Hanggliding
Julian Todd
Team Wings : _Julian_, assisted by Jeremy, not assisted at all by half the caving club, distracting, telling me to get on with it, admiring its aches and strains and cracks. Couple other pilots in carpark keeping well away and mumbling things about parachutes. On account of it all, had a shit take off and the glider started to disintegrate: battens springing out, left wing flapping noisily as a helicopter.
So decided to land as I was so awfully high. Jeremy kindly let me have another go. Picked up another hang-glider pilot and gave him a lift to his car whereupon he placed 40 shillings in payment on Rover's front bumper.
This time the audience was smaller. A couple of young men with gliders on their car drove up as I was rigging, thought that the wind was shit, the glider was shit and they didn't want to see any more of it. A couple of paragliderists were also walking all the way back down Loser, not flying, muttering something about kamakazees.
Which all goes to show it's bullshit because I had a great takeoff, great flight (little rough the air though), got scared to go any higher when I looked for an instant down at the nose of Loser, so followed Rover along the road for some way. Some little muscles in my shoulders suffered in agony to make flying possible after a while, so I slipped off and landed. On my feet. Ground zero.
T o/g ½ hour