Easter Sunday, wife left for a week to visit family and I was to scrape and re texture the ceiling. I was ahead of schedule, the wind looked perfect. Good enough reasons to take the morning off and go flying. The wind was progressively get stronger throughout the day so I got up there early. On the way I noticed the lack of wind but trusted the forecast. As I set up the wind picked up as planned and when I was ready, the wind was perfect. Excellent timing. I launched with one step and smoothly climbed away. There was a large cloud bank that slowly was passing over with sunshine on the other side. I raced from the south end to the ravine a dozen times flying fast and popping a few wingovers in the smooth lift. As soon as the sun hit the air changed to gusty with week thermals blowing through. When the frequency got steady I started jumping fom one thermal to the other out front of the ridge till I got dangerously close to CFB Suffield airspace and decided to take a strong one to the clouds. I reached cloud base at 6500' at 10:45 in the morning. It was a day to go far. Problem was, I was there alone and lack of roads an traffic made retrieve very tough. I raced for the ridge and landed a half mile short and had a pretty ugly landing behind a hill in rotor. Great first flight of the year. Later that day the cloud streets set up and there was dust devils breaking off in town. Very good day for flying.
