Hang Gliding Tale 2
Aug. 23rd, 2005 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberSee how much I love you? I wrote this story up last week, and I carried the bytes one by one by hand to a place with internet so I could present them to you... This is a story of hang gliding, true as I heard it.
* * *
Hang glider pilots are prohibited from flying at night by FAA regulations. When I first started, I asked if they sometimes ignored this for fun, like they ignored the reg that keeps you below 20,000 feet. No, came the answer, for hang gliding is a long graceful exercise in What goes up Must come down, and you want to be able to see where you're landing.
Also, the thermals die down at night.
This is a story I heard from a pilot a couple years back, and it's got an extremely amusing moral. He started thus: There are three types of people in the world. There are people who don't even notice poison oak... They could cook hotdogs on spits of poison oak and go blithely on. This is about 15% of the populace. There are the normal people, who encounter poison oak and itch and bitch; these are about 65% of the populace. And then, he said, there are the people like me, who are deathly allergic to poison oak, such that even a touch will cause the affected skin to fall clean off.
I was flying at Big Sur, he said. Growing up in Colorado, I saw hundreds of TV commercials for "Big Sur Waterbeds"... Surf crashing and spouting in the face of craggy cliffs. Green wooded hills and valleys. Apparently, in the fabled land of California, this place actually exists. And you can hang glide over it.
Alas, it cannot help but be right next to the Pacific Ocean. And so, said the pilot, As I was flying, the clouds around me suddenly coalesced into an impenetrable fog. I circled for a bit, sinking all the time, trying to find a break so I could see where I was. Finally, I decided that it wasn't going to clear, and I had to get out of the sky before I ran into a hill or drowned in the ocean.
We were all supposed to carry, on our harnesses close to hand, a hook knife for cutting ourselves free of aforementioned harnesses and parachute webbing. There were tales of pilots landing under canopy in trees, dangling precariously off the ground; and I seem to recall a story of landing and then getting dragged off a cliff by the wind catching the chute. You had to be able to cut yourself free.
Those who flew near the ocean were supposed to carry hook knives that also had a blade. Inland pilots complained that with a knife with a point, you were likely to stab yourself in a bad landing or in the panic of a crash. But picture landing in the ocean, under 150 square feet of soaked nylon and aluminum, the waves and currents dragging you down. You were going to have to be able to punch your way through the wing to survive.
Now, I never heard of anyone who crashed in the ocean. I never found a hook knife that had a real blade, either, though.
Back to our pilot. It was a damn good thing I decided to land when I did, he said. I saw the tips of bushes going by just below me and then I was able to finally see that I'd flown into a valley. What I couldn't see was that the range of hills in front of me was the last one, and after that it was nothing but the Pacific Ocean for 12,000 miles.
That whole damn valley was full of bushes, without a single break, the pilot said, But I had no choice but to land there. There was no way of getting up. I couldn't tell how tall the bushes were, either, from the air. So I set up as best I could along the long axis, came in skimming the tops, and then flared and held it and hoped I wouldn't have too far to fall.
Turned out it was only about 5 or 6 feet. It was a great landing, except for one thing: I looked around, and I realized that I'd landed in the center of a valley filled with nothing but poison oak.
I packed up my glider and I carried it out. I was doomed either way, and I'd hate to lose the glider. Eventually I found a trail, and left the glider hidden under some bushes. That trail lead to others in a huge maze of trails, and finally I found a road, and finally someone came down it and they were able to call 911 on their cell, and an ambulance came and got me and I spent the next two weeks in a hospital basically regrowing my entire skin.
When I got out, I went back to Big Sur with some friends, and I was able to retrace my steps through the maze of twisty little paths and find my glider, and do you know why?
Because I had a pencil and some paper in my harness, and I was able to draw myself a map on the way out.
And the moral of the story is this: Always carry a pencil and paper with you when you fly!
* * *
Hang glider pilots are prohibited from flying at night by FAA regulations. When I first started, I asked if they sometimes ignored this for fun, like they ignored the reg that keeps you below 20,000 feet. No, came the answer, for hang gliding is a long graceful exercise in What goes up Must come down, and you want to be able to see where you're landing.
Also, the thermals die down at night.
This is a story I heard from a pilot a couple years back, and it's got an extremely amusing moral. He started thus: There are three types of people in the world. There are people who don't even notice poison oak... They could cook hotdogs on spits of poison oak and go blithely on. This is about 15% of the populace. There are the normal people, who encounter poison oak and itch and bitch; these are about 65% of the populace. And then, he said, there are the people like me, who are deathly allergic to poison oak, such that even a touch will cause the affected skin to fall clean off.
I was flying at Big Sur, he said. Growing up in Colorado, I saw hundreds of TV commercials for "Big Sur Waterbeds"... Surf crashing and spouting in the face of craggy cliffs. Green wooded hills and valleys. Apparently, in the fabled land of California, this place actually exists. And you can hang glide over it.
Alas, it cannot help but be right next to the Pacific Ocean. And so, said the pilot, As I was flying, the clouds around me suddenly coalesced into an impenetrable fog. I circled for a bit, sinking all the time, trying to find a break so I could see where I was. Finally, I decided that it wasn't going to clear, and I had to get out of the sky before I ran into a hill or drowned in the ocean.
We were all supposed to carry, on our harnesses close to hand, a hook knife for cutting ourselves free of aforementioned harnesses and parachute webbing. There were tales of pilots landing under canopy in trees, dangling precariously off the ground; and I seem to recall a story of landing and then getting dragged off a cliff by the wind catching the chute. You had to be able to cut yourself free.
Those who flew near the ocean were supposed to carry hook knives that also had a blade. Inland pilots complained that with a knife with a point, you were likely to stab yourself in a bad landing or in the panic of a crash. But picture landing in the ocean, under 150 square feet of soaked nylon and aluminum, the waves and currents dragging you down. You were going to have to be able to punch your way through the wing to survive.
Now, I never heard of anyone who crashed in the ocean. I never found a hook knife that had a real blade, either, though.
Back to our pilot. It was a damn good thing I decided to land when I did, he said. I saw the tips of bushes going by just below me and then I was able to finally see that I'd flown into a valley. What I couldn't see was that the range of hills in front of me was the last one, and after that it was nothing but the Pacific Ocean for 12,000 miles.
That whole damn valley was full of bushes, without a single break, the pilot said, But I had no choice but to land there. There was no way of getting up. I couldn't tell how tall the bushes were, either, from the air. So I set up as best I could along the long axis, came in skimming the tops, and then flared and held it and hoped I wouldn't have too far to fall.
Turned out it was only about 5 or 6 feet. It was a great landing, except for one thing: I looked around, and I realized that I'd landed in the center of a valley filled with nothing but poison oak.
I packed up my glider and I carried it out. I was doomed either way, and I'd hate to lose the glider. Eventually I found a trail, and left the glider hidden under some bushes. That trail lead to others in a huge maze of trails, and finally I found a road, and finally someone came down it and they were able to call 911 on their cell, and an ambulance came and got me and I spent the next two weeks in a hospital basically regrowing my entire skin.
When I got out, I went back to Big Sur with some friends, and I was able to retrace my steps through the maze of twisty little paths and find my glider, and do you know why?
Because I had a pencil and some paper in my harness, and I was able to draw myself a map on the way out.
And the moral of the story is this: Always carry a pencil and paper with you when you fly!