Lining Up for Flight
Cleared for Take-off
Run!!!
The majority of my flights were on the first 3 days, right before the previous blog entry. After that, the weather was less permissive. I got 2 more flights in -- and while #6 was more frustrating than exhilerating, #7 was a great one and even had some mild thermal activity that kept me up a couple minutes longer than usual. After #7 Peter was ready to let me play in more active air, but I'll have to wait for next time.
The weather blocked our flights, but we were still lucky. The weather was beautiful and though the wind was too strong at the take-off, things were sunny and breezy on the ground. I got to take it easy amidst beautiful countryside and no responsibilities, and had the opportunity to...
do some reading:
Go for a hike:
Sit around the barbeque:
Soak up some glider theory:
And of course, enjoy the local sights:
At the last minute, fighting phone troubles, weak wireless signals, and a carillonneur who only spoke French, I even managed to get in a carillon field trip that became one of the highlights of this vacation.
The drive to Chambery was spectacular. We took a rough mountainside road, barely wide enough to let 2 cars pass, overlooking a huge lake with mountains on the other side. My camera was in the trunk so you're just going to have to imagine it.
The Chambery carillon was equally spectacular. I knew it was 70 bells (a lot) but I hadn't realized that that it would be 70 brand new Paccard bells (my favorite) going down to a low G in concert pitch, or that it would use ultralight carbon-fiber transmission rods giving incredibly precise control, with a hefty, smooth action... or that it would be set amidst beautiful scenery with a glass-paneled chamber allowing views of the bells and the mountains, or that we would have an incredibly kind and generous host who took a great deal of pride in his operation and was more than happy to bring up a dozen hanggliders for a visit, even at the last minute.
Playing this carillon was a total joy. Each bell was richly colored and happily did whatever I told it to. I serenaded my glider buddies and got to experience the privilege of a carillon field-trip through their eyes, as though it were my first time too.
When we went to the roof, our instructor Peter said he was going to stay inside for fear of the heights. "Aren't you the guy who's teaching me to run off of mountains?" I asked. "You've never actually seen me fly," he responded.
Chambery passed, as did the final flight, and when the clouds were moving a bit too fast on Sunday morning, we packed up and drove home. The first part of the ride was sunny, and it might only be chance, but I swear that the first flakes hit right as we crossed the Luxembourg border. Pretty soon we were driving at 10mph in icy conditions, at first because of traffic, then simply because there wasn't enough traction to do more than that. It didn't last forever, but the message was clear enough: Welcome Back North.
It wasn't the easiest shift. From mountainside living in the sun to a flat, aging Belgian city; from vacation mode, with less to do and more going on, to home mode, with less going on and much more to do; from campfires to the school lunch table; from wishing I could understand more of the Dutch fireside conversation about energy policy, to wishing I didn't understand the school's lunchtime Dutch conversation, which seemed only to amount to a chuckling disdain and self-contentment of being better than all those other political, national, and linguistic entities out there. From speaking to shopkeepers in my ever-growing comfort with the French language, to stumbling over words with my rusty commerce-Flemish, knowing with every accidental utterance in French, I was outing myself as 'one of them'.
I've had two comforts in my couple days of being back. The first, was the arrival of my Amazon package from the US, containing, amongst other books, "The Art of Practicing" by Madeline Bluser. It seems to be the book that I've been waiting for, a book whose content I've been grasping at, trying to construct from bits and pieces here and there; a book about the discipline of music as understood through frameworks of meditation, body-work, movement, and spirituality, a book explaining how to bring these tools to bear on a daily basis leading to performance. Or so I hope.
The second comfort was frites and assorted frituur, which seem to have made up for the lack of quality cheese and baked goods.
But of course, things pick up and get back into the swing. I've got some projects to work on in performance and in design, and between that and submitting concert programs for this summer, things have, at least for today, seemed filled with good and exciting work.
I've gotten some more pictures in from the flying, so here's a slideshow I made out of a rapid-fire set of photos of my final take-off. Sorry for all the bouncing, I don't quite know how to control that in Picasa:
And here is an overly romanticized (in the best way, of course) movie starring one of the more advanced guys I flew with. Definitely worth checking out. Given the choice between flying again and watching this movie again, I'd choose flying, but it would be a bittersweet choice. Maybe I could get some headphones with the soundtrack for my next flight?
