The big arch.

The day started off with us being shown how to pack our reserves, which is a bit tricky but obviously important. It involves squeezing an entire parachute into a tiny pouch on the bottom of the harness, just underneath the bum. I also got to hook my new harness up to a training rig so i could adjust all the straps to make it just right. The Bulgarian school that Zabdi is working with is called SkyNomads, and they're all a really sound bunch of guys, most of them speak good English too which is so far is quite rare here.
We then went up the big hill and had a flight, which i've logged already. The weather then got rubbish and we came back to the villa, chilled for a while and had lunch. But i didn't mind too much because I was still buzzing from my flight.
In the afternoon we had an eventful half hour car journey out to a place called Beklemeto Pass. There's a massive archway there that had something to do with a past war between Bulgaria and Turkey. When we got there the wind was still to strong to do any flying but it was still a cool place. We went and had dinner at a place about a mile from there, but due to the fact that one of the Bulgarian guys hadn't put any gas in the minivan we had to do 2 trips in the legendary Moscovich, with 5 in the car - and 2 on the roof (not me though!). After dinner we went back to the site and the wind was still strong but had died down enough for one of the Bulgarian instructor called Nicky to attempt some soaring. In true Bulgarian style he got into his harness wearing sandals and no helmet and did some unbelievably crazy flying. He made it look so easy though. But no one else, not even master Zabdi considered having a go.
Just as it was starting to get dark we made our way back to Sopot, I was in the minivan with no fuel this time, and Nicky the crazy Bulgarian pilot decided that since it was down hill we could just free wheel all the way down. So we did, he even managed to overtake a couple of big trucks. What a nutter, nice guy though.
I found out today that Sopot was originaly an army base that was built when Bulgaria was fighting Turkey and there are still a lot of army dudes walking about looking serious. Luckily we never past any when we had 2 guys on top of the Moscovich. I'm not sure what the plan is tomorrow, probably get up early, about 8am local time (we're 2 hours ahead) and go do some more flying.
I've been taking a lot of pictures and i tried for about an hour today to get this shit computer to recognise my camera but it just doesn't like it, so pictures may have to wait until later, unless i can find somewhere else to do it.

The big arch


Nicky doing his thing. He was flying a small glider for him so he was heavy on it. This meant he was more solid on the wing and could cope with the strong wind.