Paragliding And The Passion For Flight - Rejuvenate Your Flying Spirit
Posted on February 24, 2008
Filed Under Recreation and Sports |
You used to love paragliding, but now it just seems too much effort to find the right hill, not worth the risk to lay out the fragile canopy, it is all becoming a touch boring. The mere mention of flying used to fill you with adrenalin, one blurred image of a wing in a magazine would fill your mind with dreams of unlimited, glorious freedom. But now? Nothing new really happens, you launch, fly around, land, you’ve done it a hundred times before. Packing the glider away is just a hassle. Filling in a logbook? Nothing to report. A cold melancholy steals across your heart - where is the excitement? Where has the passion gone? Where is the magic of flying? Here are 10 ways to recharge your flying spirit.
1. Shoot it!
Use photography to make the moment count. Great flights live in memory, providing us with a breath of fresh air when we recall the experience. Memory fades with time, but photographs bring back the colour, that wonderful big blue sky filled with puffy white clouds. We’re right there, in the past, as a witness. Even a little digital camera can yield stories galore. Every day you fly, try to take a photograph which captures the mood of the day. Select your best photo’s, and put them in your logbook. Spend a little time over it, show your friends. Treat the flights as something special, and they will be something special.
2. Feeling your way
Ever answered the phone, and known before speaking who was on the line? The same intuitive sense is possible in the sky. Use it to detect thermals. Try to sense if it is flyable before you leave for your flying site. Wait on the launch site until you feel something approaching up the slope. See if you can feel where the thermals are, by flying with your eyes closed for a little while. There is a lot more to flying than meets the eye. Open your mind to the mysterious forces, and you may find your flying becoming something new and inspiring.
3. Adventure!
There’s nothing quite like standing on a huge mountain you’ve never seen in your life before, in a strange country, and then launching into its strange sky. Apart from the enjoyment of travelling, the challenge of mastering a new environment is enough to get your pulse racing. Even a trip to a new site in your own country can fire up the enthusiasm for the sport. You need to keep growing, that’s where the fun comes from, so call up some friends, jump in a van, and drive out of town for the weekend. Just do it!
4. Responding to Omens
A white-winged bird flies across your path, circles in front of you, and then glides off to the left. Pretend it’s an omen. Follow it, as far as you can. Three crows fly by, and tumble around each other. Do a wing-over. Respond to the world around you by playing with it. This childlike attitude allows magic to enter your world - you are more likely to hear the cloud calling you, to laugh at the words of the crows, and to see the thermal when your mind is in this playful frame. A logical mind, striving for more performance, and straining to integrate technical information about glide angles, lift, and tactics will allow you to achieve a ‘distance flown’. But a distance is something on the ground, and a flight is an adventure in the air. It doesn’t matter how far you fly, its how you fly that will keep you smiling.
5. Get it Thrashing
Safety courses (offered by experts in paragliders-behaving-badly) are a great first step to mastering aerobatics. You’re bored? How smooth are your wing-overs? Can you keep your wing firm when it’s below the horizon? Can you get your wing directly below you? Have you tried off-balanced spirals? There’s a lot to be learned from getting above your wing, and it can be hair-raising fun. Ask any skydiver - falling is furiously cool.
6. Change your Wings.
Take your friend’s wing, while your friend flies yours. The newness is exhilirating, the handling always different, and you may learn how much you really love the one you’re with, or find that perfect wing you’ve always dreamed of. You don’t have to buy a new glider to fly a new glider.
7. Do it together
Flying a tandem glider allows you to get a buzz off the enthusiasm of newcomers. As your passenger gasps at the thrill of lifting off the ground and trembles in the excitement of overcoming fear, you can’t help being a little thrilled yourself. The new responsibility and challenge of the tandem glider offers a steep learning curve. After putting your passenger safely back on the ground, it is usually really hard to wipe the smile off your face.
8. All by myself
If there’s a hill in the distance, then there’s a place to bivouac. Stuff some food, a sleeping bag, and a bottle of water into your pack, and take your wing on an adventure. The strain of walking can be purifying as you make your pilgrimage to the peak. The silence, the solace, the immersion in Nature makes even the shortest weekend bivouac a memorable journey. Spend the night out on the slope, warm in your sleeping bag, munch on bread and cheese, watch
9. Never Take Money for Love
One of the wonders of free-flying is that it offers an escape from the mundane world into the ethereal. If you’re making money out of paragliding, then you are exposed to an insidious danger - you may lose the love for the thing you cherished and find yourself chasing the dollar sign instead. There are many ways to make money - everyone’s doing it. There are precious few things that give the inspiration flying does. If you’re losing the passion for flying and you’re an instructor, dealer or tandem pilot, it may be time to think of finding another profession, and not another sport.
10. Novel Ideas
Enthusiasm is infectious, so catch some from your favourite writer. Richard Bach, author of ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’, ‘Illusions’, and ‘One’, is a master storyteller of aviation and metaphysics. Judy Leden, ex-World Hang-gliding and Paragliding Champion of the world, offered us ‘Flying with Condors’. Jim Palmieri (USA) has a vast wealth of tales collected in ‘Stories of our Heritage’. I wrote a novel titled ‘Beyond The Invisible’. All have a common purpose - to infuse the reader with the inspiring perspective of flying. Take one to bed with you, you’ll rise a happy pilot.
I hope that through these ideas you are able to rediscover the joy of being a bird. And maybe, by becoming enthusiastic, you’ll affect the others around you too.
Words © Greg Hamerton (http://www.greghamerton.com).
Greg has been flying since 1992 and is a paragliding instructor and cross-country pilot. He is an author and photographer and lives in Cape Town. His novel Beyond The Invisible explores themes of fear and freedom within flying. His Fresh Air Site Guide is a book
For more information visit Paragliding in South Africa.
Tags: adrenalin, flight, paragliding, passion
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