Learning to fly (part II)

When I moved to Oregon, I did not fly for nearly a year. Grad school was time consuming. Furthermore, I had no car, only a small motorcycle. One day I threw the glider in the back of my girlfriends jeep before we went off camping in the desert. Coincidentally, there were gliding pilots at the same campground (Pine Mountain) that night. They invited me to fly with them. The next morning, I did an early desert flight before the thermals began to build. It was just a sledder and it was also the roughest flight I had had to that date. Once we separated, I lacked, among other things, the transport to really put an effort in continuing to fly.

Then my buddy, Ryan, gave me a call one day in September. After college back east, he moved to lake Tahoe and became a ski bum, but he now had a position starting at the Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon. Newport was only two hours away from my school in Eugene. Nothing really happened at first. Then one day in February I figured out how to carry my glider on my motorcycle. The next day Ryan and I started kiting on the beach near his house. It was a little random, but fun. It was nice to have a familiar face in flight. Two weeks later we talked each other into going to a training hill of sorts, the Cape Kiwanda Dunes. It was early March, and I will remember that day for the rest of my life.

When I had launched at Pine Mountain, the August prior, I was terrified. It had been over a year since I had even pulled the wing out. I was even having trouble hooking up my speed system with confidence. I did a forward because a reverse was out of the question. Cape Kiwanda changed that. I screwed up a few times. But the dunes were broad and barren. The sand was soft - relatively. I ate sand. I intentionally stalled my glider a few feet above the ground. I landed cross wind. I landed down wind. Ryan was as rusty as I was. Together, we re-learned what we had learned. I walked up that training hill no less than 12 times that day. I can only describe that time as pure joy. I was exhausted by the end, but I could reverse launch again. The day was magic. It was also my first time flying with a camera. I had too much fun making this video, though I am ashamed to say I stole the song from another paragliding film - a sin I will never repeat again.

Ryan kept telling me we needed to get in with the local paragliding group. I don't know why I was so reluctant to do so before the suggestion. I left an email with on the listserv, and was soon called by a guy named Bill (P3). He said the flying was going to be good that weekend at some place called Cape Lookout. The next Saturday, I rode to his abode, threw my stuff in the back of his 4x4 and we were off. I sat in the back, listening to Bill chat with another pilot, Mike (P4), in the front passenger seat. I didn't really care where we were going or how long it would take to get there. I had felt like I already had success. I was breaking the barrier. Even if today was blown out, it would be fine. A sledder would make me happy. I would learn the site - a real soaring site, not just some low dunes.

After a couple hours we arrived at Cape Lookout. I didn't really know the geography. I could see the beach from the meager roadside launch. The wind was dead, but Bill didn't seem too concerned. We ate lunch and waited. Around 2 pm, the wind began to pick up a little. More pilots began arriving. Eventually, there were over 20 pilots gathered around the small launch. Some were taking off into sledders directly toward the beach. I got in line telling myself a decent launch and a solid landing would make the day a success. The wind steadily built...

When I launched, I was nervous. I pulled the wing up twice trying to do a reverse launch. Both times, it fell flat, with not enough wind. I fly a small Ellus 2. The wing is known to be a tank in that it's heavy as far as wings go and needs a bit more wind that most to launch. After more effort, I finally got the wing up! I was running forward! My feet left the ground!! I cleared the launch and made a gradual left, staying in the lift band of the cape out over the water. I turned away from the hill and then back toward launch. Unlike any other flight I had ever had, I maintained altitude. I didn't know what to do other than to keep doing what I was doing. So I just worked my way back and forth along the lift band. The other pilots, seeing my success, began launching one after the other to take advantage of the soaring conditions.

Only after I managed a couple hundred feet over launch, did I see the majesty of Cape Lookout. It extended a mile out into the ocean, covered by beautiful towering pine trees. Clouds blocked some of the higher parts of the cape. We were only flying a small part of it that day because the lift was light and ravines in the cape reduced the lift windward of their presence making a crossing of the ravines too risky.

Conditions remained light all day. Many launched and, during the lighter periods, many sunk out. I came close a few times to doing just that, but I always managed to hang in there. I had worn my summer motorcycle riding gloves - a mistake in the Oregon winter on the coast. My hands felt like they had frozen to my controls and I was just applying weight to my arms to turn. I also had a pee terribly after over two hours of being airborne, but I did not want to land. This was it. This was what I had been chasing whether I had realized it or not. Everything, at that moment, was perfect. Life was good. Tomorrow was not now and yesterday wasn't real. All the above rang true - until the urge to pee overwhelmed me and I went to land anyway. I CHOSE to land. I left the lift band, set up my approach and brought the glider down on the wide long sandy beach and was welcomed to a balmy 49 F. I took care of business and packed up. Fifteen minutes after landing, the wind died and dumped all other pilots from the air. I hurried to finish packing my glider as 20+ gliders rained down around me. I did my best to be courteous and stay clear as they had no choice about coming down.

No one really got high or left the immediate ridge, but it was amazing

I sat in the back as I rode home in pure ecstasy. At Bills, I loaded the packed glider onto my back and rode an hour in the dark through the farmlands until I reached the comfort of my dorm. I dropped everything as soon as the lock clicked behind me. I passed out on by bed in my riding gear. Waking the next day, most of my muscles were soar. Everything was tired. I had never thought about the muscles flying would need. I tried to explain to my friends in the geology department what I had experienced. The elation I wanted to share went mostly unheard. There was curiosity from most, but they just didn't know. They couldn't understand without having done it themselves. I was alone - at least until I called up Ryan, who had had to work that Saturday, and gave him the details. Ryan understood. He was jealous. I was still learning to make videos at the time, so please forgive the over dramatization from that day.

A couple weeks later was the Oceanside fly-in. I could only make it Sunday. I rode the bike the whole three hours to Cape Lookout from Eugene. I arrived at 10 am to already see pilots in the air. I called Ryan, told him it was on, and ran my pre-flight. I was in the air 15 minutes later. The cloud base was lower, but the lift was stronger. As I flew, more pilots arrived and launched. The sky was filling with more than 30+ gliders. Over two hours passed before I saw Ryan's wing below mine. I worked around and pulled along side him. We chatted a bit and then he took lead. I followed. We crossed the ravine nearest launch, a feat I had never dared before. Together, we worked further down the cape. I followed him into the clouds. We played a cloud base. I know it was unsafe, especially with all the other pilots in the air, but it was worth it to me then. It was all surreal. It wasn't real. I never felt safe, but I didn't feel unsafe either. The video below captures among the things already mentioned, a close call I had when trying to report another glider that had crashed. I escaped narrowly as my wing was brushed by pine needles.

After 3 hours of flying, I had had enough and Ryan landed too. I didn't realize it until I was on the ground, but I was shaking. I didn't stop shaking for many minutes. I don't know if it was the cold, adrenaline, or exhaustion. Again, the wind died shortly after I landed and the pilots were forced to break away from the cape to land.

We talked to some other pilots, who said they were headed to a nearby site, Sollie Smith, where the light thermals would be fun to play in. We followed them in Ryan's car. It was a sledder. I'll just leave this video here to describe the flight. The date on the video doesn't match the story. Either my logs are wrong or my memory is. It doesn't matter though. The flights happened either way.

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

Welcome

In an effort to exert my flying influence in a direction that is not an annoyance to others, I decided to write these things down as a record of flights passed, current endeavors, and present anticipations for the future. I do not make any promises about the regularity of posts, but if on that far chance someone takes enough interest to follow, I apologize now and only this once. However, my love for free flight is the first real activity I have felt like I can pursue for a lifetime, so, though posts may become far in between, they will persist. 

Look upward and behold the wanders I have seen...