I got the message right after playing the Wednesday afternoon concert: We leave tomorrow morning, 9:30 sharp.
The ride to Savoie took about 12 hours with the hanggliders on the roof. We left in the morning and arrived after dark. After last week's weather, I was prepared for 10 days of sitting around in the cabin. But the weather forecast was flyable so we set our alarms and planned to be at the landing field for pre-flight briefing at 8.
6.30AM: Peter and I wake up frozen in our un-insulated cabin. There was frost on the ground outside our window and condensate on our breath. Peter threw on all 4 stove burners and started fanning the heat into the room. Slowly over the next hour we brought ourselves back to comfort.
8AM: We rendez-vous with the rest of our party at the landing field. One instructor, one assistant-instructor, one very experienced student, 2 mid-level students, one 2nd timer, and one fool who was doing this for the first time. We got our flight plan, learned the terminology that Peter would use over the radio, the names of the different corners of the landing field, the protocol for shedding altitude over the landing field, etc. We got back in our cars and started the drive up the mountain. I had both the eagerness to make sure I got to fly, and the nervousness of my first mountain flight. Was I actually going to be soaring a couple thousand feet above ground in a few hours? I had proved myself on the training hill, but it had been 10 days since I had touched a glider and I wasn’t going to get a practice run.
The drive up the mountain was 20 minutes long, through winding narrow roads, first passing through the picturesque hillside
We got to the take-off site, which was entirely covered in snow.
He kicked at the icy snow by the start of the runway and stood there for a minute or two, deep in thought. Finally he looked at me. "There is another place you can take off from, but its impressive. We will go and you will tell me if you want to take off from there." Peter's English has a few idiosyncrasies that I've gotten to know over the course of my training. When he says impressive, he means scary as all hell.
The trompe-plein is a wooden platform, about
I built-up my glider in a haze of fear, adrenaline, and stupidity, and made Stephan, the assistant instructor, inspect it with all his might. Peter’s words echoed in my head “Its an incredibly safe takeoff, but its impressive”. Impressive is the understatement of the year. I said a shema.
The glider is a flying machine. It wants to fly. You run off a something like the trompeplein with a glider and a headwind and it should fly. All my theory told me this. And all my animal instincts told me that to run off a ramp into nothingness was sheer madness. I would only have once chance to do this right. I was betting that I could hold
I thought that watching Ilsa’s take off would reassure me, but it just did the opposite. One moment she was standing there, another moment hurtling into steepness, and within seconds she was a football field away from us, hanging free with emptiness on every side. I said another shema.
My turn came. I stood with my toes at the end of the flat segment. Before I could run I’d have to lean forward and start to fall, giving the glider some momentum so that it would stay with me. Once I did that there was no turning back and anything I did to fight gravity would only endanger me. Speed is safety. Speed is safety. Speed is safety. The wind stabilized. Stephan gave me the go-ahead. “When you feel ready, you can start running.” And friends, I ran.
I don’t remember anything between the start of my run and the moment, a few seconds later, when my glider stabilized in the air. But on that day, when I took my run into nothingness, the somethingness I found afterwards was completely different from what I expected. After all that adrenaline and all that buildup, I was just hanging peacefully. The air was so calm and stable that I felt as though I were simply attached to a giant crane that was slowly lowering me to my destination. Was I really flying? My glider tends to nose-up and stall, and because the ground was falling away from me rapidly I had the feeling that I was in a never-ending stall. Up and down are not entirely clear at first. I pulled in and tried to keep the nose down, and keep a steady course for all I was worth. My hands nearly froze onto the metal bars of the glider frame, but I wasn’t about to let go. Peter stayed with me on radio contact the whole time, even if just to say, “well, there’s not really much to say, you’re doing fine”. I landed alive and surprised at how ordinary I felt, having just run off of a cliff.
The most surreal part of the day was yet to come. We packed up our gliders. We left the landing field. And we drove to the supermarket. In less than an hour I went from hanging free
For the past few days its been a dependable routine: we wake up, get warm, eat, hit the landing field, and then drive up to the take-off. If the wind looks good (and it always has), we haul the gliders from the cars, assemble them (I’ve gotten down to 25 minutes for assembly, 35-40 to be ready for take-off), suit up, and take-off. There are pre-flight inspections, and if you’ve made any mistakes, you owe the instructor a bottle of wine. I’d gladly buy my life for the price of a bottle, but so far, no problems. At the landing field, we disassemble, load the cars, go back to the campground, and eat lunch, which always seems to involve fresh bread, cheeses, and wine. I seem to have taken the attitude of “eat well today because who knows about tomorrow.” In the afternoon we repeat the flying process, and then at night we repeat the eating process.
Its been 2 days and 5 flights since that first run into nothingness. Renzo, the 2nd-timer who wasn’t up to the trompe-plein spent some time salting and shoveling the original takeoff while we were at the supermarket. So the rest of my takeoffs have been a bit less dramatic than that first day (the second and third take-offs were still pretty adrenalized).
I’ve been improving loads over the past few days. On my first flight, I basically just survived. On my second flight, I leveled-off my 180-turns at the landing field, which had been too extreme. On my third flight I learned to use the foot-bar (a small rod that hangs down from your harness -- you can rest the soles of your feet on it so that you can lie horizontally instead of hanging with your legs dangling in the air – it involves some extra maneuvers to get into it mid-air, and to get out of it before landing, not to mention the psychological factor of doing a running take-off with it banging against your heels). On the fourth flight I worked on my steering sensitivity, reacting quicker and using less force. Peter let me have control for most of it. On my fifth flight, I had some turbulence from thermals (rising pockets of air) and was able to steer into them and gain a bit of altitude on my way to the landing field. Thermals are invisible, but you know they’re there because all of a sudden one wingtip rises throws you into a turn. Thermals push you away, but if you fight the turn early and get the glider level, you can slip into them and get an upward boost (at least this is what I’ve found). Feels almost like a game. In more advanced stages you actually learn to do circles inside of them and ride them high into the sky.
I think flight #4 was my favorite. It was yesterday evening, a bit before sunset. By the time we had our gliders built, the wind had shifted to a gentle tailwind.
Wind follows the contours of the slope. If the wind comes from behind you on a downward slope, it flows down at the angle of the hill. Because the glider flies at a 15 degree downward angle relative to the air, its physically impossible to do a running take-off in a tailwind. You’d have to be able to run at an angle 15 degrees steeper than the ground you’re standing on.
Stephan was betting that with the setting sun the tailwind would only grow stronger. I expected we would be disassembling and driving downhill, but Peter radioed up that because I was underweight for my glider, I could try to take-off if we got a moment of feeble headwind. I took my position on the runway and waited some more, watching the 4 wind-flags scattered throughout the take-off area, all of which were doing different things. Finally they harmonized for a minute, all pointing with the laziest little inkling uphill. Stephan said go, I ran, and all of a sudden I was in the air. Once you’re in the air, it doesn’t matter whether there’s a head or tailwind. You’re flying either way, and in the warmth of the setting sun, I felt as though I had just escaped from the glum disappointment on the take-off hill into complete and utter freedom. No adrenalized buildup. No fear. Just a hopeful wait, a moment’s run, and the air rushing by me. Peter radioed up that I was on my own until the landing field. “You can do smart things, stupid things, I won’t say anything.” I took a few extra turns to get a nice view of the lake and mountains in the evening light. The air was calm enough that I could look down and really feel the bird’s-eye view over the land below. The more you can do that, the more you feel like you’re really flying.
Well, I think I’m hooked. It took a bit of time to get over the fact that you don’t quite feel like superman, zooming around in any direction you choose. But once you’re past that, the little joys of flight seem to grow steadily.
Tonight is the first evening without flying. The wind has picked up and the weather seems to be changing. Peter’s guess is no flying tomorrow. His hope is for flights the day after. But after 5 back-to-back flights, I’m almost happy to have a little break to relax, soak it all in, and condense my experiences here. Hopefully the weather will have me back in the air before long.
