SummitPost.org

As members of a rural electric cooperative, my husband and I receive Colorado Country Life Magazine.

On the cover are these amazing photos of gliders soaring over the San Juan Mountains. My husband, who had a pilot's license before his driver's license, basically said: That's tough terrain to fly, especially in a glider. Those guys have som b*lls! I told my husband that Bob from SP who attended the Colorado gathering in the San Juans flies gliders and he should get together with Bob sometime to fly.

Well, this morning I decided to look at that article. I flipped open the magazine and, scanning the captions, quickly realized: Wow, this guy knows his peaks! I thought: I wonder if gliderman has anything to do with this! Then I scanned to these words: Bob Thompson is a retired colledge professor...

I thought: That's our Gliderman! Here's a link to the article: http://www.coloradocountrylife.coop/ind ... ories.html

In addition to the fantastic photos in the article, be sure to check out some of Bob's arial images of southwestern Colorado on his SP profile: http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=61758

In addition to flying, Bob is a strong mountain hiker who, with a 2-3 decade lead on many of us in the race of life, can hike me off the mountain like I've got no legs.

Good on ya, Bob!

Thanks for the PR Sarah. I love to share what I get to see with others, and even magazine articles can help. Its too bad the web page doesn't show the other 5 color photos in the article, but a cover shot is better than nothing. Handily, everyone in the Colorado electric co-ops get to see all the photos in their copies of Colorado Country Life.

Tell your hubby, its not b*lls, its just situation awareness and being careful and staying HIGH... I spend much of my flight time when I'm over tiger country between 17,000' and 17,900' (the FAA doesn't want us any higher than that). Having a high performance glider with a 50:1 glide ratio and choosing the right days / weather to fly helps, too.

I'm a very lucky and blessed person... get to enjoy the best of multiple worlds... hiking in the San Juans (and other places) and looking down on them from altitude. With the hiking, I get to smell the flowers, enjoy the exercise, and enjoy the comaraderie of others. And with flying my glider I get the big picture, see a wider pallette of color, am back home from the day's fun quicker, and get to sleep in my own bed that night. Life continues to be good!

The San Juans are a rainforest lately, so hiking and gliding are taking a back seat to looking over my 60 gig of photos and writing more articles. I look forward to hiking with more SP folks one of these days when things dry out.

My brother and I had the privilege of hiking with gliderman to the Old 100 Boarding House 7 level a couple of weeks ago. Bob is a fountain of information, and was nice enough to wait patiently for us to keep up. We live below sea level and had 5 days to acclimate to Silverton's 9000+ level, not to mention the 12000 ft. level on Galena Mtn. It seemed that every minute or so we would see a molecule of oxygen float by! After the hike, we debriefed over lunch and he has some absolutely stunning photos of the area. Thanks again Bob.

That is really cool. Nice photos!