When a Shoe falls out of the Sky...

...and no one happens to see where it lands, does it cease to exist? As far as I can tell, the answer is "Yes!"

Landon, Clover and I went out to Short Divide for a late season tandem flight on Saturday.

It was blowin' straight in about 20 mph when we arrived, but by the time we were ready to launch it had dropped down to about 15.

Clover made it very clear that she wanted some airtime too, so we harnessed her up and hooked all three of us in! We had a nice, healthy launch, but there was just not quite enough lift to maintain or gain altitude.

We explored the air over each little bump and ridge during our extended, 25 minute sled ride. I set up for a long, straight and level final glide, and came in with a decent landing right before the gentle upslope in the bailout LZ. As we unhooked Landon said, "I lost my shoe!"

I looked down and sure enough, his left foot was shoe-less. He thought it fell off just as we levelled out in ground effect, but a quick search yielded no luck. After breaking down the glider and retrieving our ride, we spent over an hour walking every inch of the field below our final flight path.

Clover found a couple of badger holes, so I suspect that the shoe may have fallen on the head of a stinkin' badger, who then promptly confiscated it! We never gave up hope, but in the end we just ran out of daylight. Anyway, it was a nice, albeit short flight on a beautiful fall afternoon.

Airtime: 25 minutes x3!