time to go

The last dinner was beautiful. Delicious steak, bottle of red and a smoky dessert. Steaks are one of the things I'm missing the most. It's really hard to get a good steak in Europe while in the US you can basically do nothing wrong ordering one.

dessert

We got up on Sunday and all we could see out of the window were dark clouds and rain. Nevada was crying cause we were leaving - said Zig. Hmmm, I felt like this as well. We stopped at Joe's for the real american breakfast (bacon & eggs + potatoes). The serves were just huge and we had a hard time to eat as much as we could not to upset the waitress (it still looked like we didn't like it). But we did!

how am I gonna make it?

Reno Airport authorities took their task seriously and prepared a nice "good bye" for us.

KRNO says good bye

I always feel sad leaving Nevada. It wasn't different this time. Although the weather didn't want to cooperate at all we had a great time. It looks like August is already a bit late in the season. This year has been weird all over the world and everybody was complaining about unusual weather patterns.

We don't say goodbye to Nevada, we literally say: see you very soon! Our Minden Ranch is already booked for July and we're definitely coming back hoping for some better weather.

I would like to thank every and each one of our friends for your help:

- Bogdan & Darek for letting us fly your SZD-55

- Devin for the Ventus 2B and all your help and entertainment

- Tom and Jan ... for everything

- Mark and Cherry for taking good care of the SZD-55 when we were not there

- the whole Soar Minden staff for good service

- Mike, Serge, Chuck - you know exactly what for

Forgive me please if I missed somebody. That's because of my jetlag that is just killing me today.

There is one more person I would like to thank. Ziggy - thank you for the vacation of my life ...

There are only 3 months left and the Australian adventure will start over. It's about time to start preparations for this trip. I'm leaving for Australia in December and will fly the Australian Club Class Nationals in Benalla in January. The blog will continue ...

Reno

We put the glider in the box yesterday and left it with Mark. We managed to finish all the record paperwork and left it with Tony.

The world is really small and it turned out that Ziggy knows the guy from Australia who is interested in Berry's ASW22. Berry brought the 22 to Tom's and Ziggy had a closer look at it when we delivered our boxes full of s... that stays here till next year. We managed to reduce the number of boxes though and got rid of the stuff we won't be using anymore.

40 hours total time, 5 hours on the engine ... and years in the box

We had a beautiful pasta dinner with Tom and Jan at Antochi's watching deer having their dinner on the golf course. They didn't seem to care at all. OK ... I have to admit ... I maybe had one glass of white to much. The night ended up in the Genoa Bar. Ziggy played the designated driver and saved my life taking me home before I managed to order another Corona. Thank him I got up this morning with no signs of hangover whatsoever.

wave in Minden

The winds were blowing all night long and we got some magnificent looking clouds this morning. We stopped at the airport to say good bye to everybody. Minden West Wave Window was already open and somebody reported 15 kts on the averager at 22k ft ... looks like a monster wave to me.

Welcome back Reno!

It wasn't easy to find a room for the last night in Reno. No wonder - Saturday. The Peppermill (where we stayed after arrival) was all booked out. 2000 rooms - all gone. Unbelievable. We finally found a room in Harrah's, which is nice cause it's right down town Reno. This is the first room with the beautiful view we got during this trip. We are looking directly at Reno Airport and all the lenticular clouds that are covering the sky all day long today.

window view

All we have left to do is to repack our luggage and try to squeeze all the purchases in it ... it's not gonna be easy and Zig got one more bag today to fit everything he bought. I should be all right. I've learned already and came with my suitcase half full. It's filled up now though.

We'll have a nice steak for dinner and enjoy some life music in the club.

Zig is now lying and just said: "I'm in heaven now. 17th floor, beautiful view, remote control in my hand, box channel, glass of white, almonds and olives." It doesn't take much to make him happy. Our flight to LA goes tomorrow at 1:30 pm ...