| About a week ago I began hoping for a rainy day, but fate was offering up nothing but perfect weather. Our refrigerator was empty except for a couple of bottles of water and a hunk of moldy cheese, litters of dust bunnies had taken up residence in our home, and I had about as much energy as a rock.
I’ve been having way too much fun.
In the last couple of weeks, in the area close to where I live in Florida (never mind the rest of the state) there have been so many events, adventures and parties that even a dedicated adventure gal like me can’t keep up.
Wills Wing, the biggest and best manufacturer of hang gliders in the United States, hosted their 11th annual consecutive “Demo Days” March 26th-29th at Wallaby Ranch, the fabulous hang gliding Mecca outside of Orlando. Once a year, in the spring, when the weather is still foul in many parts of the country, WW hauls a boatload of its gliders to Wallaby Ranch so that clients can “test drive” their new gliders. This year there were over 650 flights at what was the biggest hang gliding event in the world in 2008.
Was I there? Of course! I may fly contraptions made of aluminum and Mylar over a mile high, but I’m not crazy. I met up with old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years and might never have seen again, including my old teammates from the U.S. Women’s Hang Gliding team and my first foot-launch instructor from Maryland. Besides lots of flying, the event featured live music, dancing, dinner parties, plus a slide show. My favorite was a video presentation by Chris Wills on the early bamboo and plastic days when he and his brother Bobby and Chris Price were figuring out simultaneously how to design and fly early Rogallo type kites. Now those guys were nuts. I personally owe them a huge thank-you, since my life would have been very different – and much emptier – without hang gliding in it.
Sunday, the Demo Days party was wrapping up, but I had a date with destiny when I leapt out of a plane harnessed to a charismatic Italian man at the Florida Skydiving Center in Lake Wales. This adventure was so good I wrote an entirely separate blog about it (it’ll be posted in a few days). You really should try it. It’s not violent or wild, though I have to say one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen is watching people tumble out of an aircraft. I liked that the owner and manager of the Florida Skydiving Center, Betty, is so conservative and concerned with safety, and that Mario, the gentleman that I mentioned before, was both tremendously experienced and careful.
Monday, the hang gliding instructor’s clinic I’d signed up for began at Quest Air, the Groveland airport that I most often fly out of. Paul Voight, a legendary sky god and instructor from New York, was in town for the Demo Days, so it was perfect timing. After 2 days of intensive training, I’d learned a lot and earned my instructor rating.
There’s no rest for the wicked. On Wednesday, with several of my cohorts, I began taking a tandem hang gliding clinic, also given by Paul Voight. I had my Tandem 1 rating already, which allowed me to fly with passengers in a tandem hang glider, but only with ones that were rated hang glider pilots. In the tandem clinic, I would be tested much more extensively, since if I earned my Tandem 2 and 3, I would be responsible for people that had no experience. The United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association takes this extremely seriously, as they should.
The tandem clinic was mainly flying, though we had lectures, discussions and tests, as well. At the end of the clinic I was ready to sleep for a week, but woohoo, I snagged my rating! Paul took me for a strictly recreational tandem flight to celebrate the completion of the clinic. I relaxed while Paul flew, admiring the hawks and buzzards soaring with us over the ponds, lakes and orange groves.
Today, I had an invite to go wakeboarding but I was just too wiped out to attend. Yup, it’s just another boring week in Florida – NOT! |
