to Blossom which turned out to be good for HGs only at first, so I was the only one in the air for well over an hour. I got about 2.3 hours on that day.

Torrey is rated H4 so I was unable to fly there.

Orrin and his family were in the area and I spoke with him but he never came out to fly with us.

We may be going back there this summer and of course the rest of you are welcome to come along if we do.

John is heading to Rio for a few months with his lovely Brazilian wife and invited us to go down there. There's a good 3000 foot site to fly there. We'll be taking him up on his offer soon.

Tucker