Gliding!

2 weekends ago Rick and I went to Arizona for 5 days. This was a trip he earned for work, which is a really big deal with the company. As they repeatedly told us once we got there, this is the "best of the best" of the company. The top people that have done the best, so we felt really honored and special to be there. It was sort of bizarre, hobnobbing with Rick's bosses boss, and his boss, and even the president of the west region of mobility. Needless to say, it was an awesome experience, and I told Rick he really needs to do it again next year so we can go again :) Next year is in Palos Verde, CA. So we arrived mid-day on Wednesday and had down time to relax and take a nap before the events started that evening. The Hyatt we stayed at was gorgeous, too bad the first three days were yucky weather-cloudy and cold. We thought we left that in Oregon, but no such luck.
The company paid for everything, including activities and we even came back to our room each night to presents! Loved that!
Thursday morning Rick had some meetings to receive his award and I went and sat out at the pool with all my clothes on! It was too cold for a swimsuit! Thursday afternoon Rick went golfing and I went GLIDING!
They took a group of about 20 of us out about 40 minutes west of Scottsdale to a gliding school.
The sights on arriving
The gliders all lined up

The school's mascot, Be Bop

The tow plane

The first people that went up-the tow plane and glider

Nice puffy clouds

My turn! my glider...

In the "cockpit" before closing the hatch. Believe it or not I still wasn't nervous at this point!

You can see the tow plane ahead of us, this was about the point where I pulled the cord to release us.

Me, gliding!!

The nice white puffy clouds disappeared when I was up there. I wish it had been sunny!

The tow plane left us around 6000 ft or so, so we caught a thermal and glided up to about 10,000 ft and glided over to a nearby lake, called Lake Pleasant. My pilot was awesome and asked if I wanted to stall, meaning pointing the nose straight down to the ground so I could get some good pictures. I can't believe I agreed, but I did, so he did it. It was pretty awesome and a little scary for sure! That's the nose of the plane at the bottom looking straight into the lake!

Gliding back to the school

On our way back he asked me if I wanted to feel some G forces, and I did, so he did some crazy turns. We got about 3 G's, it was pretty cool. Here is a picture of us turning so you can see how sideways we were.

The school from above, as we were coming lower

Landing...surprisingly smooth

Be Bop was glad we made it safely

Wow, what an experience. I am so glad I did it!
That night was our fancy cocktail reception and dinner, so we got all dressed up for it.

The dinner was amazing-filet so tender you could cut it with a butter knife! After dinner they had a cover band where everyone danced like fools. It was pretty entertaining.
The crazy centerpieces in the dance area.

This is Rick's boss's boss, Jake, trying to juggle the centerpieces :)

Rickster and I

The band made Rick play cowbell!

And he passed it off to Josh, who had it for way longer than he wanted!

And that's it for Thursday pictures. Sedona pictures are next!