Leisurely Bike Ride

One of the problems with flying in St Andre is the timing of the forecasts; Aeroweb's forecast is pretty good, but only appears at 9.45. That leaves plenty of time to go flying - even if you walk up the hill - but, at this time of year, it complicates things if you decide not to fly. Alternative activities like hiking and cycling are a lot more pleasant if you start them in the cool of the morning.

Today was one of those days. The flying forecasts had a lot of good things; hot, unstable, not a huge risk of overdevelopment. But it also looked pretty windy. Maybe not too windy, but right on the upper limit. One of these days where it could be very good or very bad....

There were three options;

1. give it a go at St Andre
2. drive about 1.5 hrs to Montclar (which is more sheltered than St Andre), take the chairlift up and fly there (possibly back to St Andre...)
3. do something else

In the end, I decided to go a bike ride. I'd flown the last two days and the forecast for Sunday wasn't bad; I think I would have gone to Montclar otherwise. But by the time I was ready, it was already hot. Around here, most rides involve a lot of climbing, and that is tough when it's hot. So I took one of the flattest rides around; heading up the Verdon valley to Allos. The outbound route involved fighting gravity (which has got strangely stronger over the last few years) and I knew the return route would involve fighting the valley wind.

On the way back, I stopped at Villars-Colmars for lunch, and a very nice lunch it was too. I limited my wine intake for obvious reasons and had a very sedate ride back to St Andre. By then, the valley winds were stronger (or maybe they just seemed stronger), but I had taken onboard enough ballast to get through them. Back home, I was able to watch the Tour de France on the tele and feel I was some sort of 'insider' after my bike ride.

I looked to see if there were any wings in the sky and didn't see any; it's after 8 pm and I haven't seen anything other than birds flying today. Unfortunately, the balise (wind-talker) at St Andre isn't working, but neighboring balises all show high winds this afternoon. So I think I made a smart choice - but maybe I will find out tomorrow that a bunch of pilots had 100K flights!