Tandems and Ankle-Talk

Over the last couple of weekends I’ve been doing more tandems than flying solo, which has kept me happy.

Last weekend I took my sister tandem – something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Unfortunately she wasn’t as stoked about paragliding as I had hoped, but for those few minutes, it was pretty special flying with her. It’s cool with me if she never takes up paragliding, but I hope she’ll let me take her tandem at least one more time.

Lately I’ve found that I’ve been doing quite well when it comes to flying tandems…I haven’t sunk out, I have managed to find climbs when I need them, and I feel quite confident in the air. Landings have also been excellent. Launch-wise, I’m finding that in stronger conditions, the glider tends to accelerate and overshoot much more than I would like. It’s been a bit frustrating, but I suppose I need to adjust my launching style to the launching style of glider. Bring it up slower, hang onto the rear risers better, let go of the A’s sooner, and maybe even shorten my brakes by a few centimetres? The Bibeta 4 has 5 cm’s of slack as I recall…hmmm, might need to consult some experts on that one. In any case, I’ve been practicing, but I need to practice even more…I want to be the best!

Ankle-wise for me, things have been pretty good. Even though it's been over a year, I feel it pulling at the back when I hike or walk on a beach, but it doesn’t give me too much grief. In the last three days, I have witnessed two ankle injuries at my trampoline/gymnastics classes and this evening especially, it reminded me about how important first aid training is.

Tonight’s ankle injury happened to a girl who basically landed funny doing nothing remotely dangerous (doing straight-jumps on a fast track). I saw the whole thing and the coach heard a pop. I was very disappointed in that nobody seemed to be in a hurry to splint her ankle and get her to a hospital; talking about past ankle-injuries seemed to be higher on the agenda. I was disappointed in myself too as I asked her if I should drive her to Emergency, when I should have been more assertive and said “I think I should take you to the hospital” when I saw her ankle swelling. Sometimes when you’re in pain, you downplay it, and I think it’s good when you have others who encourage you to get things checked out.

I did end up driving her to Emergency, and I’m still waiting to hear what the x-rays show. Tonight I was reminded that injuries often happen when you least expect them to, and first aid training is important. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a nurse, but the few things I learned in my first aid training, which is a requirement for paragliding instructors, helped me this evening.

I feel fortunate that I’ve never had a serious injury and although I intend to keep it that way, it’s smart to be ready for things that will hopefully never happen to you or the people around you.

New World Title! First-Ever to Paraglide in Ski Boot Liners!

As you can guess from the title of this post, a couple of weekends ago, I believe I may have set a new first in the paragliding community by launching my paraglider in ski-boot liners. Yes you read that right! Also don't forget that I am also probably the first person to fly a paraglider with a "Taco" sign between my teeth. What will I think of next?

Where did this latest feat in pragliding take place? At Panorama Ski Resort - about 15 km's from Invermere, BC. I headed out there for the annual Easter Meet where paragliders get super-cheap lift tickets, launch on the ski hill and try their hand at flying xc or trying to win the spot-landing competition.

On Saturday I was ready to go flying so I rented some ski boots, stuck on my skiis and took the lift up to launch. OWWWEEEEEE! I obviously have something very wrong with my feet as the ski boots I put on were absolutely killing me. The pain was AWFUL! Long story short, by the time I got to launch, my feet had started to swell, and I sat there for the longest time in my socks. I had one launch attempt on skiis, which went, well, pretty badly, so after hitting the ground, like a fussy child, I threw the ski boots off my feet, stomped up the hill in my socks, and thought of a way to launch without those torture devices on my feet. Enter the idea of launching in liners.

I was a bit worried about slipping, but you know what? It worked out pretty good. Here's the video for the Guiness people:

I had a very nice flight and landed with one foot in the target. Unfortunately I didn't win the competition, but it was probably rigged because of discrimination against those who have skiing disabilities, but that's ok.

My next flight was OK, although a storm was rolling in so there was some cloud suck combined with what I thought was rotor sink from one of the nearby mountains. I landed fine, although definitly in a hurry, and some of the pilots who launched after me had an exciting flight pulling Big-Ass Ears, spiralling, etc.

There were no incidences relating to the storm per se, although one unlucky pilot this weekend landed in the trees...twice! Poor guy...

That night there was a nice dinner, a booze-filled party, a bit of dancing, and some instances of overall wackiness on behalf of the pilots. The next day was blown out for flying, although some pilots stuck around to do some skiing or snowboarding. Needless to say I was not one of them!

A fun weekend overall. If you like skiing and like paragliding, the Panorama Easter Meet is for you!

Quick Update

Yesterday I had a nice little thermic/soaring flight around Woodside. Didn't get too high, and couldn't go anywhere (too much cirrus again) but flew for an hour which was nice. It was really good practice and has reinforced how much love my new wing too - it even turns when I ask it to! The best part about my flight though? Thermalling in a small core with an eagle - so beautiful.

An update on Saturday's flight - a handful of pilots flew 40k! So I definitly messed up there. When I said I didn't think it was XC-able, I meant more when I first launched, but with the whole valley producing lift when I was trying to land was probably the time to think about going somewhere. Oh well, live and learn.

Clocking Up the Hours

This morning's destination: Woodside
Objective: Get High
Objective Successful: Yes

Today I had another flight at Woodside. Fresh snow up at launch but it was nice and sunny today and great to be up there.

Flying-wise, I think I'm doing pretty well this season. I got high right off the bat today and the last few times I've flown have gone pretty well too. Launching is not the greatest though. I think it's a combination of being rusty and not being 100% familiar with my new wing, but in any case, I need a good groundhandling session.

Anyway, conditions today were interesting. There seemed to be a few sheer layers which made things a bit bumpy sometimes but overall, it was pretty fun. I debated whether trying to go XC, but I didn't really feel the conditions were all that suitable. I didn't think I could make any notable distance today and I figured that if I tried, I'd ditch it 5 or 10k's down, which meant retrieve, etc., and I wasn't in the mood. Maybe I was being pessimistic? Not sure if anyone actually did manage to fly anywhere today, but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Since it was nice and sunny, I fooled around with my camera a bit and took some nice shots. The results:

Pilots prepping at launch

Looking at launch

South Knob, looking towards Mt. Cheam and Bridal launch

Redneck Beach! Packed today!

Vanity Shot - notice the mittens

When I was ready to land, I flew out to the Farm, and was greeted by lift absolutely everywhere. When recounting my flight today, I said to one pilot, "I had a hard time getting down!" and he corrected me by saying that it's stupid to say that - in that kind of lift, you can most definitely get down. To me however, it's an expression: no matter where I flew (over green patches, light patches, etc.), I was going up anywhere from .5 - 1.5 m/s and to get down meant I had to pull some sort of maneuver (spiral, big ears, etc.) which meant some effort on my part, hence the expression "hard time getting down." But anyway, I digress.

At first it was cool - flying with a hawk then an eagle and going up, up, up. Then, it kind of got annoying. I've never experienced having a challenging landing because things were going "off", but man, today was the day. At 30 metres off the deck, I was rocking up at 2 m/s. The only reason why I say it was kind of annoying is because from a safety perspective, it was a bit irritating. Things were switching in the LZ from second to second, so an approach was a bit tricky. Then preparing myself to land, only to find I was going up again, and making sure I wasn't in the way of any obstacles, etc. was definitely interesting. It wasn't the smoothest either...

Anyway, I don't expect any sympathy, I had a great flight! I can't believe I've clocked a few hours this year already, and it's only April, and I'm flying in Canada! Yeah!

Cool Flying

Last weekend I had my first proper thermalling flight of the season – hooray!

It was great: I launched from Woodside, got to base fairly quickly, and ended up hanging next to a cloud for quite some time. In Australia I was scared of clouds, but now I like them! I am still pretty cautious, but the one we were under was a happy cloud, and I was having fun.

Anyway, I decided them to glide to another cloud and as I did, I descended. Oh the pain in my fingertips! The change in temperature made me feel my fingers, and wow, did I ever wish I hadn’t! I flew back to the cloud above launch, hung out for a while, and quickly realized I couldn’t handle the cold in my fingers.

I flew out into the valley, of course finding lift everywhere, attempted a spiral to get down only to find that my fingers could barely wrap around the brake handle, tried again, succeeded, and landed. Flight time: 1 hour. I literally stood clipped into my glider for about 5 minutes trying to warm my red fingers while I moaned in pain. Yikes!

After packing up, I called a special someone to ask where he flew to. He said he was in Hope (25 k’s or so flying distance from Woodside, but about 40 k’s driving distance) and needed to be picked up. Knowing that the only two cars to drive out there both had manual transmissions, I cringed...I don’t drive standards!

I asked a pilot for a 5 minute lesson, and ambitiously hopped into one of the cars and started to drive. It wasn’t pretty, and I was scared of a big hill, and I was careful not to ride the clutch, and there were some tense moments which took 100% of my concentration, but good golly, I made it!

It sure was a bummer that I missed out on an XC flight because I had crappy gloves on but on the other hand, the adventure of driving to Hope in a car I didn’t know how to drive, was probably even more exciting! The next day however, I went out and bought a pair of down-filled mittens made of Gore-tex and a million chemical handwarmers. Bring it on, Fraser Valley!