Tag Archives: Lookout Mountain

Book Smarts

Posted by dkrashb on

There’s an expression about being book smart vs street smart.  The idea suggests people are either smart in theory or smart in practice.  In reality, of course, no one is really all one or the other.

For example, I can study how people move their bodies up stairs, determine an appropriate exercise regimen, and create a plan that will make me better at climbing stairs using book smarts.  But I can’t actually get better at climbing stairs except by, well, climbing stairs.

Since there is no room for trial and error when hang gliding, knowing what we’re doing and why helps.  And, since hang gliding truly is the application of physics, it makes sense that getting rated as a pilot would require some book smarts.

Here is where I run into a line that divides book smarts from street smarts.  I am able to read the material through once, review it quickly, and then score what would be an “A.”  However, when I return to the training hills, I am unable to translate what the material said into what my body does.  This disparity between concepts in a book and physical application frustrates me.

But today, we are in my element.  We are taking our final two tests.  I read through the materials and took notes the day before.  I think we will be done around noon given that it’s only 10AM.

As it turns out, I finish up my second test shortly after noon.  Pat, on the other hand, has not finished the reading material for the first test yet.  Mind you that Pat is someone who fully understand mechanics and physics in a way I never will.  However, his in depth understanding of how things work doesn’t seem to help him speed through test taking.

At 2PM we run out and grab a bite to eat at the closest place around. It’s a combination gas station, convenience store, hamburger joint–an honest to goodness family owned place.  After filling our stomachs, we return to the office and Pat takes his first test.  I, thankfully, have my iPad for amusement.

I’ve gotten through an episode and a half of Glee by the time Pat takes his completed test up to the desk.  After a while, I hear him talking.  He has met Matt Tabor, the owner of Lookout Mountain, and they are gabbing.  I finish the second half of the episode I’m watching and decide I need to intervene.

It’s an interesting conversation and I get sucked in.  I eventually remember that my goal was to get Pat on task and I remind him I am waiting on him to finish his second test.

At 6PM, we have to leave because they are closing for the night.  Pat has 15 questions to go on the test, but he calls it a night and we head on home.  Since completing the test now requires backtracking, I am more irritated than he is.  I remind myself that this is fun.

Graduation Day

Posted by dkrashb on

Today, I went to the hang gliding training hills.  It was one of those days that combined ridiculous mistakes with unexpected successes.  Although I had my share of spills and chills today (see video), in the end, I passed the required test of successfully executing 4 Hang I flights in a row.  This means I move to the big hill.  Not the mountain yet (thank goodness!) but from the bunny hill to the big hill.  It’s a momentous occasion.  As my instructor said, I’ve worked hard for this moment.

I pause and think about this for a moment.  I don’t believe I’ve ever worked so hard for so long on achieving a novice skill level in my life.  This is a point of pride–to have stuck it out for so long just because it was fun.  I let go of my expectations, goals, and frustrations and just had fun.  Had I done anything else, I would have quit after the 3rd day out on the training hills.

As it is, I’ve flown down that baby hill so many times, I’ve gotten attached to it.  I can tell stories about the community on that hill.  The women who inspired me to keep trying–especially one who told me she’d been coming out for over a year and was still learning to land on her feet (she’s been coming out infrequently).  The student who was 60 years old and learning to hang glide for the first time. The dogs who have accompanied me through my journey from ground school.  The instructors who insisted it was OK to be on the slow plan.  Even the view from the hill of the mountain ridge, the big hill, the trains, the deer that would occasionally wander by.

All of it together kept me coming back.  And now, I find myself attached to that small hill.  As I ride the Kubota over to the big hill, I find myself actually tearing up a little.  This catches me by surprise.  I’m confused as to whether I am sad or overjoyed.  Having never given much thought to this day, not really believing it would ever happen, I find myself unprepared for the sudden emotion.

I perch on the edge of the big hill looking down and am amazed at how much bigger it really is.  I look across the training grounds and realize that while I have been enjoying the journey instead of focusing on the destination, I managed to arrive at the destination full of wonder and excitement.  This is a new lesson for me after a lifetime of holding so tightly to goals that I squeeze the life out of them.

The wind doesn’t cooperate today.  There is only one direction to fly off the big hill and we decide today is not the day for my first flight.  As I head back down, I am neither disappointed nor relieved.  After all, it’s taken me 5 months to get here, I’m in no hurry.

Landing on My Feet

Posted by dkrashb on

We have returned to the hang gliding hills.  The instructor, Dan, tells me to run like I’m on Baywatch.  I try to channel David Hasselhoff as I take my next run down the hill, although I’m certain Dan had someone blonde and female in mind.

The rest of the morning, my flights seem to get better and better.  Dan asks me if I want to start trying to land on my feet.  I have seen many people land on their feet.  They swoop in low and then allow the nose to reach trim, move their hands up on the bars, and then push up, tipping the nose back so that the glider is like a super-hero cape behind them.  Then, they lower gently to the earth and land on their feet, just like any modern-day super hero should.

My first attempt, I get close, but when I try to flare, my arms go out fully extended and the glider is just barely tipped back.  I get enough lift to almost put my feet down, but then I crash to the ground with a thud.

I go through several more attempts, making mistakes each time.  My closest attempt culminates with me falling flat on my face.  I didn’t think it was possible to actually hit your face on the ground while strapped into a hang glider, but I manage it.  Pat pulls up on the Kubota and says, “Are you OK?  You landed flat on your face!”  I assure him I am aware I landed on my face.

After a final roll-in landing, I decide it’s time to call it quits for the day if I want to make sure I can get up tomorrow.

As I change into my dry clothes, I count the bruises.  I have a scraped ankle, bruises on both knees and both hips.  My shoulders are bruised, my arm is bruised, and my wrists and forearms ache.  For a moment I wonder why I continue beating myself up.  I smile to myself as I remember the feeling of having a really good flight.  The feeling of being lifted up into the air and then riding the ground effect for that brief moment before the wheels touch down.

I look at my bruises a second time and smile knowing I earned them because I took a major step forward today.  I think, “This is fun.  I’ll stop when it’s not fun anymore.”

I’ve always believed the saying, “it’s about the journey, not the destination,” but I’ve never really done anything that way.  Learning to hang glide is the first time I’ve taken on learning something with no goal in mind. I don’t know if I will ever do a mountain launch.  All I know is I really like the way it feels to glide off the training hill.  I’m having a ball right where I am and I’m having a ball learning one small skill at a time.  Why would I give that up?

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.