Learning to fly (part I)

I started flying at a particularly turbulent (yes, there will be puns) period of my life. I had just returned from study abroad to a failing relationship in the January of 2008. The other party to said relationship had proposed the idea of paragliding lessons over a year earlier. Despite our unraveling of the ties that bound us, we went into learning to fly together that January. At the time, we both lived in Washington, DC. Yup, on top of everything else, it was the mid-Atlantic.

I pioneered the cross-wind forward launch 

The early flights were your standard training hill activities, including a lot of forward launching and even, in our naive ways, cross-wind forward launches. The training hills were gentle, which made up for the little to no instruction our instructor gave us. We landed down wind. We landed in the rotor from tree lines. We even landed backwards. 

Our instructor eventually said we were ready for the big league and off we went to a high launch. The other two students, including my (lessening) significant other, launched first and enjoyed sledders to the large landing zone that remains a large plowed corn field. The the wind started blowing from over the back. I practically pleaded with my instructor to sit things out and see if conditions improved. The cycles began to vary from over the back to maybe 1-2 mph straight up launch. He said OK. I was elated and did a forward launch with nearly zero headwind. Now, I am only shocked he would have sent a student in those conditions.

The first time I was airborne, the air was gentle

Not having a radio, I was fortunate that sky had clouded over and thermic activity was basically nil. I had a smooth sledder to the landing zone with not a hint of lift. In hindsight, I consider myself lucky that I did not encounter rotor from the ridge. I was ecstatic as I landed. I had flown a solid 10 minutes without immediate guidance and landed safely. Years later, I found out I flew a DHV 2 wing, an Aspen Gradient. To those who are not savvy rating of paragliding wings, a DHV 2 is not a beginners wing. Should something had happened, I probably would have been in real trouble.

Our instructor told us that we were then, at that moment, P2s - Novice Pilots - and that his job was done. We never saw him again. Upon contacting others in the DC flying community and meeting up with them we talked our stories. They were excited to have a couple new P2s in the area and asked to see our licenses. "Licenses?" We asked. "No, (Instructor's Name) told us we're good..."

Turns out to get the P2 rating we had to taken a written exam. Only an instructor could do that and ours, as we later discovered, had left the country. The only other guy in the area, Jim Kaplan, stepped up and took us on for free. He gave us lectures and quizzed us on the theory and principles of flight. He proctored our written exams. I learned a lot from him, but more than anything, I learned of the many, many ways paragliding can be hazardous, scenarios our previous "mentor" had never mentioned. Eventually, we became real P2s a year later in winter of 2009. I and the once-significant other went our separate ways. Neither of us were very tactful dealing with the matter. I don't know if she flies today or not. I know she lives in Chicago, so I suspect not, but I won't assume. Either way, this is where her part in the story ends.

Ellis and her crew

Hours after she moved out, the only other paragliding pilot, also a budding P2, at my college moved in. My new roommate, Ryan, would become my "paragliding buddy" that I still highly regard to this day. Over the next year, we only flew once together. It just never worked out. Like the moon and sun, it was just unusual to see us in the sky together. Instead, I flew frequently with a P3, an intermediate pilot, named Ellis. She took me under her wing and taught me the more than anything that my learning had just begun. There were so many things I had yet to know and experience. I made mistakes. At one point, I crashed into a bunch of trees and was stuck for over three hours. I and my glider escaped without damage. In the end I only accumulated 2-3 hours of air time and a couple dozen flights before finally moving out of the Maryland/DC area. I was headed to Oregon, to start school at the University of Oregon in Eugene. I would later come to remember my mid-Atlantic flying as an intro tutorial into something that would soon become much bigger than I could have possibly imagined...

I got picked up, spun around in a bad way and found a tree