Catching an updraft and soaring higher in the sky is godlike and the very opposite of feeling stuck and helpless on the ground. Is the bad news cascading all around us fueling my desire to fly again? Because paragliding is hands-down the coolest, most spectacular thing I’ve ever experienced. And it’s impossible not to wonder if our dismal state of affairs might be driving this.
And for the first time in twenty years, I’ve found myself dreaming of getting back up there. So while I long ago sold that beach house, and replaced my motorcycle with a convertible, I still have my wing. And I knew that the longer I didn’t do it, the less likely I’d ever do it again. This crowded out the flying season, and paragliding, with its extensive knowledge base to maintain, is not a sport to drop in and out of safely. I didn’t know that then, but the following year my life began a new chapter (inspired by that Southampton beach house) that led to my renovating a beach sharehouse out on Long Island. In the Fall of 2002, I flew for the last time. Making a turn in Valley de Bravo, Mexico. Glancing down on the backs of birds soaring beneath me, I felt like I was living George Peppard’s tagline from The A-Team: “I love it when a plan comes together.” Then, on a student trip to the Spanish Mediterranean coast, I ridge-soared for the first time, riding a steady updraft (created by the wind curving up the mountain’s ridge) communicating via two-way radios with instructors as we flew a thousand feet above the silver crests of the sea.
I bought my own wing, learned how to set up a landing, and progressed to actual, short flights, none of which lasted anywhere near as long as I wanted. Then I ran down that hill, running with everything I had until that magic moment when my feet began spinning in the air. So I began riding my Shadow up to Ellenville, chasing my life-long dream of achieving liftoff.Īfter spending several hot and tiring afternoons standing atop a bunny hill, repeatedly attempting to raise a wing - only to have it crash down on me in a tangled mess - the day finally came when I properly raised and inflated all of my wing’s cells, feeling its upward pull as I bounced on the balls of my feet. I just wanted to move freely through the air. But as with motorcycles, this was never about speed. With a paraglider, you sit back in a harness, whereas hang gliders fly in the prone position. The only downside was the flight position. A paraglider’s single, curved wing allows for flight in a greater range of conditions, while the equipment folds into a pack you can carry on your back (or strap to a motorcycle) whereas a heavier hang glider would have never even fit in my NYC apartment. By then, I had swapped out hang gliding for the newer sport of paragliding. So in the spring of 2000, I bought a 1986 Honda Shadow VT 700, put down a deposit on a sharehouse in Southampton, and found a flight school in Ellenville, New York. I knew this job would be boring AF, but I was twenty-eight and needed some real disposable income so as to accomplish three specific things: Not only did I decide before the end of that segment that I was absolutely going to fly, I couldn’t understand why any adult anywhere wouldn’t immediately drop whatever they were doing to learn how to do this.Īs a post-grad, my dream was put on hold for years while I scraped by on a meager nonprofit salary then, finally, I took a job as an associate editor at a trade magazine.
The Ancient Greeks yearned to fly, and so did Da Vinci, and now, so did I. Because I feel certain that Neanderthals (and I mean REAL Neanderthals - not Republican members of Congress) gazed up longingly at soaring birds and thought to themselves, “I sure wish we had TVs.” I feel doubly certain that they also wished they could fly.
Back then, hang gliding had only been around for a few years, so it seemed incredibly lucky that over the course of 300,000 years of human existence, I happened to arrive on the scene right after we figured out free flight. I was watching a kids’ science show called 3–2–1 Contact that presented a segment on hang gliding and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: human beings - without an engine, or even the body of a plane - flying.
because I saw something else on TV that rocked my world. Why, after twenty years, I may no longer wish to remain on the groundīack in 1980, I couldn’t care who shot J.R.