Aug 14 the fast way down
Adam and Katie leave for the dune the next morning without flying .Apparently she who must be obeyed is missing the seaside and not wanting too much fuss Adam agrees to make the 5 hour drive back and we bid them a fond farewell.I guess you cant please all the people all the time.There are lots of activities here besides flying with horses mountain bikes and kyaks on hire to name a few and it seemed to my selfish mind she could at least of let him fly the mountain once after driving all that way but what do I know.The three of us left head into the village to suss out a lift up to the huge launch which is around 2000meters above landing.Although this is just a small village with one main street the potential here is such that it supports 5 paragliding shops who all seem to be surviving perfectly well without firebombing eachother and were all here when I last visited in 2005.Joe decides to fly the speed glider and climes up another few hundred meters above the launch to make sure he makes the landing field as the glide on the speed glider is only about 5:1.He has been making calculations all morning on various scraps of paper relating to the height at launch,which we don’t know exactly,the height of the landing field, which we don’t know exactly and the distance to the landing field which ,you guessed it , we don’t know exactly.He thinks its on.If his calculations are correct he will have a cool fly down at top speed with room for loops and spins and we hope to get some cool video if we are close enough.If his calculations are inaccurate he will fall short and crash into the forest and we will get some cool video if we can get close enough.Everybody wins(don’t they?).I take Nat up on the tandem.She is a game girl and knows neither me or Joe have any tandem experience but I guess you don’t get free tandem rides everywhere and we are both pretty experienced pilots with hundreds of hours between us.On the risk verses reward scale most would have to do it.We wait for Joe to make the climb and set up before we launch to be able to film his flight and sure enough after a few minuits he goes screaming past us at top speed whooping and hollering.Iwant a go on that.We thermal around on the tandem for a while but such is his speed we don’t get close enough for any really worthwhile video.He makes the L.Z. with room to spare and I decide to take up his offer of a go and for the next flight we swap places.Im not looking forward to the climb but it should be well worth it.It is.I am getting one of these.The most fun for ages and a totally new way for me to fly.Everything is super fast including the launch and the same amount of control imput that make my paraglider do a 90 degree turn sends this thing looping towards the ground.I decide to email my club back home the first chance I get to see what type of deals are available.We meet up again back at the skylark and spend the rest of the day swimming in the nearby river and trying to smoke enough weed to bring our resting heartbeats down below 100bpm which turns out to be impossible.