After this I headed a little further south, and it appears we had found a line on convergence as we were gaining 100' to 200' per minute as we went :-).   Near the prison we found a nice strong thermal gave us a nice 600' to 800' per minute climb sweeping us to about 5,500' in just a few minutes!
Now I set my sites on getting to 6,000'.   Climbing now at about 200' per minute, I looked at my watch and saw that we had already been up for an hour.  About 10 minutes later we had reached 6,200' and still slowly climbing but I know I had Craig waiting for the glider, so I did the unthinkable and opened up the dive breaks ;-(  On the way down, even with half dive breaks, there we a few times that we were climbing!
I treated Gary to a nice short field landing, with a bit of a cross-wind, to keep the glider at the take-off end of 13.  Gary Morris and I had a fun 1.4 hour flight.

Andrew Ouellet towed all day. Thanks!


Jeff Byard came over from San Louis Obispo and did Ethan Ronat's PIK 20 annual,  and my Nimbus 3 annual, More properly for my Nimbus, which is experimental,  it is called  an "Annual Condition Inspection."  Jeff has  hangars at San Louis, Tehachapi and another at Carson City. The upcoming Experimental Soaring Association Western Workshop at Tehachapi over Labor Day weekend will likely make use of his Tehachapi hanger for lectures and barbeque activity.  The following weekend on Sept. 6,  they have the annual Dust Devil Dash straight out cross country, which has produced flights as far as to Idaho in years past, although some years it may be difficult to get to Arvin, just down the hill near Bakersfield on highway 58!