AS WINTER took hold here in Europe, Team Pie bottled it and decided to go on holiday, and as the season is in full swing south of the equator what better place than South Africa. We'd heard there are records just waiting to be broken this year in the RSA, so we thought we'd go in search of some new personal bests. We booked our SAA flights to Cape Town and headed north in search of some Karoo XC's. Before we left home we had contacted some of the SA pilots and listened carefully to their solid advice & guidance, so we were ready, we were willing and, by god, we were up for it. So off we went, happy as pigs to the slaughterhouse, thinking we were off on a PG holiday to somewhere like Oz, but with maybe a bit more sand and a bit less vegetation.
Things went really well for our first week, great weather, great flying and stunning scenery. We really couldn't have asked for more. Pie's Icelandic reporter H.Jálmar Sveinsson upped his personal best in the first 3 days, and was clearly chuffed, "Getting to base was easy", he said with an ear to ear smile, "Nothing like back home, you know, and once I was there all I had to do was straight-line it. I chose West. 12K, I still can't believe it. It looks like I'm playing with the big boys now."
All went well and we were having the time of our lives, that is, until the start of the fateful 3rd week. Perhaps we had become a bit too cavalier or perhaps we had become less aware of our surroundings, and as most pilots will tell you, that's when mistakes happen. Pie's Amsterdam based journalist Tina McVee was the first to run into trouble, and we were keen to get her initial reactions on tape. "I'm not coming here again, it's fucking dangerous", she said, and with that, she left. That was the last we heard from Tina until we got back home and found her letter of resignation. What had happened to Tina? We didn't know it but slowly, one by one, we were about to find out.
The very next day "Dinger" Bell, our print editor, ran into a few problems. "They nearly got me, you know. Even now I don't know how it started", he said, "One minute I'm cruising the flatlands at 5000ft AGL and simply marvelling at the view, and the next minute I'm coming down at -15m/s straight towards them. I'm still shaking, look." He then proceeded to lock himself in his hotel room and from there on in, he watched satellite TV with the blinds down.
The following day myself & our tea girl Sheena decided to fly the tandem as strong conditions had been forecast and with those long waits for the retrieves, the tandem seemed like the ideal vehicle. After a couple of hours we were passing the 70k mark but the day was overdeveloping and it really was time to get our feet on the ground and put that waiting to good use. Down to 2,000ft and we began to realise this might be an eventful landing.
Sheena went on record later that day and summed it up well, "I don't know how we found it, I mean, it's not instinctive to want to land in one. Normally it's my worst nightmare, but to tell you the truth I've never been so pleased to see an Acacia Tree in my life. What's more, we were bloody lucky to find it, it was the only tree in the whole bloody savannah. Once we hit it, we simply hung on for our lives. After a few minutes we both unclipped and sat on one of the big branches and smoked a cigarette or two while desperately shouting over the radio. Throughout all of this those big yellow bastards were jumping halfway up the tree trying to get us, the wing was pretty much eaten, you know. Shit, if I want to see wildlife like that again, I'm going to the zoo."
When all the dust had settled, we finally understood the advice "avoid the big five", we had all wondered why 5-up was considered a bad thing in Africa.
Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1947 "Chuck Yeager Speed Camera" photos
Funnier than the 1947 "Chuck Yeager Speed Camera" photos