Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday March 28 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
After 7 years my good old laptop from Dick Smith in Australia, started to do few weird things and before loosing all my “stuff” and before not been able to write anymore, I bought myself a nice new one. I guess specially my friends in Italy will be more then pleased , so they don’t have to struggle anymore with my Australian WIFI.
WIFI is superb now and I even have a built in webcam, my new acer crystal eye””. A new world opens here for me , but also some stress as a lot of things have to be installed again.Luckily at this stage I can work on the old and the new one.
Yesterday I started windows messenger and names of all kind of friends popped up and “asked” if they were welcome in my system, of course they were, but…I prefer not to be on facebook, on linked -in and plaxo.
My old Acer has done a great job! Travelled with me all over the world and I hope it still can be used for a while.
Great ridge soaring weather in the USA. What about Blairstone where a pilot managed to fly 972 km. in an LS 3 !! Also the Schweizer pilots had a beautiful day flying just over and just under 500 km.
The Swiss and Italian mountain- pilots had their fun as well last week.
This weekend the first RED BULL RACE for 2010 will be flown in Abu Dhabi. A very thrilling sport and a spectecular way of flying and…the 10th time they are on!! There will be 8 races this year in 5 continents with 15 pilots , between age 26 and 53!!! Some of those pilots have started with soaring. The 2 debutants are from Brasil, 36 year old Adilson Kindlemann and 31 year old Czech pilot Martin Sonka. The 2010 season will have a new rule; Like in gliding there will be a min.weight of 82 kilo. So if you are only 70 kilo, you have to take 10 kilo of ballast.
Races are 3 times in Europe [ Lausitz -Germany, Budapest,Lissabon] further on in Perth[Australia],Rio de Janeiro[Brasil],Windsor [Canada] New York [USA] and this weekend as said ; Abu Dhabi.
Holland had one pilot participating for a few years in this Race and a good one!! He retired however in 2007 . His name Frank Versteegh in his 50thies and very popular and wellknown in Holland. This year he and I are going to do the main part of the PR for the CAE NLS Dutch Nationals. So you will hear his name more over the next few months.
By the way ,with the selection for this year and for the first time in history, one woman tried to be part of this race, but unfortunately the 2 new mentioned men were better.
British Airways cabin crews started a new series of strikes yesterday. This time for 4 days! Several flights were cancelled, but most people knew , as it was advised last week already that this was going to happen.
Just a short blog this time, have been away, so more news on Wednesday.
Cheers Ritz