I'll Fly Away
May. 23rd, 2010 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteOkay, let's get the exuberating over with first -
I went hang gliding this weekend! And there was up, and in the sky, and hanging from a giant kite a half mile above the ground, and it was all WHEEE and WHOOSH and WOW and then SWOOOP to the side and the other side, and SPIN and DIVE and WOW and did I mention FLYING and oh my god so amazingly epically cool?
There. Now that that's out of my system....
So this weekend, after multiple failed attempts over the past year or so, a friend and I set out once again to try to go hang gliding. And in spite of the best efforts of the weather, New Hampshire's roads, a somewhat confused GPS, and a kite that was rather reluctant to adapt to fit people of both abnormally short and abnormally tall stature, we were finally, amazingly, successful.
I was afraid Friday night, when it started drizzling, and even more so Saturday morning when I woke up and there was a haze of clouds hiding the sky - previous hang gliding facilities have refused to take us up when it was cloudy or windy. But as we drove out, the clouds started to fade and burn away, and for once the weather cooperated - by the time we were within a few miles of the flight park, the sky was clear.
That just left us with the challenge of actually getting to the flight park. Apparently, the far-out boonies of New Hampshire and Vermont are riddled with things that claim to be roads, and claim to have names, but are in fact just vaguely level dirt tracks with delusions of grandeur. Also, many of these have the same names. The poor GPS did its best to take us where we asked, but gave up and just started whimpering and pointing vaguely ahead to a nonexistent path ahead somewhere after it thought we should have arrived. Luckily, with the help of Scary Junkyard Man And His Incredibly Loud But Blessedly Harmless Hounds, we managed to get more helpful directions and made it to the flight park only a few minutes after our scheduled appointment.
Luckily again, Morningside Flight Park is apparently a very.... casual place. Within minutes of getting there, we were plunked down at a picnic table with a stack of waivers, a box of doughnuts, and a guy in a sweatshirt teaching us the FAA Required Basics of Flight And Hang Gliding, a course which lasted approximately three minutes and consisted of:
1) This thing doesn't have a motor. You control it with your body. Push forward, slow down. Pull in, speed up. Shift right, go right. Shift left, go left.
2) I'm the instructor. I'll have a parachute. If something should go wrong, you shout in my ear 'Oh God, Oh God, we're all gonna die.' I'll deploy the parachute. You don't shout, I don't pull. Remember that.
3) I'm technically not allowed to take passengers, so this is a lesson. You feel educated? Good. Let's go. Meet me over by that field in about ten minutes; we just have to wait for the guy with the plane to show up. He's waiting for the glue to dry on his cappucino table.
(I have no idea what a cappucino table is. I am torn between a suspicion that it's just a slightly fancier coffee table and a belief that it really ought to be some kind of fancy chart for calculating the exact foam-to-beverage-to-cup ratio.)
And then there was a giant kite, and the ritual donning of helmets and stepping into harnesses and hooking up ropes and looking like a huge idiot for about a minute and a half before the plane took off and we were rolling, and then we were about a foot off the ground, and then somehow the plane was in the air and we were in the air and it was so incredibly smooth and perfect that I never noticed the transition.
I can't honestly describe how beautiful and amazing and breathtaking and just mind-bogglingly awesome this was. Being in the air felt as natural as swimming, down to the tiny bumps and waves of air currents gently nudging us one way or the other. The harness felt safe and the glider was almost as natural as an extension of my arms, and the air all around us was as right as anything could be. When the plane detached and we were gliding on our own, I expected to feel a jounce or a shock or an adrenaline rush, but it never happened - just... smooth and sweet and alive.
Flight Instructor Guy let me pilot the glider for a few minutes, and I amused us both with my rather awkward and hesitant attempts to steer. Blessedly, it's not like there's anything to run into at 2500 feet, and the kite is too aerodynamic to suddenly plummet from poor guidance. After a little while I started to get the hang of it, and that's when he asked if I wanted to keep going gently down or if I wanted to have fun.
Stupid question.
That's when the dives and stalls and loop-de-loops started. And God, they couldn't last long enough. But gravity works, and eventually we ran out of wind and momentum and drifted down to ground as gently as a dandelion seed. And I commenced to spend the next 24 hours nearly vibrating in place with delight and excitement and joy at having had such an amazing experience.
I need to do this again. I need to become independently wealthy, and go back and take training classes and learn how to do this on my own. Because.... I was flying. Above the birds. Without a plane. Without much of anything. Me, and wings, and air. And Flight Instructor Guy, yeah, but... that's okay. He's cool. Because he can fly.
I went flying this weekend. I still can't get over how incredibly cool that is....
I went hang gliding this weekend! And there was up, and in the sky, and hanging from a giant kite a half mile above the ground, and it was all WHEEE and WHOOSH and WOW and then SWOOOP to the side and the other side, and SPIN and DIVE and WOW and did I mention FLYING and oh my god so amazingly epically cool?
There. Now that that's out of my system....
So this weekend, after multiple failed attempts over the past year or so, a friend and I set out once again to try to go hang gliding. And in spite of the best efforts of the weather, New Hampshire's roads, a somewhat confused GPS, and a kite that was rather reluctant to adapt to fit people of both abnormally short and abnormally tall stature, we were finally, amazingly, successful.
I was afraid Friday night, when it started drizzling, and even more so Saturday morning when I woke up and there was a haze of clouds hiding the sky - previous hang gliding facilities have refused to take us up when it was cloudy or windy. But as we drove out, the clouds started to fade and burn away, and for once the weather cooperated - by the time we were within a few miles of the flight park, the sky was clear.
That just left us with the challenge of actually getting to the flight park. Apparently, the far-out boonies of New Hampshire and Vermont are riddled with things that claim to be roads, and claim to have names, but are in fact just vaguely level dirt tracks with delusions of grandeur. Also, many of these have the same names. The poor GPS did its best to take us where we asked, but gave up and just started whimpering and pointing vaguely ahead to a nonexistent path ahead somewhere after it thought we should have arrived. Luckily, with the help of Scary Junkyard Man And His Incredibly Loud But Blessedly Harmless Hounds, we managed to get more helpful directions and made it to the flight park only a few minutes after our scheduled appointment.
Luckily again, Morningside Flight Park is apparently a very.... casual place. Within minutes of getting there, we were plunked down at a picnic table with a stack of waivers, a box of doughnuts, and a guy in a sweatshirt teaching us the FAA Required Basics of Flight And Hang Gliding, a course which lasted approximately three minutes and consisted of:
1) This thing doesn't have a motor. You control it with your body. Push forward, slow down. Pull in, speed up. Shift right, go right. Shift left, go left.
2) I'm the instructor. I'll have a parachute. If something should go wrong, you shout in my ear 'Oh God, Oh God, we're all gonna die.' I'll deploy the parachute. You don't shout, I don't pull. Remember that.
3) I'm technically not allowed to take passengers, so this is a lesson. You feel educated? Good. Let's go. Meet me over by that field in about ten minutes; we just have to wait for the guy with the plane to show up. He's waiting for the glue to dry on his cappucino table.
(I have no idea what a cappucino table is. I am torn between a suspicion that it's just a slightly fancier coffee table and a belief that it really ought to be some kind of fancy chart for calculating the exact foam-to-beverage-to-cup ratio.)
And then there was a giant kite, and the ritual donning of helmets and stepping into harnesses and hooking up ropes and looking like a huge idiot for about a minute and a half before the plane took off and we were rolling, and then we were about a foot off the ground, and then somehow the plane was in the air and we were in the air and it was so incredibly smooth and perfect that I never noticed the transition.
I can't honestly describe how beautiful and amazing and breathtaking and just mind-bogglingly awesome this was. Being in the air felt as natural as swimming, down to the tiny bumps and waves of air currents gently nudging us one way or the other. The harness felt safe and the glider was almost as natural as an extension of my arms, and the air all around us was as right as anything could be. When the plane detached and we were gliding on our own, I expected to feel a jounce or a shock or an adrenaline rush, but it never happened - just... smooth and sweet and alive.
Flight Instructor Guy let me pilot the glider for a few minutes, and I amused us both with my rather awkward and hesitant attempts to steer. Blessedly, it's not like there's anything to run into at 2500 feet, and the kite is too aerodynamic to suddenly plummet from poor guidance. After a little while I started to get the hang of it, and that's when he asked if I wanted to keep going gently down or if I wanted to have fun.
Stupid question.
That's when the dives and stalls and loop-de-loops started. And God, they couldn't last long enough. But gravity works, and eventually we ran out of wind and momentum and drifted down to ground as gently as a dandelion seed. And I commenced to spend the next 24 hours nearly vibrating in place with delight and excitement and joy at having had such an amazing experience.
I need to do this again. I need to become independently wealthy, and go back and take training classes and learn how to do this on my own. Because.... I was flying. Above the birds. Without a plane. Without much of anything. Me, and wings, and air. And Flight Instructor Guy, yeah, but... that's okay. He's cool. Because he can fly.
I went flying this weekend. I still can't get over how incredibly cool that is....
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 01:58 am (UTC)Yes, that would be what I would do.
I shall get the name of this place from you - and better directions! - just as soon as I have disposable income. Or perhaps before, so I can accumulate disposable income with a goal in mind.
MADE OF WIN. :) Go you!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:20 am (UTC)We did the Tandem Flight; it's honestly not that expensive at all. Unfortunately, the only real directions I can give are "follow your GPS; after it curls up in a ball and starts whimpering just keep going until you find the junkyard and ask the guy there.
If you do go, let me know - I will take any excuse to do this again. :)
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Date: 2010-05-24 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 03:20 am (UTC)By analogy with a water table and groundwater, I assume that if I go outside and dig a deep enough hole, I will reach the groundcappuccino[1], and be able to fill as many of those little cups as I want.
[1] Heh.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 01:15 pm (UTC)I've always wanted to fly but am ooked by the idea of jumping out of a plane or running off a cliff. Your description of the seamlessness of transition from ground to air is very intriguing! :)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 08:05 pm (UTC)