Tapalpa: The Big Day
Early morning on the second day I wandered down to the plaza to get breakfast. Sometimes I would be simple and get two chorizo tacos, other times something I could hardly pronounce. There was a line of built in stalls along the edge of a giant church, and each one had been staked out by a vendor selling one or two dishes. I was fascinated watching one of them take pieces of dough, throw them between their hands a few times in a well-practiced motion and throw it on a wooden press that looked like it had seen many days of service. So did the woman’s hands for that matter. I wondered if I would ever be as good at anything as that woman was at making tortillas and deftly flipping them on the iron skillet using just her hands. I suspected not. Sometimes I would sit on bar stools and eat my food at the counter off a plate covered in disposable plastic (they even use a bag to handle money, it’s surprisingly hygienic for street food). Other times I would get it on a small styrofoam plate and wander around the square.
In Tapalpa there were two churches. One old one, and one very old one. The newer one was massive brick structure. Looking at it I could only imagine the amount of labor that went into it’s construction, and what the workers might have felt building something that would be the center of the town for generations to come. Across from it the old church was flanked by thin stately pines like a Italian villa. It’s plaster was cracked, but it just gave the building more character. A large belfry dominated one end, on which dozens of pigeons nested. One day I startled the whole flock out of the square and they looked amazing wheeling in unison between me and the church before spiraling up to their roosts.
At 9 am sharp we piled into a large van and began the short ride to the launch site. It was funny feeling the cobblestone roads of the city proper give way to normal paved highways. Of course the last bit of driving was on a dirt road so rutted that the van had to maneuver carefully down a hill to avoid scrapping bottom. I’ve mentioned before that the launch site was very nice for flying, but it was also very comfortable. It had a huge stone building with a large sitting area open to the hill on one side, and with giant sliding panes of glass on the opposite one. The other two sides had a bar with cold cervesas and a huge fireplace. One wall had been built around a tree branch, and various decorations were hung from it’s branches. A small herd of horses lived around the building, grazing on the tight cropped grass, and occasionally running majestically past, driven by some unfathomable instinct as if the grass on one side was suddenly far superior to the other.
My first flight of the day was a sledder, or a flight where there is minimal or no lift and you mostly just glide down gracefully to the LZ. In this case there were a few bumps here and there but I didn’t try and turn. Another pilot had a close call and I was feeling very cautious. This did give me an opportunity to get some footage of people landing after me. I wasn’t the only one taking an easy flight, and a whole group ended up landing at about the same time. I paused in my efforts to pack up my glider and ran to line up the shot.
The second flight turned out to be much more dramatic. Another pilot was doing a tandem with his brother, and offered to let me try flying his wing. It had more performance than my wing, but was also required more active piloting. I was a bit nervous since I had never flown anything but my Makalu 3, which has a ton of passive safety. I clipped the wing to my existing harness (only test one thing at a time!) and started to check the lines. Right away it felt very different. The glider was a lightweight version, so everything was much thinner, and there were fewer but thicker lines to the bridle. When it was my turn to launch I triple checked my setup and took to the sky.
The glider felt more responsive, but also more needy. After a while though I settled in and hooked into a great thermal just off launch. The radio crackles and my instructor tells the XC group to stick together. You all might be following Soren he adds when he sees the screamer I’m climbing. Eventually my friend and I are circling high above launch. I’m trying to be efficient as possible, not turning any tighter than I need to in order to maximize lift. My neck hurt from craning to keep eyes on his glider above me. We have to search around a bit for lift, but eventually he gets speced out and turns over the ridge towards the town we are staying in. I do a few more turns to try and reach his height and then follow, watching his line. It was a good thing too because he had found a convergence. This happens when two air masses collide and create a band of lift over a massive area, much bigger than any thermal. I pointed my glider straight but I just went up and up and up. It was a real roller coaster, but I wasn’t about to let a little turbulence keep me from my first XC flight in Mexico. Once I got high enough I also started to hit a headwind that was blowing the opposite direction from the winds at the launch site.
Eventually I made progress, using my borrowed gliders superior glide ratio to eat up mile after mile. After a while I approached a small town and took the time to snap a few photos. Perhaps if I had been more mentally focused I could have gotten further, as there were a few pockets of lift around and some birds, but my friend was already down at the base of the ridge ahead. As I glided I mentally started picking out landing zones, option A was where my friend had gone, option B some pastures outside of the town. A small rise covered in trees that seemed insignificant from 500 feet up seemed a lot more problematic as I approached it while running low on altitude. I had no set destination, so I turned back over the city hoping to find lift. There was rising air for sure, but it was patchy and not really maintaining my altitude. It was time to commit to option B. As I came down I tried to memorize the layout of the streets so that I could find my way back to the highway. Then I needed to concentrate, because the landing zone I had chosen was very poppy, lifting me up over and over and messing up my approach pattern. I shifted my weight to try and slide out of the lift and switched one field over, trying not to make any really sharp turns this close to the ground. Finally the sky let me go and I glided to a halt halfway through the field. I did a little victory dance at my successful flight, and radioed back that I was safe.
My adventure wasn’t quite over yet, as midway through packing my wing a crowd of children came running up. I greeted them in my broken Spanish, while still trying to figure out how to fold the unfamiliar wing. They are chattering away but I’m not picking up much until they put forward a representative of sorts. He was about 9 or 10 and had had one year of English. The rest of the children knew “hello” and “goodbye”, but used them somewhat interchangeably. I was not much better, they asked how old I was (I think) and I had to answer “diez y diez y diez y tres”. I tried to figure out the name of the city, but I wasn’t able to get the idea across. So I finished packing the wing while they tried on my helmet and made swooping gestures. I let them play but kept an eye on them to make sure none of my gear wandered off. After I was packed I distributed all the snacks I had on me, including a Cliff bar that I emphasized was all the way from Estados Unidos. They asked if I wanted them to show me the exit (one of the few words I know). An older boy held some barbed wire apart like the ropes of a boxing ring while smaller children climbed through. Than a girl hardly more than an infant was handed from kid to kid through the gap. I passed my glider over the top and climbed through myself. I wanted to get to the highway, but the best I could do was ask about the “Calle velociadad maxima”. They seemed to get the idea. We set off past a series of decorated plots that I thought might be graves, but they were so festive I started to wonder if they were something closer to nativity scenes. I had heard Mexicans have their big gift giving celebration a little after xmas, and this looked like it had to do with that.
We reach the square and I say goodbye to “Mi nuevos amigos”. I get my one (and only) call on my new phone I bought for $20 and eventually resort to “I’ll honk and tell me what direction it came from”. I made it back to town flush with excitement at my flight. Just in time for a late lunch with the group (I am forever spoiled for good molé sauce now) then had a shower and a siesta. No one was hungry for dinner, so we just hung out and told stories in the evening. Finally, after a generous shot of tequila, I retired to my room to read a bit before bed. My roommate and I had been getting along fabulously, and I’d been giving him some tips as best I could as an intermediate (generously) pilot. Long after turning out the light we kept talking about what we had seen, and the amazing flights we would have tomorrow.
