Tag Archives: Hang gliding

A Very Blustery Day

Posted by dkrashb on

We are running late.  I hate that.  I got up at 6:00AM in the hope of not running late, but it seems I needed to get up a half hour earlier.  We are running around frantically trying to gather up the last of our gear, knowing that we are now barely going to make it to the training hills on time.  We remember our bottles of water at the last possible second, grab them, and finally get out the door.

I set up the GPS in a hurry while Pat starts driving in the general direction.  We’ve been there enough times that the GPS should just be a back up.  However, Pat zones out and starts listening to it only to wonder why it’s taking us the way it’s taking us long after we’ve missed the correct exit.  As it turns out, I picked the flight park office, up on top of the mountain at the mountain launch, instead of the training hills.  This will cost us another 10 minutes at least.

We keep going because now it will be further to turn around.  Pat takes corners like he’s driving the BMW instead of the mini-van.  I bite my lip to stifle a scream.  We turn off before we get to the mountain office, saving ourselves a few minutes at least.  Then, Pat takes on the dirt road back to the hills with a gusto that should really only be attempted in an all-terrain vehicle–the road is full of pot holes big enough to swallow a VW beetle.  We do make it, but we are late.

Dan, one of the instructors, advises us to set up a condor and share it.  We are nearing the end of our weekend package, so there’s no reason for us to fly falcons, I guess.

We follow instructions and soon have the condor assembled, pre-flight checked, and loaded onto a trailer for a tow up to the hill.

We fly like never before.  I get airborne so easily, I’m sure that I’m almost ready to start learning to land on my feet.  It’s a great feeling to fly over the grassy field.  Unfortunately, the wind picks up quickly.  By my second flight, I get blown around in a cross-wind after I launch.  Although this is not particularly scary to me, the instructor calls it.  She doesn’t like beginners to fly in gusting winds.  She says it’s too hard to tell what we’re doing vs what the wind is doing to make it useful to us, not to mention the potential dangers.

I am left with the high of having flown.  Plus, I am prepared to take our first written test, required to graduate to the big hill.  This is a new milestone for me–I’ve not previously cared if I ever graduate to the big hill.  In fact, I’d grown convinced that I never would.  But today, I am full of myself.  I flew!  Not only am I excited about graduating, but now I have the fleeting thought that maybe, just maybe I could launch off that mountain some day.

We go into town and grab lunch after putting away the glider.  Then we head up to the top of the mountain and sit outside in the van studying.  Pat hasn’t done the required reading yet, but I’ve now talked him into taking the written test, too.  I’m reading the book to him because he didn’t bring a pair of reading glasses.   We make it through the 4 chapters covered in the test and then head indoors.

I finish the test in about half the time Pat does.  I do not suffer from test anxiety and I try not to go back and second guess myself when I finish a test.  Pat, however, not only has major anxiety about tests, but he also is not particularly well prepared given that I read the chapters to him.  But, we both manage to pass.  This emboldens us further and causes us to decide to take the dramatic step of upgrading our package to an Eagle Package.  The Eagle Package includes 4 mountain launches.  I, however, have been assured that I do not have to go off the mountain if I change my mind.  We get the full tour of the facilities and the orientation that we didn’t get when we signed up for the introductory experience.  We even get to see the repair shop and the sewing shop next door.  It’s pretty cool.

But coolest of all, when we go outside, there are two pilots waiting for the wind to calm a bit so they can take off from the mountain.  Finally!  After so many trips up the mountain to watch this event that I’ve lost count, we will get to see a mountain launch!

Unfortunately, in my rush to get out the door today, I only brought my worst lens.  Although the 70-300mm focal range will be good and the lens is light enough that I can usually get away with hand holding it, it mis-behaves on me frequently.  I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that I dropped it on a ceramic tile floor in Montana over a year ago and have yet to get it repaired.

As the first pilot sets up, I snap a few shots and then move down below the launch to try to get a good angle of the launch process.  The moment when he starts the launch is the moment my lens decides it doesn’t want to focus anymore.  And, of course, I have my camera set to not shoot if it’s not in focus.  I completely miss the launch.  Not only do I miss shooting it, but I miss seeing it because I’m so panicked over my camera.

I take a deep breath and fiddle with the camera until I get the lens focusing again.  I manage to accomplish this prior to the second pilot, Meg, launching.

The launch is every bit as exciting as I expected it to be, but much shorter.  The longest part is setting Meg up at the launch line with 3 people holding the wires of her glider to prevent her from blowing away prematurely.  Then, Meg, in her sock feet, calls, “Clear,” and takes 2 steps before she is airborne and tucking her colorful feet into her pod.  I stand in awe.

We watch the two of them soar back and forth along the ridge, gaining altitude from the wind rushing up the face of the mountain.  They look so pretty against the blue sky.  However, watching hang gliders after they’ve launched is not really all that exciting for me yet.  I suppose I don’t have enough knowledge to know what they’re doing up there enough to appreciate it.  In any case, we decide it’s time to call it a day for hang gliding and to head on back to Chattanooga in time to catch the Head of the Hootch.

Women Hang Gliding Festival

Posted by dkrashb on

Today is the last day of the biannual Women’s Hang Gliding Festival at Lookout Mountain Hang Gliding.  We thought long and hard about whether we wanted to participate or not.  In the end, we decided not to because we figured it would be crowded on the training hills–crowds on the training hills mean fewer flights and less progress.

Instead, today we will drive out to the mountain launch in the hope of finally seeing someone take off from there.  We have been up to the mountain launch at least 5 times now, but each time, the wind has been blowing the wrong direction and no one was launching.  We’re hoping the wind will be with us today.

We take our time getting going this morning–after all, it is a Sunday morning. When we get to Trenton, GA, the closest town to the flight park, we’re both hungry and it’s almost lunch time.  We decide to stop for a bite to eat.  Where to eat in Trenton is always a question.  They have a lot of fast food choices and handful of family places, but we’ve not had a lot of luck with the places we’ve tried in the past.  Today, we decide to give the one Italian joint a try.

Perhaps they have good pizza, but we made the mistake of ordering pasta.  It was edible, but that’s about the best I can say about it.  The manicotti was over cooked and had the texture of something that had been cooked, frozen, and cooked again.  The sauce really had nothing going for it other than that it was wet, and the salad was entirely made up of iceberg lettuce that had seen better days.  The most amazing thing was the sweet tea.  I mixed half a glass of sweet tea with half a glass of unsweet tea and it was still too sweet.  But, we got through the meal and on our way with full bellies.

When we arrived at the mountain launch, it was about the time of afternoon when we’d expect to see hang gliders setting up.  No hang gliders in sight.  We look at the wind sock and sure enough, it’s a tailwind.  Having studied the first 3 chapters of the beginner hang glider’s training manual, I now know why this is so important.  While one might think a tailwind would make things easier because it pushes the glider along, a tailwind actually creates negative airspeed over the wing, which prevents the glider from lifting, which is very bad indeed.  So, hang gliders, because they rely on the wind and the wind alone when launching from the mountain, do not launch in a tailwind.

However, there are lots of aerotows going up this afternoon.  With a plane creating the airspeed needed for the glider to lift and an open field that lets the plane change the direction of takeoff according to the wind, aerotows are not so wind-direction dependent.  We stand and watch some of the gliders and I shoot, trying to capture both the gliders and the amazing fall leaves.  Unfortunately, once again I am shooting in the early afternoon and there is both sharp light and distant haze to make me wish I’d gotten there earlier.

A woman standing on the observation deck with two cameras around her neck walks over upon seeing my big lens.  She says she’s jealous of my lens.  We end up talking to her and her husband for several minutes.  Turns out they do people’s taxes for a living and only work from January to April.  The wife has gotten into photography of late, but it seems the husband is not so keen on the amount of money she’s spending on equipment, even though it appears she’s buying less expensive lenses.  She talks about wanting to start shooting portraits for money and how much she enjoys “making pictures” (this Southern expression has always thrown me, but when you think about it, it probably makes more sense than saying “taking pictures”).

The husband starts complaining about the expense again–he says, “I bought her that camera for $1000 and then she wanted another one so I bought her that one too and it was another $1000.”  I commiserate on the expense of good equipment and comment that the lens I really want is $12,000.  He turns to Pat and says, “I bet you said no to that!”  Pat and I both laugh at the notion and Pat says, “It’s her money.”  I say, “I said no–I’ll never be able to justify that expensive of a lens.”  I find it interesting that the husband has shared with us that he and his wife run their tax business together, yet he seems to think that their income is his income.  Even more interestingly, he assumes every man makes all buying decisions.  I feel sorry for the wife, although working 4 months of the year does sound fun.

We spend a little time in the hang gliding office before we head down to the landing zone to watch aerotows take off.  First, we talk about the different training packages and what would make sense for me given that I really don’t want to launch from the mountain, but I’m enjoying the training hills.  Then, we schedule coming out to the training hills next weekend and Pat takes a sudden interest in how much hang gliders cost.  This catches me off guard.  We learn that he and I could potentially share a glider and that a beginner glider starts around $3000 new.  I watch Pat’s face as he looks at the gliders the instructor points out to him on their website and I try to determine whether he is seriously thinking we’re going to be buying a hang glider or not.  I flash back to the months, even years, of getting rid of possessions in an effort to simplify our lives and try to imagine how a hang glider fits into this picture.  But, I let him look without comment.

Next, we drive down to the landing zone and sit for a while, watching aerotows.  For the first time, we see someone on a tow line that’s on a winch rather than an ultralight.  We’ve seen winch launches on TV before, but didn’t know this park had a winch.  The glider gets about 50 feet in the air before releasing and then comes back down and lands immediately.  I assume this is part of an aerotow training package.

We watch several tandem aerotows take off, and I practice focusing manually with my long lens with the extender attached.  I quickly learn that panning with an aerotow and manually focusing at the same time are not possible for me.  I’m not able to see clearly enough to tell if I’m in focus or not through the viewfinder and I can’t use live view in the LCD while panning.  I go for a small aperture opening in the hope of having enough depth of field to cover the difference.

After a while, Pat is bored and I have so many shots of hang gliders that I’ll be at the computer for hours, so we decide to leave.  As we drive out, we spot a flock of wild turkeys across a field.  Pat pulls over and I get out of the van slowly and grab my camera and tripod from the back.  By the time I get set up, another car has approached from the other side and a woman with a point-and-shoot gets out and starts walking towards the turkeys, spooking them.  I get only two quick shots in before they take flight and I have no time to make any adjustments to better capture them flying.  I make a mental note (not for the first time) that I really need to find a class on wildlife shooting or I’m going to end up always shooting landscapes.

Gaining Air

Posted by dkrashb on

The alarm goes off at 5:45AM.  I groan.  It’s Sunday after all; shouldn’t I get to sleep in?  I roll out of bed and feel all the places that are kinked, sore, and bruised from yesterday’s hang gliding adventure.  My neck and shoulders are burning.  I remind myself that I am only going to feel worse tomorrow morning after doing this a second day, then I get moving.  Coffee, face wash, and a glass of water all wake me up.  Pat is up and in motion.

Once again, I run around gathering everything necessary for a morning on the training hills followed by tandem flights.  For someone who doesn’t own any hang gliding equipment, this is an amazing amount of stuff.  First, I pack my camera bag, then I pack a change of clothes and stuff it in my new tripod bag.  Next, I pack my laptop, Verizon MiFi, iPad, iPhone, and all required power cords along with my wallet, sunglasses, etc. into a laptop bag.  Now, you might wonder why I need an arsenal of electronics to go hang gliding.  The truth of the matter is, I don’t.  But, I need this bag for the same reason Pat is gathering up pillows while I’m packing my bags:  we are going to have 5 hours to kill between the morning hill flights and the 5PM tandem flight.  I might as well make it a productive 5 hours.  Next, I grab my bag with my five fingers shoes and our water bottles.  When at last we’re ready to roll, I hang such an assortment of goods off my appendages that it’s not clear I can fit through the door.  Pat relieves me of a couple of bags and go on our way.

Having learned from yesterday’s mistake, we stop at a gas station in Trenton, GA before we get to the country roads that lead back to the training hills.  They let us use their employee restroom and we buy a couple of granola bars.  When we get to the training hills, I, of course, have to go again.  Back to the nasty outhouse I go.  I wish I would have brought a nose plug, but I survive.

This time, I am not only on time to help put together the gliders, but I am required to put together my own.  Today, Pat and I will each have our own glider.  Assembling a glider is a little scary.  As you read the instructions and put each piece in, you think to yourself, “I’m going to fly in this thing and if I don’t do this right, I’m going to die.”  It’s a lot of pressure.  But, I manage to get the thing together and ask for some help when I’m not sure if I’ve got it right or not.  The thing that surprises me is that the ribs that make the wings rigid are rods that simply slide into pockets and rest loosely against the front bar that creates the leading edge of the wing.  Seems like they should be attached somehow.  The other thing that surprises me is the places where it’s OK for the glider to be severely bent.  For example, the bracket that attaches the wheels to the down tubes is completely askew, but I’m told that there’s no problem with that bracket.  However, bends in the wing ribs are bad.  Bends in the front tubes on the leading edge are especially bad.  While I understand why the wing needs to be a particular shape, I’d kind of like my landing gear to be just as straight.

I get my glider together faster than Pat (I had a little more help).  I load it up onto the trailer and hop on, holding the strap that keeps it from tipping backwards in one hand and bracing the front of the glider with the other to keep it down in the trailer.  We bump along over the grass and to the back hill, climbing to the top in no time.  I am the 3rd person to make it up the hill.  Dan, the instructor, arrives only minutes after I do and the first students start launching.  The air is calmer today and we hope for a good day with lots of flights.

My first flight is an improvement over the day before.  I am encouraged that I am able to get air right away, although I still fail to correct my direction and spin out when I land in the middle of an unplanned turn.  An interesting thing is happening as I gain confidence–I am starting to have one more conscious thought that I remember each flight.  I remember the feeling of running in the air.  I remember letting my hands loosen and slide down the bar.  I remember trying to turn the glider.  This is all a lot of improvement–earlier flights, I could not tell what I had or hadn’t done or if I’d had any actual thoughts at all.  Now, I am able to discuss my flight with the instructor and realize that I was not keeping my eyes on target.

My next flight, I realize when I am not looking at the target and correct a little earlier.  Each time, something new is achieved and remembered.  It’s interesting to observe myself learn.  While I wish I were one of those natural athletes who can take on any physical task and instantly conquer it, my slow learning process at least gives me the opportunity to understand how I learn.  I notice that there is a point in each flight where I go from experiencing the exhilaration of soaring to the fear of landing (I have an assortment of scrapes and bruises from yesterday).  When I shift from the feeling of flying to the fear of falling, I start to forget what to do.  But, each time, I get a little further before that panic sets in.  Even after a particularly painful landing the flight before.  In that flight, I am caught by a cross-wind and turned dramatically to the left.  I shift my weight but I don’t change direction.  I assume I’m shifting the wrong direction and shift the other way, which makes matters worse and then I fall to the ground, literally bouncing off the grass and getting completely airborne a second time before landing for good.  The entire flight from when I left the ground to the second time I landed lasted about 8 seconds (based on the times of photos Pat shot).  Both knees hit when I landed the first time; they are bruised and swell slightly.

But the next flight, I still get better.  Now I know that I was correcting in the right direction, I just didn’t have enough speed to be able to control the glider in the wind.  I work on moving the bar in and out.  When I push the bar away from me, I get more lift.  When I pull the bar in, I get more speed, but in a downward direction.  I realize I am moving the bar too much–I need to stay light in my hands while I adjust.  I realize this just as I come in for another landing after a 7 second flight.  I get in one last flight–8 today all together–before the wind starts to kick up.  Pat gets in his last flight right before me.  He pulls his hamstring as he launches himself from the hill.  He is done.  I’m already spent and am happy for the excuse to call it a day.  I get my last flight in.  It’s smooth and controlled, although the wind has died and I don’t get as much lift as I have on previous flights.  That’s OK.  I wanted to have a controlled landing and I did.  I am not breaking any learning records on the hill, but I’m OK with that.

With Pat hobbling badly, we decide to postpone our tandem flight again.  We make the drive back up to the pro shop at the top of the mountain.  Once again, a crowd of tourist has gathered around the launch ramp only to be disappointed that no gliders are launching today–the wind is from the wrong direction again.  However, a tandem flight is towed up from the landing strip below, so the tourists (us included) get to enjoy watching that flight soar by.  I go inside to get a book that we need to pass a test to graduate to the next training hill.  While I’m paying, I hear a girl screaming and many people laughing.  Pat tells me when I return outside that the glider buzzed the pro shop and scared the girl to death.  We were surprised–I wonder if this is a boyfriend taking his girlfriend for a tandem flight since none of the pilots we flew with in our previous tandem flight did anything to intentionally scare us.  In any case, we’re glad to see them land safely on the airstrip below.

Pat limps back to the car and I drive us home.  Once again, we are exhausted.  I find myself wondering if there is a workout we can do for hang gliding preparedness!

Hang Gliding Take 2

Posted by dkrashb on

Still toying with the idea of getting our novice hang gliding certification (although also still not convinced I ever want to launch off the mountain), we signed up for a second round of hang gliding lessons.  We upgraded our introductory package to a weekend package, which gives us 15 more hill flights and 1 more tandem flight each.  Today is the kickoff of our weekend.  The alarm wakes us up early and we scramble to gather all the gear we’re taking with us.  We actually do not need anything other than a change of clothes and water, but I, of course, must take my camera.  And, the fact that we will be done on the hills by early afternoon but our tandem isn’t until 5PM means that we need things to do.  That means I’m taking two laptops, iPad, iPhone, and MiFi.  We also take air mattresses and pillows in case we want to take an afternoon nap.  We have more stuff than if we were traveling with an infant.

But, we get the car loaded and we make it out the door in plenty of time to fill up the gas tank and still get there early.  The entrance to the training hills is about 40 minutes from our place.  But once we get to that entrance point, there is a long dirt road full of pot holes, rocks, and ruts that we must make our way down.  It adds an extra 10 minutes, although it’s a little faster in the mini van that it was last time when we made the mistake of coming in Pat’s lowered BMW.

By the time we make it over all the bumps, I really need to use the restroom again.  Believing there are no facilities at the training hills, I start to head into the woods, but I see a man heading down a mown path and stop, thinking I don’t want to walk up on him if he’s headed into the woods for the same reason.  When he returns, I follow the same path he took to discover that there is an outhouse at the end of it.  Now, I have used many outhouses and, while none generally smell good, some are tolerable and some are really only appropriate for acts of desperation.  This outhouse appears to be occupied by mice.  I assume they have some rare disorder that causes a complete loss of smell.  The mice are not home right now, but their nesting and seed shells occupy the majority of one corner of the outhouse.  That is the most pleasant part.  I stand in front of the open door looking in and contemplate the pluses and minuses of just going in the woods anyway.  In the end, I opt to hold my breath and practice my balance inside the outhouse because I figure at least it’s private and I’m running out of time to find a good spot both because I have a very full bladder and because I’m supposed to be on the field by now.  Mental note:  make a pit stop at the nearest town tomorrow.

When I arrive at the field by the storage unit, I discover that I am supposed to be learning how to assemble my own glider and that Pat and the guy we will be sharing our glider with today, Craig, are already more than halfway through the process.  I get there in time to watch the final steps and perform the pre-flight check.  Pat tells me on the way to the hill that now that he’s seen how a glider goes together, he’s a little worried.  He was expecting it to have more parts that are fastened or something.  I decide not to think about it too much.

My first flight is not a flight at all.  It’s a run-and-crash.  I try to review what I did and didn’t do, but I have no conscious memory of what actions I took or didn’t take.  I assume that I stopped running too soon.  Pat, on the other hand, gets airborne like we were just hang gliding yesterday.  He seems to have retained what he learned last time.

My next turn, Gordy, the instructor, reminds me to loosen my grip and let the glider fly and to keep my eyes on my target.  I get a good start and launch well, but perhaps I loosened my grip a little too much because I am suddenly much higher than I expected.  I am also pointed towards the woods instead of my target and headed towards the 4-wheeler used to tow the hang gliders back to the top.  I confess:  I scream.  I know I did something to turn the glider back to straight, but my brain is not processing information at a conscious level, so I cannot say for sure what it was.  However, whether I did the wrong thing or just did too little, too late, I found myself diving towards earth, landing hard, and spinning out at the stop so that I ended up facing the hill.  The good news is that I landed before I hit the 4 wheeler.

Despite the crash landing, the feeling of flying stays with me.  The moment of lift off when my feet were running in air and the sudden realization that I am flying make me want to do this again.  I realize that I’ve been pushing myself into this.  This is the first time that it really felt fun.  Every run previously was more about “I can do this, too” than it was about wanting to be in the air.  I scraped my ankle on the first landing and it’s oozing blood.  My shoulders and upper arms are already bruised from carrying the glider.  My knees are bruised from landing too hard and too fast against the ground.  But now, I really want to get good at flying off this hill.

Unfortunately, there is a big crowd on the hill.  The wind is gusting and changing direction.  We need a calm, gentle headwind to safely launch and land.   There are 10 gliders up on the hill all vying for a turn at the precise moment the wind is right–we can launch only one at a time.  Plus, the morning ground school has now joined us on the hill to try to get their first flights in, adding 8 additional students and 3 more gliders.  But there are only short windows to launch in and everyone must launch into a headwind, so things slow way down as we take turns waiting for the wind to cooperate.

We stand-by as Gordy holds another trainee poised for take off, waiting for the wind to calm down.  When it does, it changes direction.  The student moves from one side of the hill to the other to try to catch a headwind.  Then the wind changes again.  This switching of direction slows the whole process down even more.  It’s not easy to move from one side of the hill to the other with a 90+ pound wing on your back in gusting winds.  Even more troublesome, the gliders start lifting off the ground on their own when the windspeed gets too high.  We start having trouble keeping gliders on the caddy coming up the hill.  First one flips in the wind, then another.

Between gusts of wind, Gordy manages to launch a few more students.  However, as I get on deck, I watch an experienced student in front of me get caught in a crosswind that causes one wingtip to catch the ground as she runs down the hill.  The glider goes airborne, spins, and then drops her on the ground hard.  She is OK.  She didn’t get high enough into the air to get seriously hurt, although I supposed she could have twisted an ankle or something easily enough given that she wasn’t launched yet.

Gordy announces that we’re going to call it a day and that we’ll try to fly down if the wind will let us, but we should take our gliders back after we land.  He looks at the windsock and looks at me and says, “I’m nervous about this wind.  Are you nervous?”  I say no.  I’m really not–I have confidence in my ability to heal.  He decides to walk me further down the hill so that I’m launching from a lower altitude.  The wind dies and I launch safely, but I get little lift because there is suddenly no wind at all.  It’s not quite the day on the hills we were hoping for, but we live close and walking away with only some bumps and bruises is far better than risking serious injury,

Pat and I discuss the odds that we’ll be able to take our tandem flight.  We decide to drive up to the pro shop at the mountain launch and reschedule since we don’t want to hang out all day only to have to reschedule anyway.  When we get up there, there is a crowd of disappointed tourists who were hoping to watch hang gliders launching from the mountain.  The wind is blowing the opposite direction needed for a safe launch, a tailwind, which we learn is called “over the back.”    The person in the pro shop thinks it’s a good idea for us to reschedule our tandem flights for tomorrow–apparently they have already moved people from Friday to Saturday and the schedule is over booked.

We head on home, tired and slightly disappointed, but still excited about the experience of flying and looking forward to returning tomorrow.

Hanging on Air

Posted by dkrashb on

When we decided to move to Chattanooga, one of the attractions was it’s proximity to Lookout Mountain Hang Gliding Park.  Hang gliding wasn’t really on my bucket list, but it was on my husband’s.  For me, I just hate to miss out on anything.  So, adventure number one was the Introductory Experience.

We arrived at the park office at quarter ’til 8AM.  The office perched high above the valley with an ominous looking concrete . . . slide?  The words that popped into my head when I saw it were, “Ramp of Death.”  But wasn’t so much a ramp as a concreted coating on the top of the mountain that started out looking reassuringly level and then took a nasty bend at almost a 90 degree angle, directing my gaze straight down a 2000 ft drop.   My stomach started doing flips–and not for joy.  Fortunately for me, the Introductory Experience package we’d signed up for did not include that kind of leap of faith!  Instead, after signing in, we were led down the mountain to the valley below to start learning on the bunny hill.

I love learning.  It’s the best part of life.  But the frustrating thing is how slowly new lessons sink in.  Especially when it includes making your body do something it’s never done before.  Picking up a hang glider and running across a field with it is one of those things.  It looks easy enough.  But finding the right spot on your shoulders to balance the weight of the glider is tricky and sometimes painful.  Then, there is wind.  There was no wind until I put a glider on my back, but as soon as I had wings, there was air moving me in directions I didn’t want to go.  The glider is designed to take flight.  You would think that would make it easier to carry.  But getting it to fly straight isn’t all that easy.  Especially when your airspeed is something less than 3 MPH.

Then there is the difference between knowing what you’re supposed to do in your mind and actually doing it.  I vaguely recall an article about how your brain has to build new neural pathways to allow you to perform an action that you have not performed before–being told what to do is not sufficient to allow you to do it until your brain finds a way to communicate the appropriate action for each muscle fiber to take and can coordinate all of those actions.  My brain seems a little stubborn.  For example, one of the things we were told when we graduated from the flat ground to the actual bunny hill was that we needed to run and keep running until we had taken three steps in the air.  Until you haven’t hit ground for three steps, you really haven’t launched.  The instructor repeated this message 9 more times as we each did our ground test hanging in a glider on a stand.  I said this to myself over and over as I prepared for my first launch.  “Keep running.  One, two, three steps in the air.  Keep running.”  But when I started down the hill and I felt myself lifting off the ground, what did I do?  I stopped running.  Then I landed hard, belly-flopped onto the ground and drug my body flat across the grassy slope at a rate of speed fast enough to make the tops of my feet feel like they were on fire.

But why did I stop running?  I know how to run.  I don’t need a new pathway to tell my legs how to move.  Yet, apparently, there is some message heavily coded in my brain that says, “Don’t run when you’re airborne.”  Where did that come from?  I’ve never run into the air before except in my dreams.  Maybe I stopped running when I was dreaming?

After gliding (dragging?) down the hill on my belly one more time, something in my brain clicked.  I couldn’t remember when I stopped running.  I couldn’t remember the feeling of running in the air.  It took two belly flops for me to even realize that I stopped running too soon.  The third run, that was a primary thought in my mind, “Just keep running.”  Not just before I started down the hill, but as I was picking up speed, feeling the harness pull against me, feeling myself lifting into the air, “Just keep running.”  And I felt myself running in the air, lifted off the ground, suspended by wings.  Then, I stopped running.  It was a glorious few seconds of flight.

Later that afternoon, we went for a tandem ride, each of us gliding with an instructor.  Being sympathetic to beginners, Lookout Mountain uses ultralight airplanes to tow tandem rides from the ground rather than having us run off the cliff together.  Saved from jumping off the cliff!

My instructor, Clayton, checks in to see how I’m doing.  To tell the truth, I’m not sure how I’m doing.  During take off, the glider starts to climb almost immediately, but there are a lot of jerks and bumps while being towed.  Watching the plane in front of us bumping up and down in the turbulence creates visions of horrible crashes in my mind.  I keep reminding myself that a glider is forgiving and there is plenty of room for recovery.

After detaching from the tow plane, we soar above the valley.  When you look out the window of an airliner, you don’t think about the experience of the wings.  Today, I am strapped to the wings–exhilaration and a small beep of terror compete for my attention as the air rushes around me.  Clayton finds a thermal and we circle our way up to nearly 3600 feet.  I’ve been in helicopters and a sailplane, but neither provides the view from a hang glider.  There is nothing between you and the ground.  I wonder how an eagle spots a fish.  I imagine spotting a fish and diving towards the earth with the assuredness of being born for flight.  I experience “eagleness” for a brief moment.

But the moments of exhilaration are clouded with fear.  I feel the tension in my body that indicates adrenaline is flowing.  I cannot relax although I try.  When I do relax for a moment, the glider bumps in an invisible shift of rising and sinking air and I am tense all over again.  I wonder how anyone can feel secure suspended from a giant kite?  I wonder why I am there.  Then, I return to that moment.  That instant of soaring above the earth experiencing lift and rushing air and the endless view.  There is no wondering and no fear when I am no where else in my head.  When I am mentally where I am physically, I am simply there.  No thoughts of crashing, no thoughts of falling, no thoughts of any kind.  I breathe in and I enjoy.