Soaring

Had a terrific weekend. Debra bought a glider flight from Soar Minden for the two of us for our 2nd anniversary. If you are into roller coasters and or flying I think it is a must to go and take at least one flight in a soar plane (glider). It's hard to describe how nimble these planes are until they are up and turning on a their wingtips in a manner that would send any powered flight into the ground. Soar Minden as a company was excellent. We walked into the office and immediately were greeted by a bunch of smiling owners and pilots. One note though, these guys aren't dressed in crisp, clean airline blues. A mix of old blue jeans, sweats, and heavy jackets were the norm. The look on Debra's face was kind of priceless when they introduced Gabe, our pilot. It was funny. Small in stature with an unshaven face, it definitely brought a quick moment of "Are we sure about this?". But, this guy was fantastic with more hours then we could imagine on both powered and nonpowered planes. On top of it, the whole place had a fantastic attitude and were very helpful with everything. Highly recommended. www.soarminden.com.

As for the flight itself. It was a fairly cold morning with almost no wind to speak of. Heavy cloud cover was preventing any decent thermals from forming, so the cart plane had to haul us all the way to Emerald Bay and before it could release us to glide back. Gabe was excellent at the controls and the old glider felt amazingly stable under us. He wasn't allowed to run us through the full gamet of acrobatics (requires a different type of glider) but still put us in nose up stalls, big time banking, and partial loops for good measure. I tried taking pictures during the different manuevers but a lot of them didn't come out too well as I was having problems keeping my hand up and steady under the G-load. Amazingly fun and always felt safe. I think Debra and I had grins just about melted onto our face by the end of the flight. Absolutely terrific. On a side note, we never once felt unsafe or unsure of ourselves from the moment we left the ground. The scenery is excellent, and if you ask the pilot they seem more than happy to whip the plane around some so you can really enjoy the scenery while having a little roller coaster fun. Again, I really do recommend anyone coming out to the Carson City area to give them a try.

The pictures are in order from takeoff to almost landing. The shots were you can see nothing but ground through the canopy is where he is putting the plane through some nose down manuevers. Great fun.

One other note, if you are under about 5'9" make sure you bring a dense pillow to sit on. Poor Debra had problems seeing until we were upside down. Then the view got much better :).