Looking forward to this weekend, take two

Gale warning - that's what happened last week. It's amazing that what makes paragliding possible, the wind, is also what makes it impossible. The wind has to be just right, especially for beginners, for someone trying to learn. And patience is required for an apprentice pilot. The wind and the weather will never ever cooperate. It does what it will, never minding us, the tiny people looking up the sky, praying, hoping, and wishing for clear, blue skies and light, fluffy clouds.

I started a new book, Touching Cloudbase by Ian Curran, and it confirms that I need to take this attitude. Learning paragliding is not a short course. It's a balance between my available schedule (weekends) and the whims of Auckland weather, so it will definitely take weeks and months just to learn the basics.

I rebooked my unfinished first lesson for tomorrow. I'm really hoping it happens and I get to launch into the air. I also hope my wife comes along to do a tandem.

When I started this, my goal was simple: learn paragliding. I had assumed all I needed was some money, some enthusiasm, and some free time. Like going on a bungy jump. Instead, I learned that this was a journey of many steps and many hours of flights. And, above all, many times of looking up, wondering what the sky will bring on the coming weekend.

Over the past week, I've been noticing each lonely gull soaring in the air. I would recall how I used to find it beautiful and peaceful to watch, and wondered how it felt to be like a bird. Nowadays, I see the gull's flight as a demonstration of the principles of flight. The abstracted ideas of lift and drag and angle of attack come alive. How each flap of the gull's wing creates a sudden lift, like the paraglider pulling on the brake lines. How a gull can stay in one place in the air, a point where the gull is gliding down while the wind is pushing it up. How the gull lands on top of a lamppost by folding its wings at the right moment. Learning to paraglide is learning to fly.

Long, long ago, I've read Richard Bach. Yes, his Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, but also his A Gift of Wings, where he describes flying as a religious experience. In that book, I got a glimpse of the wonder of flight. I have always wanted to fly, but any kind of flying has always been expensive. Planes, gliders, hot air balloons, sky diving. Lucky for me, I waited long enough for paragliding to become established and affordable.

I'm beginning to change my attitude. Perhaps, paragliding can become more than a hobby. It's possible to do it well into old age, when I'm retired. Instead of puttering around the house, I can soar in the air.