Yesterday after a birthday party (for me) the hosts walked with me out to my truck. It's a circular driveway with plants overgrowing both sides; a smoke tree with other plants on the inside of the semicircle that they're resistant to trim back, and exceedingly large yucca plants with other plants on the outer edge nearest their front door that jut into the driveway so that no vehicle can avoid either one. Scratches from the tree or scratches from the incredibly large yuccas, take your pick, or both if your vehicle is a truck.
Nobody uses that circular driveway because of this. But it was raining really hard when I got there and I cannot walk very fast. Now the party has ended and I am the last to leave.
Do those yuccas grow stalks?
"Oh man, they shoot up huge stalks, see the brown remnants there in the middle? There were five huge stalks earlier this year. Look at 'em. Look at those things."
They put in a very good variety of plants but they don't like to trim them. If they did they would be a tight mass of various textures and colors trimmed as a poodle, as it is, it's a wild spreading jungle.
The yucca plants reminded me of my last hang glider crash.
"Did I ever tell you about my last day of hang gliding?"
Here George and Paul cracked up laughing. I don't know why they found that so funny. They were both bent over holding their knees, shaking and laughing, trying to stay standing up.
"What's so funny about that?"
"Jesus Christ, Bo, you sure know how to start out a story."
They repeated the line introducing the story and cracked up laughing all over again.
They're impossible sometimes. I never know what normal thing is going to set them off or why they find something so funny. I still don't get it.
"Do you want to hear my story or not?"
"Yes. Give us a moment."
"It was the final straw. The Harrier II was beyond me. Its swivel crossbar too much for me. I wasn't up for it. It's for experts. Not me. Due to the swivel mechanism at the center where you usually tie the bag, the substitute instructor told me to tie the bag behind the swivel mechanism instead. This threw off the balance.
It's balanced incredibly well.
The swivel mechanism caused the entire wing structure to flick to the side during turns. Imagine the keel holding steady while the entire wing flicks right or left at the slightest movement.
This enabled the kite to turn on a dime.
And that's the sort of thing experts are interested in doing. Not me.
Useful when flying through thermal pockets. When flying along if one side lifts upward that means that side of the wing was lifted by a warm air pocket floating upwards. The swivel mechanism allows a quick tight turn back into the thermal bubble or channel to lift up the whole kite.
That allows the pilot to gain altitude and stay up longer.
That's the whole point, to find those thermals and stay up long as possible.
But all that was beyond me.
At this point we're just flying down an intermediate slope.
Whereas we were training on Green Mountain (now all built up with McMansion type homes) and the other side of it that faces Red Rocks park, this time we drove the northern edge of Boulder.
The slope is perfect. But there's a barbed wire fence at the bottom and the hill is all broken shale with intermittent yucca plants. Small ones compared to giants in their garden.
This is not the gently sloping plushly verdant pillow-soft hills of Tennessee. No. this is gray shale that slides when you walk up it, with harsh sharp sword-like intermittent yucca plants and cactus here and there.
This training ground is harsh. That's what makes us such studs.
Because my bag was tied behind the swivel mechanism, that meant my center of balance was shifted.
And that altered the affect of Hang Glider Rule #1, when in doubt remove your hands from the control bar.
That rule was drilled into our heads.
It's very counterintuitive.
The rule is designed to prevent pilot overcorrection.
The weight of the pilot will force the kite to self-balance.
But now my bag is throwing that off.
And I didn't realize it.
Because I'm a beginner. Entering intermediate training.
It means I'll have to pull in my control bar to compensate but I did not know that. I didn't know my balance was thrown off. My new glider is a specifically well-balanced kite. I trusted it. There was nothing to tell me that had changed. I didn't intuit the new instructions by the new instructor would change the balance of my kite. I realized all this later, well after the incident.
On a simple flight down a gentle slope I gained incredible height splendidly. Immediately.
The weight of the bag pulled down the back end of the kite and I stalled midair at the highest point. But it was only one side of the wing that stoped flying. The other side kept flying. That meant I was spinning circles as the kite descended.
Let me draw you picture what that looks like.
Apologies for large size. It's optimized outrageously to 200% and its dimensions are very small but displayed here larger. But I do need the frames to convey what I saw.
I was very high up, about forty-five feet, and my glider was crashing.
One wing was flying the other was not. Rather, one side of the wing was flying and the other side was dead.
To get out of this I'd have to pull in the control bar. But Rule #1 is let go of it. I studiously adhered to Rule #1 so my weight would balance the kite, as the bundled bag threw off the balance and my kite continued to fail.
"Dear Lord, this is it. This spot is mine. I now own this exact spot of land. Whoever owns it is irrelevant. Now it's mine. I purchase this spot with my life. Thank you, Lord. It's been a good life. I did enjoy this life to the maximum. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for giving me this wonderful life. The whole thing was a blast. Lord, I hope you had as much fun as I did. I hope you saw it all through my eyes. Please know I went out living my dream. I have no regret. You're the best. Amen."
Holy shit! Fuck me, I lived.
"Lord, I meant all those things that I said. Thank you for letting me live again. Amen."
The other hang glider students all ran down the hill toward me. Colorful dots all converging.
My hang glider was a crumpled colorful rainbow sail mangled amid a tangle of twisted cables and hardware. The tubes were completely bent and crimped.
It was a disaster.
There were no tears in the sail. All the tubes and wires and hardware would have to be replaced. It turned out later reconstruction would be only $200.00 for replacing the aluminum tubes and the wires and hardware. The sail and swivel mechanism were still fine.
There is not that much to a hang glider.
I looked around. A yucca plant was wearing my sunglasses. A yucca branch was stuck into my arm like an arrow. My arm was bleeding.
"Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? What did you have for breakfast? Where is your car parked? Who is the president of the United States?"
"Fuck you. I just crashed. What's with the annoying goddamn pop quiz?"
"Sorry. Don't mean to annoy you. I'm trying to see if you have short term memory loss."
"I don't remember what I had for breakfast. I haven't a clue where my car is. I don't know who the president is. I don't know what just happened. Fuck you. I'm trying to get this fucking helmet off."
The other student pilots were dissipating. Going back to their business. They came to learn and to practice so they got back to it. Simultaneously getting me settled. Explaining where we were, how we got to Boulder, what we were doing, how I'll get home.
It wasn't so bad. I figured out who the president was, and I recalled where my car is, and I finally remembered what I had for breakfast.
A young man running behind the group, getting to me a bit later than the rest approached me.
"I don't intend to take advantage of a bad situation (yes, actually he did) but in case you're thinking about making changes I'm still very interested in buying your glider."
"Sold. I'll repair it and turn it over for $1,200."
That was $200 more than I paid for it. As it turned out, after repairs, I broke even precisely.
It was a beautiful glider. I miss it. It was spectacular before that rainbow became the gay symbol. Now that guy's flying around and everyone thinks that he's gay. But who cares? The kite is the most beautiful I've ever seen. And he's got a good one. A great one. Just remember the bag tied behind the swivel mechanism displaces the weight.
Back at George and Paul standing next to their giant yuccas.
"Sorry we laughed at your intro. But that was really funny.
1 comment:
This is somewhat badass but unfortuantely they look like flies caught in a web. Poor millenials can't even do badass right. (The secret is that you're not supposed to look like you're trying too hard.)
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