I caught up to a good street which put me up to over 10,500ft and then raced along just under the base for a while. I found good climbs along the way and stayed high. Around 50 miles out I noticed the lead pack catching up. Jeff O'brien came my way as the others took a line more to the west. I topped out on a climb to 10,800ft and went on glide as OB climb up right behind me. A few minutes later, out of nowhere, he passed just feet over my glider diving in front of me. The bright colors of his glider, just feet in front of me, was really startling and was a lot of fun. It's funny how he can just play with me that way and keep kicking butt. I guess that's why he's on the world team.
So now we were gliding together and storms to our west continued to move in. We got low on that glide, maybe 4,500ft (1,500agl), then found a good climb back up. I was getting nervous about the two storms ahead because the turnpoint was in between them. I used hand gestures to communicate my concerns to OB and he just gave me an A-OK signal and motioned to move on. So we did. At the turnpoint we joined the rest of the lead gaggle in light to maintaining lift. I didn't see any future in this light stuff so I went to tag the turnpoint and glide out for a landing before the storms got worse. I had had a great week and didn't want to push it on the last day.
So it turns out that I flew 71 miles and everyone else kept dropping soon after. Nobody made goal. I came in 8th for the day, my best in this meet. I ended up in 16th overall and am really happy about it. I flew 464 miles out of 651. Not bad for a weeks worth of flying. Texas never dissappoints a hang glider pilot.
Here is a picture of the storms heading to the turnpoint. That's OB in the center.
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