Jul 6

Written by: Mike Maddocks
Sunday, July 06, 2008 7:55 AM

Well thanks to Andy outlanding again we at least have an interesting retrieve story. More on that later. Congratulations to Johno for third place on the day and third overall. The closing and prize giving is at 11am. I will probably not get to post photos or blog until I get home as we are getting on a plane this afternoon. I will try to get Johno to write something when he recovers (last night party last night) The party went till well after dark and in Finlnd that means fairly late. I probably should have said until well after light. A live band was playing. They were great. It was interesting that there seemed to be a couple of the local gliding types in it and I was told the band were all in the local fire department. They did set the place on fire. ( I am sorry for that but this is afterall my last post). Back to the retrieve. Andy passed us the coordinates which were placed in the car GPS. The glider owner was here so he and I set off. All was well until about 2km to go. We ended up in what looked like a farm yard, passing a piggery and heading towards a forest. The GPS told us to keep going. We worked out that Andy was on the other side ot the trees with the GPS showing a "road " around them. I don't think so!!!! We ended up on  track worse than any farm track I have ever seen in Australia. The grass was over the car and when the track became a swamp we decided it was time to turn around. This involved removing the trailer, a fair bit of pushing and jumping aboard a moving vehicle. Those of you with a GPS will have heard the term "Route Recalculation". We heard this many times until finally it did not have us heading back to the same forest. The rest of the retrieve went well as Andy had chosen a paddock where they were just loading the last of their hay bales. I'll try to do a wrap up when I get home or maybe next year. Maddog

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