Italy: Poggio Bustone / Rieti

After a long sleepless flight across the great pond I have finally arrived in the beautiful countryside between the cities of Rieti and Poggio Bustone. I successfully hooked up with Jamie Messenger and his girlfriend Bella after a wicked good game of charades with the locals after arriving in Rieti (I need to learn some Italian, but it is always a funny game to try and express yourself with no common language). Thus far the Italians couldn’t be more accommodating, we’ve only been greeted by people offering nothing more than kindness and a helping hand. We are camping for free at the landing zone of the main flying site, the LZ stinks of sheep piss from the critters that mow the field and this smell reminds me of home (growing up on the farm in Walla Walla).


Jamie took a nice picture of me on our first flight.

We arrived to rainy weather and hardly a pilot to be found but the closer we get to the start of the PWC the nicer the weather gets and more pilots arrive by the hour. People from every corner of the earth are converging on this place for the event, all very outgoing and go out of their way to make introductions. I expected to be intimidated at an event at this level but have found the opposite, just a bunch of nice folks that love paragliding as much as I do. One of the first people I met was a guy named Yassen from Bulgaria, surprisingly he knew a lot about US pilots. Rob Sporrer from Eagle paragliding did such a fantastic job of reporting each day’s task on the Internet while we were competing in Mexico that the Eagle team now has an international following. Yassen thought that all the Eagle pilots lived in Santa Barbara California (where Eagle is based), he figured that this place must be incredible for flying to produce so many talented pilots and actually considered moving there. Keep up the good competition reporting Rob, everyone really appreciates it.


Jamie and Bella

The past three days have been great for flying, a little windy so I haven’t been doing much in the way of huge cross-county flights, (some pilots have) just boating around for a few hours and enjoying the view of a new place from the air. I had a great flight yesterday; the best part was climbing 250 meters above cloud-base up the side of the cloud. First impressions are that the site will offer some technical flying, a mix of mountains, flats and signs of convergence. From a flying perspective the place looks to be a cross between Valle De Bravo Mexico and Woodrat Oregon with some proper mountains thrown into the mix.

I will do my best to give updates during the contest but make no promises because computer time is tough to come by. I’m looking forward to a week of racing, should be lots of fun to learn how to play this game from the best in the world.

If you click on the images you can view a larger version.