See the pics

See the video

Thanks to Bubba & Jeannie Peters and everyone else we met in
Colorado. What an awesome time we had. Lots of high altitude
flights, I got up past 12,000 ft. and killed the motor, catching
lift from the valley below past sunset one night. Finally had to
pull big ears and do some spirals to lose some altitude and come
down.

Andy, Greg Hanneman, (cameraman extraordinaire who has helped on most of the movie trips, displaced Texan residing in Oregon) & I were
prepared to camp at the Lost Stirrup Ranch but some people cancelled
out at the last minute and we were given the opportunity to stay in
the lodge in the buffalo room. Bubba & Bubbette (Jeannie) are
wonderful people to open up their house and property to everyone,
what GREAT hospitality. Thanks to Mike and others for cooking up
some of the best food I've eaten outside of Texas. Not to mention
the HUGE chocolate cake Jeannie baked up for everyone.

When not flying we enjoyed hiking, jeep rides up to Waugh Mountain,
(where we saw 4 large elk!) A buffalo jump used by the indians to
herd buffalo off a cliff and then collect the buffalo that ended up
crashed on the rocks below. A mineral hot springs and more.

The highlight of the weekend was on Sunday morning when several of
us headed out early to try and fly over the Royal Gorge in Canon
City. After finding a bandit LZ where we had to hand our equipment
over 2 fences, Bubba took off with little or no wind, uphill. He
finally got off the ground and had to turn quickly to miss the fence
on the far side of the field. Andy was up next and had the same SLOW
climb and turn to miss the fence. I was up next and had a couple of
aborted take off's as now the wind was picking up a little and
shifting around. On my 3rd attempt, the motor dies while revving up.
Greg takes a look and finds that my fuel filter has broken off a
tip. By this time Andy is over the Gorge, and luckily enough I had
put a lipstick case camera on him. We think he is the first PPG
pilot to fly over the Royal Gorge and Bridge. The footage from his
camera is pretty spectacular. Bubba ran into some turbulance and
decided not to fly directly over the canyon, but Andy got some
footage of Bubba doing wing overs and such as he was coming back to
an alternate landing site.

The last night of flying at the Lost Stirrup brought some clouds and
incredible sunset video and pictures. Unfortunately I had a mishap
on a forward launch in higher winds than I have previously tried to
do a forward launch. I was in a hurry to get up and get some footage
and pictures of the quickly developing sunset. I didn't get out the
wind meter and was using a Muse 30 rather than the 28 I normally fly
with, due to the higher altitude. I should have looked at the wind
meter and realized the wind was blowing at about 7 to 10 and done a
reverse launch with the 28. But the 28 was up at the lodge about a
1/2 mile away and I was in a hurry. I also am not experienced at all
on doing higher wind forwards, if the winds are over 5 I always do a
reverse. As I ran forward the wing came up and a gust hit me at the
same time. Bubba and Andy talked to me after the "Turtle" I suffered
and talked about having to keep your feet moving and literally back
up under the wing in higher wind forwards. When the wing came up I
basically stopped moving my feet and didn't go to full power thus
pulling me off my feet and backwards into the dreaded "Turtle"
position. I didn't get the engine killed immediately and my right
hand went back through the netting, glancing off the spinning prop
at the wrist. At first I thought my hand was really messed up and
didn't want to look at it. Then I started to get some feeling back
in it and looked. Whew, all there with a large egg swelling at the
wrist. Don't know how, but the prop did not break. We did have to
fix the muffler, and the cage that night but had it ready to go for
the morning flight on Monday the 4th. I flew with Andy towards an
extinct volcano and then split off by myself for about 30 minutes.
During that flight I spotted a herd of antelope moving over the top
of a mountain top at about 10,000 ft. Another pilot had also spotted
them and we flew over them at about 500 feet AGL for a few minutes.
They moved off into some trees and we headed back towards the Lost
Stirrup. I landed safely and Andy came in about 20 minutes later.

Our LZ at the Lost Stirrup was at 9200 ft. above sea level, very
challenging for us Texans who normally take off on the beach at sea
level. I was happy and proud to earn my "High Altitude Pilot" patch
from Bubba. What an exciting and fun filled weekend! Thanks again to
Bubba, Jeannie, Mike and everyone else who made this fly in a great
success!

We continued the flying & filming adventures throughout the week
after Bubba's fly in. Andy used the extra days to visit family in
Denver. Greg & I stayed with a friend in Denver on the evening of
the 4th and he treated us to a Colorado Rockies baseball game and
huge fireworks display after the game. We then moved up to Ft.
Collins where my sister and her family live. I flew on a horse ranch
while there, entertaining the group, including her two boys, Gavin
14, and Ian 10. They both want to try PPG someday. From there we
were off to Avon (near Vail) where we met with one of the main
characters in the movie, new pilot Ken Reeder. I arranged for him to
do a tandem flight with "Summit Paragliding". I put a camera on him
and had a camera on me as I did some flying with my rig around Avon
& Vail. We stayed in Breckenridge the last night and celebrated with
Ken Reeder and family downtown.

Greg headed back to Oregon and I went into Denver to pick up Andy on
Friday morning the 8th. Andy & I drove all day, and at about 8pm
somewhere east of Amarillo we decided to pull over in a field beside
the Hwy. and get one last flight in for this trip. The sunset was
beautiful but the wind was a bit gusty. Andy went up and decided to
land about 200 yards down the field as it was unstable. I was
determined to go up as we had already unloaded our equipment. We
watched the wind meter jump from 5mph to 15mph but then it started
to calm a little and steady out from about 7 - 10. I decided to
launch as Andy did the filming this time. I got up to about 300 feet
or so and flew for about 10 minutes B4 setting it down. Andy setup
and launched again in a mass of grasshoppers and bugs enough to
equal the plagues described in the days of Moses. I went up again
and we flew for another 15 or 20 minutes. A local pulled over to
watch as we were getting ready and told us to watch out for all the
rattlesnakes that were in the field we chose. Don't know if he was
messing with us or not, we didn't see any. Andy was flying in
sandals as usual. We both set down and loaded up, trying to keep the
billions of grasshoppers and flying ants off of us and our wings as
we packed them up. We ended up getting a motel down the road another
45 minutes or so.

We drove into Houston Saturday afternoon about 4pm a little sore and
tired from the trip. What an epic trip it was. Lots of great video,
still pics and great flying. Stay Tuned...

Chris Page. aka Gadget Man.