Saturday's flights were uneventful. I had a ~25 minute flight with only a single climb. We were lucky to get what we did with the weather how it was. That evening we had a cookout with campfire and live music that was a lot of fun. Sunday ended up being a decent XC flying day. Mark, Rich, Greg and I took off. I launched first and hung out at cloudbase (4500 feet AGL) until everyone had launched. We then all started drifting downwind. After my first glide I released my VG rope (which allows me to tighten the sail for a better glide) and the rope went all the way through the cleat that holds it. I tried for some time to put it back in the cleat, but doing so would be a long 2-handed operation, and it also takes 2 hands to fly a glider so I gave up on it. Rich and Greg were 1 thermal ahead of me for most of the flight (~2.5 hours) which actually worked out very well since I then always knew where the next thermal could be found. Mark caught some horrible sink at 35 miles and was forced to land before a very long blue hole. I was hoping to have radio communication with the others (we all brought radios) but it seems my radio must have had the button stuck (which I re-soldered that morning) causing radio communication to not work at all. During one of my long glides about 1 hour in I was flying while holding the VG rope in my hand and tried to get a drink from my camelbak. The bite valve came of the hose and unfortunately with a full face helmet, visor down, and the camelbak located well above my back, it was like a geyser going off in my face. Blinded by the water all I could do was search for the hose with my gloved hand and eventually got it out. The hose flew over my shoulder and continued to soak me. I was very hungry the whole flight because I skipped breakfast (stupid mistake) which did not help when I started to get airsick. After getting low and drifting at 1500 AGL for a long time, I decided to glide for something better, but not much was there. I spent my last 800 feet searching over a neighborhood in hopes of finding a Memorial Day BBQ I could partake in while waiting for my ride. I saw smoke coming up from behind one house and my mouth started to water. After flying over there I saw they were just burning some yard waste :-( so I continued over to the soybean field to land. After a good landing one of the neighbors came out to inform me that the airport was only a mile north of there with a "what the heck are you doing here" voice. I told him I didn't want to land at the airport and he seemed a bit shocked. It's always great seeing peoples faces when you land away from the airport. I landed 47 miles from my release point (as the crow flies). Greg and Rich made it 75 miles landing ~5 miles short of the Mississippi river. The flight had it's share of frustrations (radio not working, camelbak explosion, VG rope not functional, GPS tracklog started too late, landing just short of 50 miles, no cell signal after landing), but with a "personal best" for XC flight and a good landing, I had a very big smile on my face. I uploaded a whole bunch of photos from this weekend to: http://tinyurl.com/q7h62a My flight can be seen on the map and loaded into google earth by clicking the KML link here