A sunny, happy ride up to launch.

Every time I show up at a new mountain here in Europe I'm sure I've found paradise. Having perfect weather helps a lot, but even just from a paragliding perspective I understand why there are so many more pilots in Europe than Canada or the US. Cable-cars up the mountain, huge grassy take-off areas covered in yellow & purple wildflowers and a bar at almost every landing field.

With the hundreds of pilots in the air you might expect chaos, but so far we've only seen one crazy event. A pilot was flying about 100 meters over launch in Slovenia when we heard a big "THWACK!" Usually by the time you look up the collapse is over (the noise is the wing snapping back open after a wingtip folds in) but this time we could see something funky was going on. It looked like he tried to fix his mishap with too much brake and the wing was trying to stall (you could see it starting to go into a horseshoe shape) and then he started rotating and his risers got all twisted up. It was all very plain to see since by now he was maybe 50 meters over launch and everyone was yelling at him to throw his reserve parachute. He did, it opened quickly and he ended up landing back on the take-off! Everything turned out fine - even the 'diaper bag' from his reserve landed next to him - and we've been really lucky to have seen nothing worse than some shaky student take-offs and downwind landings.

Since we've been exploring new sites our flights have been a bit shorter since we don't know the areas too well and are hesitant to go on a cross-country flight anywhere. Now we've found a fantastic spot & tomorrow will be our 3rd day flying here. We're getting to know the mountain a lot better with each flight so if the winds cooperate tomorrow we'll stretch our wings...so to speak. Heh heh.

Wild & Beautiful

Another gorgeous flying site in Austria

Traveling thru the Alps in May is excellent...at least this year it has been. Sunny skies, no crowds and of course excellent food! The one problem for paraglider pilots is the lack of open cable cars. Most of them are closed for repairs this time of year and don't re-open until June when the masses over here start their holidays and come to hike in the mountains. So I've had to be more creative finding launches this year instead of relying on flying sites I've been to before. Between the internet and the best TV channel *ever* which cycles through the webcams sitting on top of all the ski resorts we've been able to find some new spots to try out.

It's through this method that we ended up at Wildschonau, which from my rusty German translates into Wild & Beautiful, or Natural and Pretty, or something of the sort. It's a close drive to the home of our Bavarian friends (where we're currently staying) and has a cable car that conveniently reopened last week. The "town" is adorable, a little ski village nestled in a valley where the fields are overflowing with purple and yellow wildflowers. The launch isn't too high but the flight we managed a couple of days ago restored us in a way most people probably only experience after a day at the spa. We were in the sky for an hour flying around under puffy clouds, down low over cows with clanging bells around their neck and dodging helicopters delivering supplies around the valley to homes that have no roads to service them. Well, the last item we could've done without but it added to the excitement!

Unfortunately after 3 weeks of beautiful weather, we finally woke up to rain and now have to wait a day or two for this weather system to pass. With a good internet connection and a bag full of big German pretzels on the table I think getting through this will be tolerable.



View of the landing zone from the hotel bar

Munich-Slo-Austria

Looking right down on some castle ruins while paragliding - Tolmin, Slovenia

I'm taking an afternoon off from flying. Those who know me may question my sanity, but those who know me best understand that this only child needs alone time to recharge. So I sent Derek up the mountain and am hoarding the laptop all to myself to finally write a blog update (despite the crackly internet service) and to meditate on my trip so far.

Flying has, once again, been a learning experience. Our first flight was at a site we'd been to before in Slovenia so we weren't too concerned about any paragliding surprises. What we forgot to consider was that in the past we'd flown there in the mellow fall air, and we were now standing on launch looking at full-on spring conditions. After our first few flights we realized that waiting until midday to launch with everyone else was just silly. Both of us had flown some early spring currents at home, but neither of us were ready to jump right into butt-kicking, roller-coaster thermals. So we started launching earlier which helped ease us into midday, and went for soul-restoring flights at the end of the day to end everything on a good note.

Which leads us to right now. Today we're at a new site in Austria we've never flown before, and once again we found ourselves taking off in prime thermal production time and kept our flights shorter than usual. Derek went up to try a late afternoon tour of the valley, but I'm content to wait until morning, when you can be sure I'll be one of the first ones on the bus. One thing for sure is that we're having a fantastic time - we're both suntanned and learning more each day. We still have a month left with nothing to do but fly, so hopefully I'll be posting some great flight reports here soon.

Europe 2011 so far...

My boyfriend and I are in Europe right now, finishing up week 2 of our 6-week paragliding adventure. It's been fantastic so far, especially since every time we check on the weather back home the forecast is for rain. Over here we're already getting sunburnt!

So far we've had about 5 flights this week, which were much needed after the first 10 days of visiting with friends & family. Actually...it was kind of nice being on a 'normal' vacation for a bit, the kind where you don't base your day (and mood!) on what the winds are doing but instead go sight-seeing and eat way too much local food.

I'll post some flight reports & pictures soon, right now it's time to go flying again!

Good Friday...and then some!

The view from my paraglider today (or...another reason I'm addicted to this sport).

It was a great Friday, and Saturday was fabulous too! Having gone to a Catholic elementary school, Good Friday was always a solemn occasion. We would go to church, talk about Jesus dying and the worst part was we had to eat fish for dinner! Of course that would make Easter Sunday all the better as I got to wear a pretty dress and eat lots of chocolate.

But this year my "Easter" was on Good Friday, with the celebration continuing through the weekend. Friday's flight started out pretty rough but I kept repeating my mantra, "relax", and soon beefed up my bump tolerance. I followed some pilots until they started sinking and then found enough lift to get back over launch. After gliding around the valley a bit I found a beautiful thermal over a little hill and tried to make it back to launch again. It didn't look like I'd clear the ridge so I touched down in a farmer's field just ahead of a "poop" truck. I packed up quickly to keep from getting sprayed and soon a wonderful man asked if I needed a ride back to my car. He had his own little fixed-wing airplane & wanted to know all about what I was doing, so by the end of it I'd offered him a tandem and hope he'll take me up on it.



The "poop" truck coming to get me!

Today looked like it would be too stable to fly, but after waiting on launch for 2 hours we finally got airborne. My friend Karin was out after a long hiatus so we decided to try a small xc flight together over to my house. Everything worked out perfectly and we had a really fun flight, landing on a small road between the fields and then hopping a barbed wire fence to get out. We felt pretty adventurous! While walking the 2 blocks to my house we passed some kids selling lemonade so of course shelled out the 25 cents each for a drink. So refreshing, and such a civilized ending to a great flight.



Karin coming in to land

Tomorrow morning Derek & I hop on a plane to Europe for 6 weeks of adventure. I'm pretty sure this is my favourite Easter ever!

Flying Dreams

One of the first things people tell me when I talk to them about paragliding is that they have flying dreams, and want to know if paragliding is anything like that. Usually it isn't. In dreams, most people don't run off cliffs and spend their time either frantically looking for lift or holding their breath as they pass through turbulent air. But yesterday was different.

It was cold. Really cold. In fact after about 15 minutes I was ready to call on the radio and see if anyone wanted to go land and get some hot chocolate. But no one else seemed to mind their frozen fingertips, so I gave myself the challenge of trying to stay airborne while flying around closer to the ground where the couple degrees of temperature increase would make all the difference. And then the magic happened.

At around 250 metres over the ground I saw a bird in front of me, going up slowly but still going up. I flew over and sure enough there was a thermal...although it was a very stinky one. A pooh thermal to be exact. A tractor was fertilizing the fields below and with each pass of the field would release the tiny, smelly thermals. For 30 whole minutes I spent my time between 250-350 metres over the ground happily drifting all around the valley floor, while everyone else was shivering while flying up high over the mountain. Any time my thermal vanished I would just head for my trusty tractor & literally sniff around til I found the lift again. It was exactly like a flying dream...quiet, smooth air and the feeling of just being able to float around above the ground forever.

I've been flying for over 10 years now, and it never gets boring. Just when you think you have the day figured out a little gift like this flight pops up, and the sport is brand new again. I think I may just be the luckiest girl in the world.

Air Therapy

happy girl after landing

Something about a good flight makes everything else in life better. That's probably yet another sign that I'm hopelessly addicted to this sport, but I'm a happy addict so it's fine by me.

Today was amazing. It's been raining for the last 3 days & the forecast was for rain straight through the weekend so nobody was planning to fly at all. But magically the sun appeared and by the time our group reached launch at 4pm there were already a couple of pilots twice the height of launch. Some hazy cloud had moved in by the time I took off so I wasn't expecting much, but there was still lift to be found and soon we joined our friends and started exploring the sky.

Most of us had decided to go over the back so I went that way after getting high enough, although I was on my own for the first bit as I had launched last. At Agassiz mountain the group had split up, but 3 of us chatted on the radio & decided to try & fly back to the launch (especially since all of our trucks were parked there at the bottom). It had clouded over some, so eventually the other pilots bailed and flew out to the alternate landing. That left me in charge of getting back to the truck and going to get everyone else! I was pretty low and turned to go land with the group a couple of times, but kept the faith & eventually skulked around the south knoll and had the landing in sight.

Of course as soon as the hard part was over I caught my best thermal of the day. I got back up high over launch and extended my flight a bit before heading out to land and pick up my buddies. Today was a sweet surprise and a great enabling for my addiction.