tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58356998161595356502024-03-05T04:44:12.476-08:00Fly Away ParaglidingThoughts about paragliding, personal opinions and ranting.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-65511241471654509912011-02-22T09:02:00.000-08:002011-02-22T09:03:18.115-08:00Yelapa 2011Yelapa 2011<br />There's is low fog bank over town tonight. A full moon above that layer illuminates sky in one pale glow. From the open front porch of our room, I can see across the bay to the far side of town. The lights blink and shutter at times as the power comes and goes. There is the sound of the ocean. It is not the far anyway, white noise ocean sound but the close up sound with the surges and ebbing of the surf as it crashes against the beach. The world seems very close. It's day five of the trip. Sleep is stalking me, I do not resist.<br />I got off the plane last Friday in PV. Darren, Trang, other Bill and I all flew together. The rest of the gang, Jeff, Sandy and Eck came in the next day. Us early birds, threw our bags in the hotel and scrambled off the fly the local site. After a hellish hike we arrived at the smallest most misbegotten launch ever. There is such a small area to take off that the launch has been extended by a metal mesh platform. The bitch is the platform doesn't follow the slope of the launch but flattens out. So just as you start to get your three steps running in, the glider unweights. The flights are ridge lift and light thermals capped hard by the inversion. The air is thick, warm, moist and full of frigate birds and turkey vultures.<br />That night we walked in town along the ocean. Venders were selling colorful junk for us tourist. There was a mime doing an act which we couldn't make sense of off. On the beach a man balanced huge rocks on each other. The disks in my lower back trembled in fear as I watched him lift hundreds of pounds and then slowly balance them.<br />The next morning I took the bus back to the airport to collect the rest of the group. After an eye ball rattling ride I stood in a thicket of arm waving taxi cab drivers looking for the new arrivals. <br />The next step was to get on the boat to Yelapa. These boats are maybe twenty five feet with outboard motors. They pull up on the beach, you roll up your pants, time the surf and make your best attempt to get in with the minimum of a soaking. <br />The boat ride is a little over a half an hour. The boat bangs over the water while the jungle drift by on shore. As you pass each bend of the coast line small beaches are revealed. Some with resorts, others small villages, others yet have the abandon wrecks of someone's dream house gone wrong. Rounding a steep point of land we drop into a deep bay. The mountains here a a few thousand feet tall. The town is sparsely scattered up high growing ever thicker as you descend to the ocean. There are roofs of palm fronds contrasting the ones of corrugated steel. No point of glass in the windows. The outside is not something you need to keep out here.<br />The boats bobs around in the surf as we, once again, time when to jump off. I wait till the wave recedes before leaping out to find my stuff on the beach that the boat driver has piled up. Our rooms are right on the beach. I'm two floors up.<br />After showers, unpacking, turning slowly in circles, talking... The group is ready to head out for dinner. A paraglider favorite is Pollo Bollo. So up the stairs, down the hill, into town we go. Once into town proper I'm hoping I remember the twist and turns through the maze of walk ways to the restaurant. There are no cars and if there were they wouldn't fit on the "roads" anyway. <br />A restaurant here is a roof with chairs and tables under it. There is a waist high wall on one end with a kitchen behind it. The garlic fish is a favorite. I like the breaded chicken. Dogs churn around the place being unobtrusive but just in case you have any spare food you wouldn't want you know it would have a home.<br />On the way back to our rooms I stop by Alan's place. Alan is a local pilot. Darren describes his place as Gilligans island with computers and flat screen tv. We say hi, catch up a bit and arrange for the truck to take us to launch the next day.<br /> Morning here goes like this, breakfast at the Vortex over looking the lagoon. Pancakes are favorite. Seagulls spin around in the air crying, turkey vultures pick the unfortunate out of the debris on the shore.<br />The next part is hiking to the truck that will take us to launch. All through town we go. Over the bridge, past the bright blue post office and then follow the equally bright blue water pipe up the hill. (Watch out for donkey shit!)<br />The truck gets jammed full of paragliders and pilots and then is off up the hill. The road winds around sometime super steep at others merely steep. Bends and ruts, a few streams and rocks, dust flying, a dog chases us for a miles before the climb and dust snuffs out his ethusiasim. <br />Launch is over two thousand feet up. The beach is a far away strip of tan. Between the launch and the beach is a lot of jungle. Macaws go squawking past, one squawk per flap.<br />Launch is short. It's a big run and then you lift off and fly out over forest. You either find lift or not but either way it's beautiful flight. It's not been too lifty but people get to hang out for a bit. My flights were pretty lift free so I either tour over town and see the water fall or head out over the ocean and hang out.<br />After landing there's lunch to find before we hike up for the evening flight. The hike is a bit sweaty before you get to launch. We did find out that launching into a light right cross isn't a good idea. There was even a long time professional paraglider instructor who said it was a bad idea. After getting a couple of slow learners out of the trees (and gettin scratched and bitten and poked by thorns...) we had dinner.<br />It's been the coldest I've every seem it in Yelapa. For someone who had just left twenty eight below weather it wasn't very cold. Still one wrapped up a little in the evenings. In the morning you just needed to sit in the sun for a bit while eating breakfast and all was good. The first day of the SIV clinic started, as all such things do, with a briefing. All of us have towed before but a boat tow is a little different. The boat moves and so needs to be followed. There is trick to this. Next was going throughout the maneuvers that would be done on the first round of tows. These start simple and then advance till you decide to do the optional stuff or not. The basic idea is to put your glider into situations over water and then sort them out. The most important are the things that could happen to you as you become a more aggressive thermal pilot. So the first set of maneuvers were big collapses, pulling in half your wing and then flying it, keeping control. Then frontal collapses. For each set of maneuvers the pilot is towed to two thousand feet or higher. The collapses are pulled while you are way out over the ocean. If you do really goof something up you splash into the water. Some of the Mexican pilots threw their reserve parachutes for fun, but rising the salt water off your gear and getting it dry is not so much fun so no one in our group did this.<br />Brad G instructed this part of the trip. Brad is an excellent Arco and cross country pilot. He is a member of the U.S. National team for the worlds paragliding championships. Not only has he found time to be at the top of these two disciplines of the sport but also become an excellent instructor. Brad ran the group through the days maneuvers. A day is usually three tows with multiple maneuvers on the way down. Day two was more folding spindling and twisting of the gliders but this time with the speed bar on. The real cool thing was that you could fly back to the mountain after doing your maneuvers and soar till your next turn came up. That afternoon after we were done for the day certain members of the group were confronted with the margaritas of doom. Some simply stumbled around for a bit while others went missing till the next morning.<br />The third day the group split up a bit, some did stalls and asymmetrical spirals while others twisted up in their lines and tried to steer their gliders. <br />Bill Lhotta who has already sen through a number of SIV clinics worked on his helicopter. A maneuver where you get your wing to whirl around like a helicopter blade.<br /> That night the margaritas of doom were avoided, seems everyone had had enough. It was jam night in town. The local musicians get together and put on a show. There was a whole lot of butt wiggling going on as the band ran through a quite reasonable rendition of Sympathy for the Devil. <br />We made a lot of new friends in the pilots from all over the world. There were people here to fly the sites, others who would be in the next clinic. We all hung out, told stories, danced or and drank as one pleased.<br />Our final flying day Darren and I headed up the hill in the truck to fly. Eck headed home on the boat. Jeff and Sandy tool another boat out to some islands. They have great pictures of whales breaching! Darren got an extra tow to work on his asymmetrical spiral. One of The guys in the next clinic really botched his maneuver and had to full stall out of in to recover. He was so frazzled after that he ended his flight with a spot landing on the lagoon.<br />I had one last flight off the lower launch. I was soaring around as the winds picked up but it got more and more cross so I landed.<br />There was one last dinner to be had. Brad joined us and so did Edith a gal pilot from Mexico city. Brad talked about about going the world championships, coming is year on Spain. We all talked about our flights, maneuvers and got one last chance to tease the consumers of the margaritas of doom. The night ended with salsa dancing in the moonlight at the yacht club.<br />The last morning we got breakfast and got on the boat. We headed out of the bay. On shore, far away on a balcony we saw Brad waving goodbye. We went around a bend and Yelapa disappeared behind us. Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-73838303024209882832010-07-21T09:23:00.000-07:002010-07-21T10:48:01.510-07:00RIdge soaring '10It's the fourth day of the clinic. I'm driving to the site with the windshield wipers going to fend off the mist. A big jet materialises out of the gloom overhead, flaps downs, contrails spinning off the edges. It's setting up a landing approach, east to west. That's not a good sign as I'm looking for west winds, soaring, west winds.<br /><br />This is the trip of anomalies. There's never been a trip before that has had three days of no soaring. Now there is. Then again I've never had a trip where most of the people's names start with "J". (Jeff, Joan, John, Jon, Johannes, Janel.) Or where twenty percent of the pilots are women. Or where so many people lose their phones.<br /><br />I've gotten a bit despondent. The beach is where you go to escape flakey weather. Hot land, cold water, these are big powerful weather influencers. Even as I drove that morning I could see the branches of the trees bent from the trunks to the east. This is the sculpting of the westerly sea breeze day after day. It's what happens most of the time, west wind, why can't it happen now?<br /><br />It's not that we're not flying at all. There are short flights off the dunes. People are working on spot landings and kiting skills. The group has been hiking at point Lobos and up into the redwoods. But as the organizer of this I'm starting to twitch. All these people have taken off time for work, bought plane tickets and paid me to take them ridge soaring but the weather won't let me do my job.<br /><br />Janel was the victim of the weather's rude humors. She just getting back into flying after a serious accident. She could only get time off for half the trip. And it was, to the minute, the bad half of the trip. After days of short flights and hikes back up the dunes, Janel's last day had come. She hung out till she had to pack up and leave. The winds were still light. Twenty minutes later the winds finally starts to pick up. It's a bit cross and it's already late in the day so we decide to scramble down to the far end of the dunes where the curve of the bay would hopefully make the winds straighter. Wind chasing in usually a goose chase but this time it works. The more experienced pilots are launched immediately upon their arrival. I start getting the newer pilots flying. And then the phone rings. It's Janel, she's driving down the highway seeing us all in the air. If only the wind would have held off five more minutes at least she wouldn't had to see everyone else getting the flights the weather wouldn't give her.<br /><br /> The winds are medium strong so everyone is getting plenty of height and there's lots of room as the lift band is fat. I'm playing air traffic control. The new guys need a some time to fly without traffic and get use to soaring the dunes. I give each new pilot a piece of dune to fly alone, then one of the other pilots flies the rules of the right of way with them. I then send them further down the dunes to fly with the rest of the group before launching the next pilot. Soon everyone is up. The group is now spread out over the entire five miles of dunes. I keep the newer folks closer to my end of the dunes to keep an eye on things. I find a good place to sit in the sand and feel an incredible sense of relief. If nothing else, everyone will go home with a great flight. I give some occasional input over the radio as the flights turn from minutes to hours.<br /><br />With the sun getting lower in the sky the winds lighten a bit. With five miles of dunes to explore some of the pilots have landed out on the beach. The dunes are not a consistent wall, there are gaps that have to be crossed to get to the next section. With the lighter winds some of the crossings are getting harder to make. After a bit all the newer folks are on the beach. This my chance to get in the air. I launch and head south along the dunes. I soon find the whole group, either airborne, packing up or hiking back. Bob is down on the beach. I see his back pack was left behind on launch. Hmmm.. Could I....? I swoop onto launch, pause for an instant to grab the bag between my feet, kangaroo launch back into the air, fly down to Bob and drop the pack.<br /><br />Now the day is giving up and everyone is landing. There will be a bit of the "who can stay up the longest" game but our day is not over. There is a picnic to be had in the redwoods. I land and call my sister Martha and tell her we are on the ground and packing up. They have the grill lit. We now have to collect everyone, pack gear, get in the cars, drive to the store for supplies and get to the picnic. This group had a tendency to come unraveled, but we finally get everyone in the cars with food bought and head down the Big Sur coast. <br /><br />Right before the the Bixby bridge is the turn off, one dirt road to the locked gate, then down the narrow track carved into the hillside. The flowers have stayed in bloom late in the year. It's evening but still light, colors surrounded by shadow make up the hills, the bridge is a black silhouette with the ocean brilliant in the low evening sun. Our wagon train of cars poke slowly around the bends in the steep road. Then we enter the redwoods and it might as well be another world, tall trees, ferns, the stream.<br />The cars are parked, stuff unloaded. The dogs barks as we approach. I can smell the grill going.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-19613866087888003162010-07-01T18:31:00.000-07:002010-07-01T18:32:32.270-07:00NevadaThe sea of Nevada<br /><br />Why in the world do we have so much Nevada? To be fair Nevada is no larger than any other of the states that I will pass through on this trip. But, where as Colorado does have the mind numbingly boring eastern plains, they are soon enough relieved by the stunning sceanery of the mountains. After that the high desert takes over into Utah. Then, cresting over Soilder pass, one drops into the Wasatch valley all lush with streams and fields before the buzzing activity of Salt Lake City consumes everything. Then there are the salt flats. And then Nevada. <br />At first the grey teeth of rock thrusting up through gums of sage bush and biting the sky are yet another environment to absorb. But like a multi course dinner where every dish is mash potatoes, one soon aches for a change.<br />When I saw the sign pointing out that Reno was 511 miles away, I started working on a plan.<br />It occurred to me that there is a hell of a lot of coast south of Panama City that nobody is making much use of. What if couple of fifty miles long strips were brought up to surround a small inland sea. Then Nevada would become an attraction instead of a chore. <br />I stopped by city hall in Elko to see if I could talk anyone into my idea. No one could find any fault in my plan. If Utah has a Great Salt Lake why couldn't Nevada have an inland sea. There was some concerns that Panama would miss it's coast line till I explained the sea would merely move inward to form a new coast. After a few days of the waves washing against the land no one would be able to tell the difference. Sure someone might think that the walk to the beach was way too short but that could be explained away as the product of poor memory.<br />As there is endless money available right now for these type of "shovel ready" projects, the city officials of Elko told me that they should have the new sea in place later that afternoon. I jumped back on my car egar to see my idea realized.<br />I soon entered the jungles of Humbolt county. The roads were poor as of yet as the soil needed time to settle before a real road was laid. I drove slowly on the dirt road listening to sound of holler moneys bellowing at the more adgile and teasing spider monkeys. Here at the beginning of the jungle I saw Jack rabbits with swollen bellies napping in the shade. After spending their whole lives eating sage bush the rabbits had gorged themselves senseless. And speaking of pigging out, wild pigs were grunting about is a state of agitation. Perhaps the moving of the coast line beneithe there feet had been unsettling.<br />I drove with my head out the window looking up and all about. That is until a snake dropped off a tree on me. My flailing around only sucseeded in sending the snake flying into the car. At this point it was looped around the rearview mirror eyeing me with intent. That was the intent of where, exactly, to bite me. As I was paying very little attention my driving, I bounced off a log by the side of the road. The car heaved to one side and the snake gave me one last glaring looking as it flew passed my face and out the window.<br /><br />After that excitement I was thinking of taking a break when I saw a small bambo shelter with a palm frond roof. There were hand written signs, in Spanish, hanging from it that I could make no sense of. I pulled over.<br />I am always surprised at how much communication can go on between two people who speak different languages. I found out that Javier would like to sell me a drink. I sat at his table drinking what I think was a banana mango smoothy. It was a buck. Obviously Javier was in need of some corporate branding like a nice logo and a uniform as then he could have easily charged four dollars for my drink. Toucans flew around looking for any fruit to job off. One actually got it's beak in my drink before I could pull it away.<br />Javier was surprised at how many Americanas He had seen today. While I was thinking, "Well, what else would you see in the middle of Nevada." it ocurred to me that maybe Javier had been scooped up when the sections of coast line had been removed from Panama. He may have no idea of where he was or what had happened. I decided that I would not be the one to explain his situation to him, especially when our form of communication depended on way too much arm waving.<br />I had finished my drink and grinned and waved my goodbyes.<br /><br />Bumping along the road I came at last to the sea of Nevada. There was a fine sand beach with palm trees reaching out over it for the sun. At the water's edge there was hundreds of orange vested highway repair workers. As is well known, it is essential to the balance of the universe that these people are employed at all times. That is why they are seen all summer long dragging around orange cones placing them, seemingly at random, on the roads. Now, a hundred miles of interstate had been disturbed by the new sea. Sticking orange cones in the jungle would be pointless as would be floating them on the sea. Their new job was to ferry the cars across the sea on a large bambo raft. I drove my car up on to the raft. It sloshed back and forth violently.<br />A legion of orange vested people pushed the raft into the sea. Another legion picked up long bambo poles and started poling me across the water. I sat on the roof of the car. I was surprised to see seagulls had already found this new sea. They whirled overhead squawking. I sat there reflecting that my idea had been a great sucsess. This was way grander than endless miles of Nevada. I soon found out that not everyone had agreed with me. I was chatting one of the gals poling the raft. She informed me that all of Lovelock Nevada had been submerged. Houses flooded, lands lost. They were pissed. She went on about how some knuckle heads had come up with the plan in Elko and had forced it through without consulting anyone. I kept very quite as she told me about a how football rivalery was most likely behind it as Lovelock had always crushed Elko.<br />At the far side I waved goodbye to my orange vested friends. I crossed the beach and back into the jungle. In a few miles I saw a building going up. The sign on it said The Curved Banana Saloon. Well it was Nevada after all. The jungle ended aburuptly in a pile of mud and dirt. I drove down directly onto the highway. It had been a long time since I had been over fifteen miles per hour. The speed felt exicting. In a few minutes I saw a sign, Reno 24 miles.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-67888120787521521382010-07-01T14:00:00.000-07:002010-07-01T14:29:54.013-07:00DrivingDay one<br /><br />I headed up the Grizzly creek trail from the rest stop in Glenwood canyon. I had a large book of Jane Austen novels clutched in one hand. The path swung around like a slow motion roller coaster. There was the sound of the creek to my left, thousands of feet of orange red rock cliff over head. Purple flowers, like fuzzy antenna hovered over the tall grass over there. And over there yellow flowers huddled under the bushes. A tumbled stack of rock sloped upward to my right. But over there, some other rocks had muscled their way in amongst the soil and tree roots. Everwhere were trees and the green, angled light that was filtered through the leaves. Wasn't long before I had found a suitible place to lay down by the creek started to delve into Lizzy and Mr Darcy misrepresentation of their fellings to each other.<br /><br />I have see a bunch of movies of Austen books but had yet to read any of them. Reading books of movies you've seen can have a mixed out come. On the up side the book can provide a wealth of depth of charactors you already like. On the other hand if you liked the movie but the movie butchered to book, then you wonder what the two ever had to do with each other and whether there is any point on continueing. So far I'm enjoying the book. Didn't expect the language to be as odd as it is though.<br /><br />Some unknowable time later I awoke with the book laying on me. Getting up with the slouth that day time sleeping brings, I headed further up the trail. It occurred to me that, even though I had resently chain sawed my foot, that I was relatively uninjured and had no time pressures on this trip. Now was the opportunity to hike further up the trail then I had been before. Of course in Colorado, going as far as you can go and going as far as the trail goes, can be two very different things. For all I knew this trail could go on for days.<br /><br />At some point it was time to turn around and start driving again. It's that time of year when we head out to Monterey to fly our paragliders. I've got nothing but hot weather and lots of desert to see the next few days.<br /> I've got a newer car thanks to the CU police that crashed into my last one. The new one, alas does not have AC. So I built a fine evaporative cooler out of a fan, plastic storage bin and a humidifer wick. Ok, if doesn't blow freezing air at me but for $40 it's the difference between being baked alive and being reasonably comfortable. Plus the weird thing bungyed to my dash board pleases me to no end.<br /><br />Got 41mpg on my first tank, full moon guitar playing in the desert, camp set, sleep comes.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-78080445540693155982010-06-26T08:06:00.000-07:002010-06-26T08:13:13.877-07:00Packing paranoia9:07 Saturday MOrning.<br /><br />I'm leaving by 11:00 for the ridge soaring paragliding trip I teach each year.<br /><br />Right now I'm twirling around trying to finish packing even though... I'm done. But it doesn't feel like I'm done yet. There is still that lingering feeling that I'm missing something. Flying in the face of that idea is that the car is packed to the ceiling. I have also made lists, and written down everything as I put it in the car. I've already checked the list for things I think I might have forgotten.<br /><br />The final bit will be the, "did I lock the door" challenge.<br /><br />Anyway, from here on out I will blogging from the, I Smear. Typos will increase.<br /><br />More Fun Soon.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-49047501576212931042010-02-14T17:12:00.000-08:002010-02-18T20:54:43.560-08:00The last of trip.Going home, Yelapa<br /><br />The plane is rattling around in the sky. Three hours and I'll be home. I awoke to the sound of the surf on the beach. I'll go to sleep to the sound of the wood stove crackeling. Sand for snow.<br /><br />I had breakfest on the pier as the high tide surf tried to slop it's way over the wall onto my table. Pelicans were swarming the fishing boats. The group of us finished up and got on the boat. A hundred feet off the pier we saw Carl waving from shore. Hold on! Back to pick up Carl. The surf was really big. As we went from beach to beach picking people up, the boat would dart in and then back off. We would be lifted high as the surf sucked back under us. I'd look down at bare sand just before us, sure that we would be thrown upon the beach. But the boat pilot had it all timed just right.<br />Out of the bay onto the ocean, the heavly laden boat wallowed. There was too much weight for the boat to get up on plane. The boat just pushed through the water like a plow in deep snow. A few times it seemed like we might turn over.<br />Darren's friend Mike got us set up in the first bar he could find in PV. The long wait, till the plane left, began. For those that drank, a plan was quickly in place. <br />Slowly the wind shifted around into the south west. That meant the launch above Bob's house might be working. I could tell that Darren really wanted to go. Now we only had two hours till we had to get to the airport. I sort of remember how to get there but clearly remember that it is a scramble on a shitty trail and that the launch is tiny knoll that has been extented by a raised wire mesh. (really) Light wind launches are completely hairball. And I've got the sniffles. I'm trying to sinc up to Darren's ethusiasim. I'm failing but think, "What the he'll". There is concern that we will all miss the plane because of Darren and I's boondogle. But in the true spirit of paragliding priorities we go to find a taxi that has some idea of where to go. The third guy we talk to does. <br />After winding up the streets, I'm not sure where the trail starts. I know where the hard way is. But remember there was a better way. Time is ticking. We head up the nasty path. It's steep and lose. Soon, as I remember, it turns into some sort of water course and gets even steeper. I must use my hands to pull myself up. Then it's through the rocks and bush. I see the scaffolding that supports the launch extention. Launch extention? What the hell am I talking about? Well, there simply isn't enough room there. So a scaffold with thick wire mesh was put up to make just enough room. Indoor outdoor carparting is thrown over the back. While the front has been left open mesh to let the air through. (once again, no really) However, someone had done some work up there and there was some more room. Just enough for a forward launch. Darren is about to put this to the test. The winds are light. I stand in front so I might have some chance of waving him off if the launch is no good. It's good! I go and get my gear ready. It's hard to be patient with your glider when there is so little room. But "right" is better than "quick". And I am off. I've got houses below and below that the beach. A sea bird is turning in lift below me but it is bird lift. My flight is soon over. We pack up on the beach, catch a cab and are back ten minutes late, just as the rest of the gang are ready to leave us behind.<br /><br />The rest of the story is about linking one form of transportation to another till I'm standing at my front door. It's snowing.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-49115309812230263292010-02-12T19:01:00.000-08:002010-02-18T20:48:20.369-08:00Darren goes flying (we watch)Yelapa day five<br /><br />Darren just landed after two and a half hours. This is best day, of all days and trips we have done. Darren, without his vario, launched first and landed last, therefore out flying everyone. (The whole gang got great flights.) Darren flew out to the front ridge. At first I thought he was going to miss out. The guys that launched later got right into thermals and were flying over launch. While Darren was stuck far below. But then he got a nice thermal and flew all the way back over launch. After that, as everyone sunk out one by one, Darren just kept flying around.<br />I was starting to wonder if Yelapa was really the place to go. I've never been skunked here, but I've been waiting for that one great day. Now we've had one.<br /><br />I missed it though. I woke up with a head full of crap. My right ear wouldn't repressurize on the drive up the mountain. Felt woozy everytime I stood up. I'm on the evening launch now. Watching white caps coming in out on the ocean.<br /><br />Later, after short but reasonable flight, I'm watching Darren fly some more. There has been a lot of that today. Darren got just a little more lift than I and got into the next layer of air. From that position he could just keep boating around. It's him and the turkey vultures. <br /><br />It's the last day at Yelapa. Tomorrow we get on the boat to go to the taxi to go to the... But we will try one more flying spot. Now it's off to Meme's to see the band play. Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-52721911688191188612010-02-11T18:17:00.000-08:002010-02-18T20:45:38.949-08:00Blog blogOk, just reread the last few blogs. The typo level is amazing! Please bare with me. I am typing on my new Ismear (ok, it's really an Ipod) and need to get used to the thumb key board. Last night I accidently pasted two copies of the previous blog smack dab in the middle of the new blog. It took me eighteen mintues on the backspace key to get rid of it. I didn't do much proof reading after that. I went into SIGB mode instead. (screw it I'm going to bed) I'll stick up another blog on this trip soon.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-117638693389354662010-02-11T15:30:00.000-08:002010-02-18T20:44:43.795-08:00More of YelapaRest of day three,<br /><br />Strap on the pack, duck under the clothsline, open the bungy chord that closes the gate to the graveyard, through the graveyard, up the hill to the truck. The path is a red orange dirt. Everything else is green and not sort of green, very green, lush and varied. <br />Today there are even more people than people that didn't really fit in the truck yesterday.<br />This resulted in the following reactions. Carl bagged it and headed back to the room. Four others decided to hike the launch. (their gliders where in the truck though. That's three miles and two thousand feet!) The truck was then quite roomy in comparision to the last ride. However, after a few minutes we caught up with the hikers that, for some reason, had changed their minds. Once again it was cram-o-rama in the truck. I was standing up in the back holding a rope tied to the front bumper, ducking branches.<br /><br />At launch there was five mintues of perfect breeze to launch in. Darren wisely got out there right away and was rewarded with a nice flight. Soon after he got on the beach he radioing up, "are you guys coming?". The wind had turned to super fussy. Over the next few hours the wind reluctantly let a few pilots off every twenty minutes. However, as some were trying to no wind reverse launches, not every opportunity was taken. The fun really begain when one pilot did a low energy launch, bounced his butt off of the hill, sort of flew through bush and definitly did not fly through the tree. He disappeared out of sight to the sound of cracking branches. There is a moment where one askes themselves, "What will the next few minutes of MY life be like?". There is a bunch of running around, yelling and genral commotion. He is not responding. That's not good. But then... Wait there is a faint voice. He fine.<br />Now, going into the jungle to fish someone's glider out of tree is not something to rush into. You can come out with quite Collection of parasites. Amazingly enough he got not only himself but his glider out with minimum fuss. Finally my chance came. I bailed on my first launch. I didn't like it, I stopped. I liked try two just fine. I flew out with the clouds just few hundred feet over my head.<br /><br />Back on the beach I rejoin the group. They have heard that something was up on radio. A little story telling is needed then completed. At Darren's we have some coconut milk from some coconuts Darren knocked out of a tree. And then it's off to snorkel. This time the whole gang goes. We float around looking at fish.<br /><br />Tonight is pizza.<br /><br />Late in the night sitting on the balcony. There is the sound of the waves and rolling calls of the jungle insects. The group has split up to, walk, sleep, play poker, check out a dance. I'm sitting here writing. This balcony seems to stick out into the air, three sides of it look out over either forest or ocean. There's a little quite time now, a little time reflect. I could have gone a lot of places in life but the best of life is when you're glad you've ended up where you are.<br /><br />Day four <br /><br />I'm sitting on the pier reviewing the pictures I've taken today. Two little boys press up on either side of me, peering into my camera. One is blowing up and then releasing the air out of a ballon, in my ear. He names everything he can recognize as I scroll through the pictures.<br />I woke up to rain again today. The sky over the ocean was black to the horizon. The road to launch is wet, the clouds were often below launch. Once again, not normal. Got on the radio and started working on a plan B. There is a waterfall up the valley. I had never been there and there has been some interest in going. This became the new plan. At Darren's place we sorted out who was going, who was going back to bed and how much money was lost at the poker game last night. (not much.)<br />Us hikers get going. That would be Trang (name now spelled right) Darren Cindy and I. The hike is about two hours in and another two back out. The trail goes up the river. The further up we go the more we leave behind the part of Yelapa that is design to accomodate tourist and the more we enter the part that is of the locals and about the locals. The store fronts become quite funky, just the open side of a cinder block buildings. There are sad and bored looking horses tied to posts. All the chickens are free range in the fact that they are everywhere. The stone walk way becomes dirt. (The horses providing new proto-dirt.) We walk past the school. The kids, in uniform, outside playing. Further up the river the houses space out. The jungle becomes more of a presence. Trang, who is native to Vietnam, is pointing out the various fruit trees. There were a lot of mango trees. Alas, the mangos were green and the size of the end of my thumb. Now we are a long way up the river. The path is a lot smaller. The houses get very rustic and not in a quaint way. As I peer further into the brush I can see the ruins of adondon homes. One has a satellite dish attached to a pole leaned up again the side of it. Finally, after becoming tired and sweaty, we arrive at wooden gate that has "waterfall" painted on it in bright green paint. It is locked, we climb under.<br />Now we really are in the jungle. There are big hanging vines strangling trees, macraws squaking overhead, the soil of the poor condition of having every nutrient sucked out of it. I can hear the roaring of the falls. The trail is very indistict. We're climbing over rocks hanging onto trees. But, here in the middle of nowhere, the last ten feet of path to the water is crisply set stone stairs. ?<br />Darren and I strip down to shorts and pile into the pool beneithe the falls. We both have waterproof cameras and are trying to take pictures while dog paddling. I climb into a side passage that has little steam coming out of it. The rocks are slippery. In a ways there rock walls on either side. Trees are drooped over the top like wet spegetti, while their roots braid themselves down the sides. It was one of throughs rare serendipitous moments. <br />The hike is revesred. Thanks to clothes made out of oil I'm bone dry by the time I get back.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-71458270354789755802010-02-10T07:07:00.000-08:002010-02-10T07:09:46.949-08:00Yelapa tripDay one of the Yelapa trip.<br />After losing an epic batttle with the automatic parking machine (that left an unnecessary 10 bucks poorer) I'm on the bus, heading to the airport. This is the part of travel that is not the journey. Plane flights have become the travel equivilent of waterboarding. I am reminding myself that my opinions need not be shared with any TSA employees. I just need to keep my mouth shut and get on the plane.<br /><br />The day will go like this; car to bus to airport to being frisked to plane to airport to taxi to boat to beach to hotel. Yea! Done! <br />I'm now working on phase three, the airport. When there I'll find two of our party, Jeff and Cindy. We'll get processed before flying off to meet Darren and Carl. Darren is bringing his wife, Tran and his friend Mike and his wife Jill. Yelapa is one of those flying sites that you would want to bring a spouse to. With a beautiful beach, palm trees, warm ocean, not to mention warm weather, who wouldn't want to go there?<br /><br />On the plane now. The snow is starting to fall. We are getting out of here just time. Soon we'll take off and fly up into the murk. <br />I am Always surprised at the weather these big planes fly in. Before becoming a paraglider pilot this wouldn't have phased me. Ignorance was my shield and protector, However knowledge has corrupted that innocence. Flying in blinding snowstorms seems like a bad idea, but these planes fly this stuff all the time without running into problems. I realize that I am committing the crime experience creep. I am taking what I know about paragliding and trying to apply it to big jet flying. I often have encountered this problem teaching students that flown other types of aircraft. They try to use their understanding of that craft to help them learn to paraglide. The problem is that paragliding is too unique for that knowledge, beyond the fundamentals, to be of much use. I know this and yet still try to do it but the other way around. I, like everyone else, like to feel smart. My twenty years of paragliding give a level of expertise but I am the one who needs to remember that once I leave the field of paragliding, even into the relatively close neighborhood of jet planes, my knowledge fades. I think, for that reason, instructors need to keep trying to do new things. It's comfortable to hide behind ones skills, but, if you teach, you need refresh yourself with the feelings of being brand new at something. (this thumb typing is doing the trick for me right now.<br /><br />Way beneith me the snow is gone. The tv screen shows me I'm soon to cross the Mexican border. The last time I was in Mexico was the final leg of the Central America TV Show I did with American Explorer. Sleepless nights of endless driving, being searched five times a day, made Mexico seem like an unending hell hole. Yelapa, however, will redeem Mexico for <br />me. The TV schedule was a max rush and we were two weeks overtime at that point. I am sure that we pasted by many very cool places in our mad dash Cross the country. Yelapa is Mexico experienced the right way. Slow down, get to a known cool place and stay put, soak it in. I just need to get everyone onto the ferry, (with their bags) and the relaxing part will begin.<br /><br />And... We do get all of our bags! Jeff had a scare though. As the bags came around a bend in the carosel, they were falling off into a big pile. After waiting Round for one of Jeff's bags, he decided to dig through the ever mounting pile of bags being barfed off the carosel. And there it was!<br /><br />Off we went in the taxi to Los Muertos Pier in Puerto Vallarta. We were treated to some Mexican taxi driver driving. My favorite was a, cross six lanes of traffic on a red light, U turn. As we got into town the road became cobbles. I took in views of jammed packed beaches with vibrating eyeballs. Kids were playing in the surf, beer was getting drunk (and so were the people.) some sort of volley ball without a net was being played. <br /><br />Arriving at the pier we found the rest of our group sitting in the closest bar. No really! One thing that makes Yelapa special is the boat ride. Yelapa is not a island, but the long winding dirt road you would have to take, makes the water taxi the most sensible way to get there. This boat ride adds this sense of disconnection to the trip. There is real feeling of leaving the world behind the minute you get in that boat.<br /><br />The boats are open pongos with outboard motors. You go banging over the waves for a fortyfive minute ride. The coast slips by. Jungle glad mountains rise up a few thousand feet. Ridge lines follow deep valleys. Hidden villages are revealed and once again obscured. I breathe thick warm air and start to relax. The trials of travel are almost complete. Around a point that reaches out into the ocean we go. We enter a deep bay. There lies Yelapa. Clouds twist around the mountain peaks, a cluster of houses are scattered on the hill sides. Smoke rise out from the trees, some cooking fire somewhere. Our boat weave through to moored boats to the beach. At the beach the boat leaps Around in the surf. Getting off dry is not an option, timing your departure is and decides if it's getting your feet getting wet or a full on soaking. Our bags are shouldered to shore, we have arrived! <br /><br />Day two<br />Rain. It hasn't rained here, in February, for eleven years. This is my fifth trip and I've never seen it rain. I had just got out of the ocean from snorkeling and felt the rain start to fall. <br /><br />Guess what? We didn't fly today. Plans for these trips must be made so far out that no weather report would have any relationship with what will actually happen. And the weather is changing, everywhere. A quick poll to my fellow Instructors confirms this. Everyone is seeing big changes in the weather. Whatever! If you can't wait on the wind don't become a paraglider pilot!<br /><br />This year the group is housed all over town. Darren and company are right on the beach. Jeff and Cindy are are up the hill a bit. Carl and I are on the other side of town, way up the hill. We have great view of the bay once we climb aaalll the stone stairs. This morning I went out on the porch, turned on my radio and raised the troops. I can see the other lodgings way across the bay. For the morning flight there is a truck that drives up a beat up dirt road to the top of the mountain. We arrange to meet the truck at ten. For Carl and I this is a few minutes hike, for the others it's good slog across town and a good climb up the hill. See there are no cars in Yelapa. The road from inland stops just above town. Everyone walks in town or rides donkeys. However, after we land on beach, it will Carl and I that have big slog home. So it all evens out.<br /><br />We wait for the truck. And wait. The locals make a few calls and find out that due to some late night partying, there will be no truck. We make a plan B to snorkel and head our seperate ways. At the preappointed meeting place there is no sign of Jeff and Darren. We wait. Finally we go all the way across town to check their rooms. Nope. I get a hold of a radio from another member if our party to find out Jeff and Darren had meet our truck driver on their way back and were now sitting on launch. I'm a bit bummed. I would like to fly and I'm not there to do my job. I am on the beach though so, if I can't be at launch to brief people on the launch, at least I can guide people into the landing zone.<br /><br />The landing zone is a length of sandy beach dividing the ocean from a small lagoon. It's not a hard place to land but it does tend to focus the mind as a splash down is the reward of a sloppy approach. So I hang out on the beach. Not a rough assignment.<br /><br />Soon Les, a local pilot, appears with a boat complete with a tow rig. Turns our Les, along with Brad ( who's last name I will not even attempt to spell, but he is an excellent acro pilot.) have been doing safety manuver clinics, Or towing up over the ocean and stalling and spinning their gliders. The idea is if you mess it up you go on the water. Les goes up and does a few spins. I used this opportunity to brief the members of the group on the beach about these maneuvers.<br /><br />Soon I hear from Darren and Jeff, the conditions are no good, they are heading down. I can't talk anyone into going back to plan B, snorkeling. Beer and sitting on a chair on the beach have stronger pulling power. It's hard fo resist the gravity firmly pressing me into me seat.<br /><br />But, if I can't float around in the sky, floating around in the ocean is a good alternative. There is great little beach at the bottom of the long stairway to my place. With my ancient contacts in my eyes and flippers and mask in hand, I wander down to the water.<br /><br />I got a new camera before the trip. I'm up to about $1200 in four cameras over the last few years. All Sonys. All have died of lens drive failure. No more. I got a completely encased underwater deal. Now I knew it was waterproof but as I waded out into to the water. I had the hardest time actually sticking it in the water. I was holding it up over my head. Years of previous experience were shouting, "no! Keep the camera away from the water!". Finally in I plunged. The water was full of fish. Everywhere, every color, every size and shape.<br /><br />Day three<br />Not only is the truck there, there is someone to drive it. Twelve pilots cram themselves and their gear in, on, and hanging off of the truck. A classic paragliding experience. Up the road we go, Bouncing around trying fruitlessly to find something better than friction and faith to keep us in the truck. We twist around bends, get thrashed by low hanging branches and vines while the truck whines along in four low. About a third of the way into the journey someone says "Are we there yet?" for the first time. Much later we are there.<br /><br />The view is terrific. The curve of the bay way below, a few scattered islands on the horizon. Thick jungle drapped over ridges and mountain sides. Birds turn lazy circles or squak with every wing beat. And the wind is perfect. Gear is prepared, wings laid out, lines cleared, buckles buckled. One by one the group flys off into the sky, to turn slowly with the birds. I am almost always last. It's part of my job to see everyone off ok. I run my wing up overhead. "Man I am rusty!" The tactile response to my wing feels blind. But I launch well and am soon way out over the jungle, feet dangling. The clouds have come in so there is no sun or heat for me to use to climb higher. It's a long leisurely ride through the sky back to the beach thousands of feet below. I look at hidden houses or out over ocean or just watch the jungle pass. Then it's time to set up my landing and join the gang on the beach. We get some lunch before hiking up to the lower evening launch for a quick windless flight.<br /><br />We sit around on the beach chatting till we make the way too complicated decision of where fo get dinner and then change our minds a few times. But we end up at a great place and our hostess finishes the evening with a fire dance.<br /><br />Day three,<br />The people in the room next to mine had a very important discussion about pickles just before sunrise this morning. Beautiful morning.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-72278970725297176332010-01-30T12:59:00.000-08:002010-01-30T13:06:54.947-08:00Test this just testJust got an Ipod touch. Trying to see if I can use this for updating the blog when I'M<br />on the road.<br />Look's like it's working!<br />BillBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-81085823717690984282009-07-06T13:25:00.000-07:002009-07-06T14:11:04.274-07:00Last man Standing,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdMV6SawqrsHRmP6NT13HqkhJ6_qmMw4paM2zyoJChyphenhyphen4LKV7f_fGdxBteGIDH5dJIIhUpPS0sbaJCsgPP8xekvqs6ihNOggMY3dkimKKx7rDo5GRbjrxFwI6uWu0qq5l1XFKYnDhq3Thg/s1600-h/lakecourt.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdMV6SawqrsHRmP6NT13HqkhJ6_qmMw4paM2zyoJChyphenhyphen4LKV7f_fGdxBteGIDH5dJIIhUpPS0sbaJCsgPP8xekvqs6ihNOggMY3dkimKKx7rDo5GRbjrxFwI6uWu0qq5l1XFKYnDhq3Thg/s320/lakecourt.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5355457650230564338" /></a><br /><br />Just got done cleaning out the little fridge in front of the guest house. (There are leftovers for days.) The clinic is over. Our woodstock nation of tents is gone. No one’s about. No more rustling of gliders having the sand poured out of them or the scattered conversations of the days flights and events. The dogs have a lot less to bark at. I slept ten hours last night and still feel like I could use another ten.<br /><br />If I start with the first official day of the clinic, Sunday, we only had one down day where we didn’t fly. (Ok, some people got in early on Saturday and that day didn’t work.) After the last few years I was starting to wonder if the magic had worn off and Monterey would no long be the flawless flying site. After this trip however, I think I can write those other trips off as the fickleness that is always the weather’s purgative.<br /><br />For those that haven’t been out yet, the beach here has an unbeatable set up for flying. The central valley of California gets very hot in the summer, that hot air rises and pulls the cooler air off the ocean to replace it. The greater the change in temperature the greater the effect. Under the bay there is a 9000 foot trench, which helps make that temperature difference even greater by circulating cold water up out of the depths. What happens then, is there is a cold, smooth wind that blows right into the dunes. This winds is deflected up over those dunes which make a band of lifting air that parallels all five miles of the dunes. If you stay in that band of air you can fly for miles and have flights hours long. That’s what we did. (The longest flight was six hours long.) The last thing that really helps make this place be so great is that the bay is very recessed. The depth of the bay helps to straighten any cross winds blowing along the shore. Those cross winds “fall” into the bay as the inland heating sucks air eastward.<br /><br />Each morning the group would coleus from it’s various factions. There were the, sleep as long as you can, the go for a run, go find breakfast, groups. I set the leaving time at nine so that we would actually be under way by nine thirty. Next, we would drive out to the site. We are camped out in Carmel valley, the site is in the bay, between the two is the ridge that makes the Monterey peninsula. What ever weather you wake up in on one side has no barring on what is happening on the other. I never check weather reports here, I just go see. The first clue is from the top of the ridge, whether you can see down to the beach or whether the fog of the marine layer is obscuring everything. But the real “say so” of the weather is the flag of truth. The flag truth is right on the beach by the hotel. If it’s blowing it’s time to speed up and get your gear out to the beach, if not it’s down for a bagel in the shopping center.<br /><br />On a typical day we parawait on the beach waiting for the winds to come up. Somewhere around eleven, if we’re lucky, or one if we are not the winds come up and we start to fly. Sometimes the first flight is too early and people sink out to the beach. Other times not, but once the first person is up then it’s a shark attack of pilots getting ready.<br /><br />The training end of the dunes is maybe a half mile long. Everyone starts here. When they get a little altitude then people start crossing over the dune-less section of the beach to fly the other 4.5 miles of dunes. That leaves me with the newer pilots that are working on their beginner ridge soaring skills. <br /><br />At some point the winds either, get too strong, cross, or too light and the day is over. Then it’s time to get as many as sixteen people all pointed in the same direction to get dinner.<br /><br />This trip there were many adventures but to protect the guilty and the innocent, I can’t tell all. You can get the stories from you flying buddies.<br /><br />There will be pictures going up on the yahoo group.<br />See you all for flying this weekend.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-67906603067461924342009-06-30T22:04:00.000-07:002009-06-30T22:08:54.264-07:00As of TuesdayThe quick up date is...<br />Sunday, Monday were both great days. Flights as long as 3 hours were flown. Today was a bust for flying but we had a fantastic picnic and hike in the redwoods. Stupid football was played. (That's, throw the ball left handed with your eyes closed... Well you had to be there.)<br /><br />See ya get some pictures up next time.<br /><br /><br />BillBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-9004879799917527942009-06-27T07:51:00.000-07:002009-06-27T08:23:27.215-07:00Day TwoOK, <br />As your poor paragliding Instructor, it was a little weird going to pick up PV after he flew his private plane into Monterey. The kind of thing that starts one of those, “What have I done with my life.” thing. Be kind of nice to have my own plane, you know. Little did I know... <br />PV said he had a friend that wanted to go on a tandem flight. We waited around at the parking spot for him. When he does come, it’s in a Ferrari. So I showed him my home made evaporative cooler and said, if he wanted, I could bungy it to the dash of his Ferrari, cause I could always make another. So Ferrari driving dude and his gal come out to the beach and we have a great day, flying the tandem with them. I was now thinking, “It would be kind of cool to have a Ferrari.” ( Or more accurately, It would be great to, 1. have the money to buy a Ferrari, or 2. Have so much money that I WOULD actually buy a Ferrari)<br /><br />We wrapped up the day with a few hours of flying. The new folks were psyched to fly. But, at 4:30 the gal needed to go off to the airport. There we met another former Microsoft guy, (who lends God money). She got in his twin engine $600,000 plane and flew off. At this point I’m thinking... What the fuck! And to think that just yesterday I was a little envious of PV’s plane. (Which, now, as compared with the twin engine plane, was looking like my car as compared to the Ferrari.) <br /><br />Anyway, If I did have too much money I probably won’t be hanging out with all my paragliding buddies this week, which would be my loss.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-34735478927417900312009-06-25T21:45:00.000-07:002009-06-25T21:48:22.080-07:00PV and I flyingJust a quick note.<br />Picked up PV at the airport. (He flew his own plane there) Went to the beach and got an hour of flying in. Strong winds, fat lift band and sunshine. Perfect, if you can beach launch. There was at least another hours of flying to be had but we worked a lot of those beach launches. SO, we warmed up the site for all of you and it should be ready when you arrive.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-15106319081267877312009-06-24T18:08:00.000-07:002009-06-24T18:11:30.404-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9Dnz5eDqBvo2S9Rxmkyz0PJ91m996vGlLTDV3lcTr4J6Ja3iGRC4eu7KYyT2GuGSsfbmA1MmBGZjDEfHqUInWX66HWPAzv7k38wFtR-h3BEaiSYOViwwz1dFOMrNXEB2oF5kuLI-ruc/s1600-h/trip9.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9Dnz5eDqBvo2S9Rxmkyz0PJ91m996vGlLTDV3lcTr4J6Ja3iGRC4eu7KYyT2GuGSsfbmA1MmBGZjDEfHqUInWX66HWPAzv7k38wFtR-h3BEaiSYOViwwz1dFOMrNXEB2oF5kuLI-ruc/s320/trip9.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351066582878825970" /></a><br />Road Trip 09<br /><br />If you drew a straight line from my house to Dad and Barb’s, (Where we will be camping out) the distance would be 927 miles. I will drive over thirteen hundred to get there. It’s funny to watch the GPS, which gives me that straight line distance, and the odometer count down the miles from their differing references.<br />In my first half hour I managed to drive twenty seven miles while getting five miles further away from my goal. A bit discouraging that. At other times the arrow on the GPS would point right down the road and they would click off miles together. At other times the arrow would point off way right or left and as the odometer tumbled along the GPS would stubbornly sit there.<br /><br />It’s time for the annual fourth of July ridge soaring clinic. This will the ninth year in a row that it’s been held. That we’ve come back nine years running is proof enough that this is a great place and a great time to fly.<br /><br />I’ve done this drive many times. I started out going balls out, trying to get the drive over with. But the flaming eyeball feeling of too many hours on the road changed me over time. I settle on a three day trip in the end. There is now a routine of sorts but a pleasant one. A sandwich in Vale, a bike or skate along the Colorado river in Glenwood canyon, skipping rocks at the secret rock skipping place. There is no point is blasting through all these amazing places. I’m now camped out in one of my dirt bag camping sites along the road. There is a stream and it’s running hard with the snow’s run off. The highway is far off, though a slight rumble of the trucks can still be heard.<br /><br />Tomorrow with be Salt lake city, the salt flats and lots and lots of Nevada.<br /><br />Day Two,<br />About half way through day two, somewhere around Elko, the road trip looses it’s sparkle. The big mountains are gone, salt flats were an interesting change as you leave Utah, then you hit Nevada. And for a while this olive green terrain, with it’s dusty black teeth of rock is interesting also. But there is four hundred miles of it. I run playlist after playlist of music on the Ipod, then switch to book on bytes. <br /><br />The heat of the day slowly ramps up but, amazingly, my homemade evaporative cooler keeps the car to, just, the warm side of neutral. My new car has no air conditioning, So, out a plastic box, a fan and wick from a humidifier I built one. It is a god awful looking contraption that I’ve bungy corded to my dashboard. What still amazes me is that it works. At 70 degrees it’s cool. a little less cool at 80. By 90 degrees it’s warm but far from that, “ I’m a pizza in an oven” feeling that you get from no air conditioning at all.<br /><br />The orange cone migration is in full swing. It’s a little late in coming this year (with all the last season snows) but, finally, the orange cones are starting to leave the lower winter grazing grounds and move to their high summer pastures. <br /><br />These endothermic creatures love the heat of black asphalt. You can see them for miles lined up on the interstate. Sometimes they line the edges of the road, sometimes they come straight down the middle forcing the traffic down to one lane. Legions of federal wildlife workers help manage the migration. Dressed is camouflage orange vests they wield orange diamond shaped signs directing the cones along. There are the petite females, the classic cone shape, and the big bull barrel males. Sadly, I saw few conelings. (probably yet another effect of global climate change.) It’s hard sometimes to not become annoyed at the pitiful slow progress of the cone migration, and yet we need to learn to share this world of ours. Thankfully their social structure assures that they only travel in single file, if not the road would be impassable most of the year.<br /><br />Tonight I’ve packed into Donner pass. (Never gone back packing with computer before.) The bugs are swarming. (and I’m a Wisconsin boy so I know swarming.) Never camped here before. Tomorrow is the last part of the big drive I could be soaring beach by 2:00 if all goes according to plan. Coyotes howl, time to sleep.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-27682465683599828012009-05-03T13:03:00.001-07:002009-05-03T13:07:13.633-07:00Training Sites<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG4RhOwBlcy7OE1kgmCD2V5oxVhcKvfoIUpbz1hRF6a0kMj4maRIrLLCpKL-EQWmyU9NK3t_o2M6rwrdu2tY7Yp6ZjluRc7VLD9LGKL2OBkN5g36eSJV54YYM-f5zgoSsBmeG4z_6oKkY/s1600-h/launch+view.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG4RhOwBlcy7OE1kgmCD2V5oxVhcKvfoIUpbz1hRF6a0kMj4maRIrLLCpKL-EQWmyU9NK3t_o2M6rwrdu2tY7Yp6ZjluRc7VLD9LGKL2OBkN5g36eSJV54YYM-f5zgoSsBmeG4z_6oKkY/s320/launch+view.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331691639283600802" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3QhDgActD4-JSqYZ-hVfsOpj6yYbBD17h30i6AVdaxlw8mrii58hD3l9UHQSEM3Ec4fUVswt4dPBsENgNbooGzSIRDib4Ihyphenhyphen4YEDHL8TsiQmrF1IQ_tDxs8w3hnEfaUzV7Kc1KzAafrc/s1600-h/site.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3QhDgActD4-JSqYZ-hVfsOpj6yYbBD17h30i6AVdaxlw8mrii58hD3l9UHQSEM3Ec4fUVswt4dPBsENgNbooGzSIRDib4Ihyphenhyphen4YEDHL8TsiQmrF1IQ_tDxs8w3hnEfaUzV7Kc1KzAafrc/s320/site.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331691154757724162" /></a><br /><br /><br />There is nothing more critical to this sport than training sites. If you learned to fly a long time ago you might think that there are other factors than are more important. But think of this, if no one learns to fly then, there are no pilots. This will be a fact if there is no where to train.<br /><br />I hopped into Mark W’s truck this morning to head out to the western slope of Colorado. We are on a mission to find more places to train. <br /><br />The front range of Colorado lost a half a dozen flying sites one day. One misguided person cut down some trees on Boulder Open space. As a community it was decided that it was better to tell the powers to be than to try to hide the fact. This was a huge mistake as the entire flying community was punished for the actions of one individual. To this day we have only be able to reopen one of the sites.<br /> <br />Over the years the weather has also become a lot less accommodating. I’ve seen the flying season go from close to nine months to as little as six months. I now question how viable a paragliding business really is here in Colorado. I love teaching flying too much, and the life style it affords me, to just walk away without trying everything I can to keep it. If I could find another reliable training site, I could teach more days and make up, at least somewhat, for the shorter season.<br /><br />So this trip is about exploring for new sites, not for soaring or cross country, but for those small smooth hills where one can take the average person and reveal to them what it is like to leave the ground behind.<br /><br />Good flying sites are not a fluke. There are very solid reasons why the best sites are so good. It starts with weather. The all essential factor is the wind must blow up the hill. The wind has to really want to blow up the hill, it has to be the easiest thing for the wind to do.<br /><br />We’ve gone to the western slope because every night the air cools and gets heavy way up in the mountains. That heavy air makes it’s way down Vale pass along the Eagle river valley, passed Avon till Near Dotsero it joins up with the Colorado river. This mass of cold air drains through Glenwood canyon, then past Rifle and, at last, floods across the plains west of Grand Junction. I meet this air one morning flowing over a ridge in the desert and flew for hours. Now if there was a training site some where with that same smooth morning air flowing up it. That could be a perfect training site.<br /><br />4/28/09<br /><br />There is a mind numbing aspect to spending a day doing something which yields no results. And yet... Seven hours of exploring dirt roads in the desert plains, in and out of canyons, up cliff lines over looking the Colorado river, bumping along jarring roads, wild flowers blushing color into a landscape of rock, wind twisted junipers paused in a dance that takes years to perform... This is not hardship... and yet I would love to report that I found that perfect hill. I didn’t.<br /><br />“Where’s that one go? I don’t know. Might as well try it as long as we’re here. Where the hell are we going to turn around. You know if there’s a place to land under that, that would be great, I can see a road over there, but I’ve no idea of how to get to it. Well that’s what the map said... ” That how the conversation went.<br /><br />The wind roared all day long. I returned to find my tent, pulled free of it’s stakes, at the bottom of a three hundred foot cliff, ripped and torn after taking the only flight of the trip so far. I am a wind blown, sun dried, tired. My body stretched by the chips and chocolates that were too close at hand in the car. I saw so many things but not “The Hill” <br /><br />I think we found the best place yesterday. This is an area I had check out before. But it took going soaring on another ridge, to understand that the wind could well blow up it, in a predictable matter day after day, to look again at it. First off there is a wide open landing zone. Next, a few launches of various heights. I would like there to be less rocks but it’s OK. If that perfect breeze blows up them, then great. I would like to have road up then but we have to hike everything else, so what the hell. <br /><br />I have spent so many days looking for the perfect site. Rounding every bend hoping that I will find what I’m looking for. For all that effort I have found only a few sites and only one truly great training hill. There are few more roads to try tomorrow. Fingers and toes are crossed.<br /><br />In the end, the place we went the first day was the best. A good training hill has to have all these factors, A nicely sloped, grassy launch, a landing zone that is an easy glide away and is open without obstacles. And most of all a consistent breeze most blowing up it. We found all of these factors but none all in one spot. None the less, though a a little rocky, there is a spot worth a trip and a try. And if the weather here stays SOOOOOO fickle we’ll have the opportunity.<br /><br />BillBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-47762358510752024682008-09-08T12:08:00.001-07:002008-09-15T10:49:58.898-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh81ZvochnQ3aa5SKxoaHkreI-n4BBfCGPTExcffl_w6pgxKzL5vTeXTnAF9eGM9u_1O8Cq5Aj-wd3zGA4ooo8bvNv6QHC7wCtww8SeBGNEyFt08OHIYnPjl-Q2UvWwxY0VF8j4LN7VAJs/s1600-h/Steve.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh81ZvochnQ3aa5SKxoaHkreI-n4BBfCGPTExcffl_w6pgxKzL5vTeXTnAF9eGM9u_1O8Cq5Aj-wd3zGA4ooo8bvNv6QHC7wCtww8SeBGNEyFt08OHIYnPjl-Q2UvWwxY0VF8j4LN7VAJs/s320/Steve.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243729661178554258" /></a><br />The hardest part of keeping a blog is writing after an exhausting day. We are on day four of the trip. That’s four days of sun, wind, hiking sand dunes and missing lunch. My lips are sun burnt. Eating mexican has mapped the degree of burning. Hmmm... lower lip is fried.<br /><br />Monterey has been the miracle place. The place where the weather is always good for flying. In a sport where one becomes an expert at parawaiting long before becoming a beginner pilot, a site that works all the time is sheer relief. That is how Monterey has been. We had eight clinics without one single day that we could not fly. However our last two clinics went fifty fifty. But not for everyone if you came late, left early, you didn’t do as well.<br /><br />So, I stress a little more these days. Will Monterey stop being the miracle place? Will we get flat out skunked with no flying days? So far, the site is working. Day one was a brilliant day. The wind came on nice and progressively, lightly soarable to fantastic. Alas, only Jeff made it to the full first day of the clinic. (Some people decided that stopping for lunch instead of coming out to the site to see if it was flyable was a good idea. No really!) Jeff got a hour and a half all to himself, (mostly, besides a few hang glider fly byes.) And the lift was very tall. Oh and sunny. <br /><br />Day tow flopped.<br /><br />Days three and four were both on. Day three being a little short but great flying. Today was strong winds but the lift band was sky high, way beyond the normal for a great day. Darren and Dean got two hour flights with great altitude. I mean real high. Oh, and it was sunny. The strength of the wind was the eventual down fall of the day. It got rough and strong and stopped being the smooth conditions you come to the beach to fly. That included some big holes in the lift that, for at once being so high, made sinking out a big surprise. <br /><br />We had another sled day ride the next day. The fine art of para-waiting was starting to grind. One has to reflect that a day at the beach sitting in the sun is not exactly getting water boarded. BUT when one comes to go paragliding, sitting on the beach is NOT sitting on the beach, it’s waiting. After the briefings are done, tests are discussed, everyone’s told their stories, jokes, teased each other, buried their feet in sand, listened to weather reports, tried drowning themselves in the ocean, you are still waiting.<br /><br />We were way into a parawaiting stupor on Friday afternoon. Hours had gone by. The wind was blowing across the bay, not into it. We could see sailboats heeled up in white cap water while we sat in calm hot weather. Darren called up the wind talker at <br />Marina up the coast. The north end of the dunes were getting the wind it was straight in there. Now, chasing the wind is often boondoggle, however, it was the last day for Dean and Darren so might as will go give it a look and see if it was really good. We got packed to leave and I spotted a glider flying at the north end. Now packing was thrown into high gear.<br /><br />The dunes at the north end are more broken up. There are low gaps to cross. On the up side there are high points where you can regain your altitude after making the crossings. And it was sunny again. If we weren’t getting consistent weather, the weather we were getting was beautiful. Soon enough the whole gang was out, jumping from dune to dune, each glider lit through by the sun of the afternoon. After a hour and a half, staying high got more difficult. The day was loosing energy. After a bit one glider sank out to the beach then another. I knew it would only be a matter of time till I joined them. I radioed Darren who was further down the dunes to start heading back or look at a long hike. I did the same slowly loosing altitude till I landed right below the launch on the beach.<br /><br />The last day of the clinic was a bust. In the end if the dunes didn’t give us the consistency that we were used to, it did give us beautiful weather. But more to the point it served the purpose we came for. And that is, the opportunity for new pilots to get extended flights smooth conditions, to get a chance to dial into their gliders, all that in a beautiful settingBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-58725774158887989962008-08-27T11:56:00.000-07:002008-08-27T11:57:00.233-07:00fire in Salt LakeMiles into the desert from the Mote Exit in Nevada.<br /><br />More dirt bag camping! Follow some dirt off an exit in the middle of nowhere and keep driving till the road gets smaller and rougher. Go till you think for the fourth time, “Just pull over and set up the freaking tent!”. And I do, checking the ground for level, cactus, cow shit, (well dried, no problem.) I spaz around a little too much trying to get the tent up before all the light bleeds out of the horizon. My water bag has been sitting on the dashboard all the way across the salt flats and is piping hot. I place it on the top of the car, pull out the driver’s side floor mat and put it under my feet and have luxurious hot shower. I get out the guitar and serenade the stars. Finally the few bug that are out here find me and I retreat to the tent.<br /><br />This morning I woke up and started driving. HIghway six wiggles it’s way down a canyon before depositing me on interstate fifteen. At the opening of the canyon I was surprised to see eight monstrous wind turbines, their long white blades shone brilliant in the now revealed morning sun. For us paraglider pilots their position made immediate sense. They would capture both the evening’s draining winds and the days building winds. Smart! Nice to see something smart. I am perturbed by the idea of an energy crisis. There’s a oil crisis for sure but energy, being neither created or destroyed just changing form, is in the same relative state it always has been. It’s more the pure sloth of not taking advantage of what’s available and the problem that a few people are getting crazy rich by keeping us trapped in the oil age, that has put us in the position that we are in now.<br /><br />All right enough of that. (It’s buying this expensive gas that’s keeping me ranting.)<br /><br />As I got onto I-15 and headed towards Salt Lake City I could see the smoke from a large fire beyond the Point of The Mountain. <br /><br />The Point, as it is known is a famous paragliding site. It is a unique geological phenomena because it is a ridge of mountains that cross a valley. Usually what ever routed out the valley in the first place would remove any perpendicular features to that valley. What this does for the paragliding is that the cold air that flows down the valley every morning flows over the point, making good flying. In the evening the heated air flows up the other side of the point. On a good day you can fly one side in the morning, take a long lunch and fly the other side in the afternoon.<br /><br />As I get closer to Salt Lake City I see billboards for the Mormon movies. The Mormons make movies about the book of Mormon and show them at the theaters. My favorite was “Polygamy, our Heritage.” I kid you not. This always gets me thinking. I am reminded that Salt Lake City was originally a separate city state that then joined the United States. Salt Lake has a unique history and remains a unique place for it. I keep thinking one of these days I’m going to watch one of these movies just to see what they are all about. <br /><br /><br /><br />The hiway took me around the point and I could now see the fire blazing up Lone Peak. The smoke had a orange tint to it and now reach up beyond cloud base where the smoke became bright white as the moisture within it started forming a huge cloud. I stopped by the Paragliding shop, Cloud Nine. Everyone was out back taking pictures of the fire. I heard the owner Steve, talking on the phone with someone, “No, you can’t fly today...” (Paraglider pilots can have such one track minds!) I saw the big multi engine slurry bomber plane drop a load of red goo over the house at the bottom of the mountain. With the slurry bombers out the airspace would be closed to all paragliding. I got back into the car and drove and drove and... drove. The salt flats went by the mountain came and went. A river was rarity. The heat got up to speed and started baking the land. Dust devils quivered in long, towering columns. Finally the sun slunk off behind some mountain to look for the back side of the horizon, the heat backed off and I found the sign “Mote exit number something, no services.” or dirt back camping here.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-62542586010721792952008-08-27T11:30:00.000-07:002008-08-27T11:31:39.129-07:00The oil age and road trippingGreetings from one of my favorite dirt bag camping sites. I’ve just crested Soldier pass on Highway six. I pulled off a few miles down the west side on a dirt road of questionable condition. Straddling the massive ruts made by the SUV’s, I drove down to the creek and set up my tent. I always drive to the Monterey clinics. I love the road trip and the dirt bag camping on some disregarded piece of property. But each year there is a shadow growing ever darker on my trips. It’s the sun setting on the internal combustion engine.<br /><br />My last road trip was the epic Central America trip with American Explorer. At over twelve thousand miles, Monterey’s mere thirteen hundred seems a quick trip to the store for milk. Yet the trip to Central America had two things going for it that this one does not. I’m driving my own car, not the sponsor’s and the credit card that I insert into the gas pump is mine. So, from that looming shadow I was talking about comes this voice, “How much longer can you pull this off?”. I drove pass a station in Glenwood Springs, and there it was, four dollar plus gas. Now I know I’m going into the heart of reckless gas profiteering, California. I saw the grim reaper waving at my car, standing beneath that sign.<br /><br />On my last Paramotor trip to Utah in November, I remember talking with Bill Lhotta about how when the gas is gone we won’t miss mixing the two stroke oil, or the smell, or the noise. And it made me think that we are all trapped in the oil age. Like a bunch of cavemen dragging our stone clubs around, we are all pushed up the end of a technological canyon that is narrowing. Cars were once powered by many different engines but like a bad businessman that relies on one client to keep his business afloat, there is only one now and that way is a dead end. Just the fact that you need an on board computer to run the thing should be a clue. I know when the cars we have today are gone, I won’t be missing the noise or the stink or that only thirty percent of the energy actually turns the wheels as the rest is wasted or all those endless pieces that need fixing. But if the road trips go away...<br />But there’s one more thing I’ll miss. It’s a by product of those wasteful engines and that’s the heat, cause there’s nothing like going for a drive on a cold winter’s day, slapping that heat control all the way right, and baking myself.<br /><br />BillBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-33554207148287624592008-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:002008-05-30T07:51:05.277-07:00Home Again, Home AgainI'm writing you in a world class stupor. I got very little sleep in the final drive home from Copper canyon,Mexico. Fell asleep yesterday at four pm, woke up this morning at seven am. Not sure which way is up now.<br /><br />I've got one last entry for the trip in my lap top but right now, it's time to get the paragliding school going.<br /><br />So for all of you that have been waiting to go flying. We are going Saturday to the leyden site,meeting at 8am. Call me after seven tonight if you want to go. 303 642-0849.<br /><br />Paraglidng info about schedules and when we are going flying will be on the email list from here on out. If you are not signed up for this it's on the opening page of my web site. Click on the button and sign up.<br /><br />The blog will continue with stories and ranting.<br /><br />See ya!<br /><br />BillBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-63205099852654203282008-05-25T00:22:00.000-07:002008-05-25T00:34:57.596-07:00drivingdrivingdrivingone thirty, just peeled my socks off like they were duct taped to my feet. Spent all day yesterday in the water and my one pair of shoes is a science project. Drove all the way from Panama in the last few days. Big drives, little sleep. Got to the point were the only sleep we were getting was a couple of hour lay down in the back of the Earthroamer.<br /><br />We've gotten pulled over at every road block, get searched two to three times a day. Late one night we got stopped. While one guy got his grubby hands in all my stuff another jerk stood in the my face, firing off Spanish at me while making sucking noises like he was smoking a joint, over and over again. I've never wanted to punch somebody more.<br /><br />Mexico was getting some bad PR in my little brain till we finally hit Monterey. Monterey is a great mountain city and the places we saw were world class in grandar and beauty.<br /><br />That's my eight minutes of personal time for this day. Time for my four and half hours of sleep.<br /><br />see ya.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-43510489225964224362008-05-21T15:54:00.000-07:002008-05-21T15:55:14.904-07:00Panama Canal, Batman style.May Nineteenth,<br /><br />Made it into Mexico later last night. We were trying to make it to a boarder that closed at eleven. With a lot of mad driving, we got there at eleven-o-five. Then we went to the other boarder that doesn’t close... (Ya, why didn’t we go there in the first place?) <br /><br />The brakes on the Land Cruiser had been making some noise. Now, there were crying out in agony at every slow down. I’m sitting at the hotel while local mechanic works on the brakes in the parking lots.<br /><br />A brake job is so simple here. Dude goes to parts store, picks up parts, goes to the car’s location, installs parts. What’s missing is, a garage, a lift, matching uniforms and corporate branding.<br /><br />Back in Panama City. We’ve had one last day to finish coverage of the canal. But first we had to shoot some tape for the airline that had flown us back and forth from the island. ( oh, and that owned the island we were on.) Don and I where at the end of the runway filming the planes taking off and landing. Some of the pilots figured this out, seeing us on the runway. So they decided to give us a show and fly real low overhead. I had to over ride the reflex to run as those big planes came roaring right at me. “It can’t hit me. Can it?”<br /><br />Next Don was going to over fly the Panama canal in a small plane, the little 182. They pulled off the door and the seat on the right side so he could film without having to shoot through the glass windows. He was in my paraglider harness. I had attached the reserve bridle to the carabiners and then routed it behind him so that we could secure Him to the plane somewhere. Now I know that the bridal on my harness has a working load of eight “G’s” but the airline freaked out. They ended up trussing him up with a sorts of stuff. He was probably good for thousands of kn’s before they let him fly. Off went Don with his feet out the plane for an hour long flight over the canal.<br /><br />When Don got back, we all drove back to Ganboa to get back on a boat to get more coverage of the Panama Canal. On our last trip on to the canal we were racing to met the Earthrace. Now we wanted to take some time to film what we had seen then.<br /><br />At the dock there was some discussion about the level of fuel in the boat. Person “a” was saying we needed more fuel while person “b” was saying the gas gauge was screwed up. As this conversation went on in spanish I was only guessing what was going on. I would find out soon enough who was right. As we took off from the dock person “b” pointed to the gas gauge that would read full, empty, half full and so on. He gave me the thumbs up and a wink.<br /><br />Most of the land around the canal had been kept as natural jungle. It was explained that, as it is, the canal must be constantly dredged because the silt from run off tries to fill the canal back in. If the area around the canal was developed then this problem would be even worse. This makes the land around the canal relatively pristine. There are monkeys in the trees, crocodiles on the blanks, jaguars have been sighted and the jungle is thick as it climbs up into the hills.<br /><br />We saw the big shovel on a barge dredging the canal and went over for a closer look. I had seen it on our last trip on the canal when we were in a hurry. Now we motored over for a closer look.<br />Don started filming as the engine was shut off. The huge shovel was shiny bright from constant abrasion. It was a gigantic metal hand scooping out house sized piles of dirt and water. The shovel would plunge in with the illusion of slow motion that an object of incomprehensible size can give. Then returning to the surface with it’s load of mud and a waterfall of brown water pouring off it, it would dump the load onto a barge. With each scoop the barge would shutter taking on the load.<br /><br />The current was slowly taking us closer to the shovel. And, although we wanted a nice close look, we didn’t want to get scooped up with the mud and dropped on the barge. Our guy went to start the engine to move us away. CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCLUNK! went the engine. (We continue to drift towards the shovel.) CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCLUNK! went the engine again. I heard some muttered Spanish, that, although I didn’t understand it, I think would be spelled, even in Spanish as, “%&^$#@#%! CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUGCLUNK! Went the engine one more time. (That drifting? It’s still going on.) There is some loud Spanish going on now. One of the guys goes to the small electric trolling motor, no luck there, it doesn’t work either.<br /><br />Now Don, who is looking through the lens and has his headphones on to hear the audio feed, does seem to be aware of; how close we are, the guy waving his hands over his head at the shovel operator or me yelling, “Do we have any paddles!”. I can clearly see the scratches in the back of the shovel as it come back down. The wave sent up from the shovel impacting the water rocks the boat. One of the Spanish speaking guys point at a hatch that I open to find two paddles tangled up with a bunch of other stuff. I wrestle one loose which Keith grabs and starts powerfully churning the water with it. I grab the other one and get behind him. We are moving now, slowly but , moving.<br /><br />It appears that the shovel operator either doesn’t see us, (which seems impossible as we were right there.) or does give a crap what a pile of idiots in a boat do to themselves. We are real close. On the next scoop the shovel is no more than fifteen feet away. The next one is going to scoop us. Here’s the problem, with both of us paddling on the same side we only get the boat sideways from where we want to go. That is, straight up current. There is no way we can out paddle the canal’s current. I go to get on the other side of the boat as Don comes screaming by, grabs the paddle out of my hand and starts paddling on the far side. I have almost enough time to think, “Hey!” before I spot a broom laying in the bottom of the boat. Taking the broom I run to the bow of the boat and start paddling across it. I’m not making the boat go forward but I can point the boat across the current so that the efforts of Don and Keith’s paddling will take us across the bow of the barge where, we will be on it’s far side, away from the shovel. Then the current can take us away from the shovel.<br /><br />I’m wondering if a broom will make an effective paddle as I plunge it into the water. I’m also thinking in that quite, observational side of the little brain, “This is kind of like a James Bond/Indiana Jones/Batman movie, cool! The shovel comes down now even closer. “Crap!” I’m jumping if this doesn’t work. But the broom is doing teh job, the boat is slowly turning and the frantic paddling behind me is moving the boat. I thought we might hit the barge’s bow and then drift onto the wrong side toward the relentless shovel but we just clear it and are safe.<br /><br />We scrape along the side of the barge, catching our breath. The flesh of my hands feels all compressed from being caught between my bones and the paddle. There’s a little laughter that has a twinge of the hysterical in it. We start babbling about what happened, what we did and thought. And then the cops come.<br /><br />It seems we can’t get on the canal without a visit from the cops. It appears that there is a new dredging project going on in the canal and the powers that be, want to control the spin. So dudes with cameras get asked questions. Add to that that we almost got snuffed by the dredging shovel... well cops need to check this kind of stuff out. “Yes, officer we are here with our sixty-five thousand dollar camera to make home movies of monkeys. Yeah, monkeys that’s it, you know the ones over there. Look! point point nod smile.” “Yup, the engine failed, bad luck that!” Believe it or not that story worked and we didn’t get our camera confiscated.<br /><br /><br />Remember that argument about whether the boat was low on gas or that the gauge was bad? Well, the guy who said the gauge was off said that the engine failed due to an electrical problem. The<br />funny thing was that, when another boat was sent out with a gas can and that gas was put in the engine the electrical problem cleared right up. Funny, that. Our day, even after all that excitement, wasn’t over. We got in a car and head back towards Panama to the locks at Miraflores.<br /><br />The sun was setting as we filmed from the observation deck over the locks. The sky had a patch work of clouds outline in gold, the hills surrounding the locks fading ever more purple in the distance. On the intercom we got tourist information, people of all languages surrounded us.<br /><br />It’s hard to capture the scale of things here, but imagine a huge ship stacked with layer upon layer of leggos and then realize that each leggo is actually a container the size of a semi truck. Watch the ship enter the locks, see the doors open and close, see this behemoth of a boat sink down between the concert walls of it’s pen before being released into the Pacific<br /><br />This ships toll was close to a quarter of a million dollars. The smallest toll ever paid was a man who swam it, 36¢.<br /><br />Almost done with this day now. My last task is to climb into the Earthroamer and drive to the town of David, eight hours away. Keith and Don are in the other car. I listen to a book on tape, the road spools along under my tires in the night.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-11017450696200518992008-05-13T19:49:00.000-07:002008-05-13T19:52:44.883-07:00Last Day, San JoseToday we leave behind San Jose, the private island that has been our home for the last few days.<br /><br />Got a word for all of you about all those plastic bottles we use. They’re out floating in the ocean, That’s where they go. San Jose, being private has a tiny population, not large enough to cause what we saw. When I was out on the boat yesterday afternoon, I found the ocean littered with trash. There we were miles from the island that is miles from Panama and we would go through large swaths of floating garbage. Bottles, bags, flip flops, foam containers.<br /><br />I had heard about there being vast expanses of trash in collecting points between the major currents of the ocean. But, hearing about, is not seeing. So I’m thinking about putting an end to the plastic throw away bottles in my life. One Gatorade bottle can last for many uses, when being refilled with powder and mixed at home. Give it some thought.<br /><br />Well, leaving a private island out in the Pacific. Sounds like a wistful lament, but I’m ready to start, at least, pointing home, if not going there. I see all trips as a big bungy jumps. First is the glorious liberation of committing to the unknown, then the meat of the adventure falling through events. But then you start feeling the pull of home, like that bungy starting to go taunt. And slowly the desire to go home increases, till on those last few days it’s like being sucked into a black hole. I’m just starting to feel the bungy cord, just starting to slow me down.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5835699816159535650.post-37919373856728028692008-05-13T19:46:00.000-07:002008-05-13T19:47:22.070-07:00Earth RaceEarthrace<br /><br />Well today I spent running around San Jose Island. The Earth Roamer arrived so we drove it around shooting on the roads and beaches.<br /><br /> But let’s back up to yesterday.<br /><br />Woke up early again. ( I guess I should just start remarking when I actually wake up late as it is the more noteworthy event.) Drove the twenty minute drive across the island to the airstrip. Getting on the little 182 four seater, flew, with the gang, back to Panama City.<br /><br />I've been flying back and forth to the island the last three days in a row. It’s my commute! So I drifted over the islands of the Pearl Islands. Sleep was trying to shut my eyes as the ocean passed below me. Little wisps of cloud parted over the wings. I saw miniature towns on small island and nothing but the jungle on others. I was trying to see if I could spot some whales but found my eyes were shut and I had been sleeping.<br /><br /> The plan... you know how this goes, there’s a plan and then things change. After all our mission is to shoot great TV not to adhere to schedules. Back to the plan, that was to over fly the Panama canal. The weather was a gray overcast mess so we had to bag that. Next on the to do list was filming the Earthrace.<br /><br />The Earthrace is a bio- diesel boat that is trying to set the around the world record while drawing attention to bio-diesel. Today it would enter the Caribbean side of the Panama canal. We were to get on the support boat in the canal and meet it.<br /><br />Now about the canal. If you start on the Caribbean side, the canal cuts inland to a lake after going through a number of locks. Then you must cross a channel cut in the lake before reaching the locks on the other side that drop you down to Pacific ocean. We would get on the support boat at the Pacific side of the lake, motor along to the Caribbean locks and wait there for the Earthrace.<br />There was a big meeting at the Dunkin Donuts of Panama City with the Earthracer people. They needed to know who we were and what we were doing.<br /><br />Two of the guys had been on the boat, Tino and Adrian. They seemed happy just to be on dry land having donuts and pizza. (Duncan Donuts sells pizza here!) They were taking a short break while the boat went through the locks before returning to get on board for the next leg.<br /><br />Everything was cool. We then had to move from the Dunkin Donuts to the Subway. (That’s sandwiches by the way, not a form of mass transit.) There, Andrew would come by with the support boat on a trailer. <br /><br />Now, the support crew was a different animal than our American Explorer Crew. First off they had women! And, we’ve never packed beer and rum and what not before heading off anywhere. When the support boat arrive it was provisioned, then we followed it up to Gamboa to put in.<br /><br />Gamboa is on the most Pacific side of the lake, (who’s name I can’t remember, if I ever knew it.) that is the middle part of the Panama canal. The support boat was maybe thirty feet and had two two hundred and twenty-five horse power engines. There were shouts of “Ipod, Ipod, who’s got an Ipod.” so the music was blasting as Andrew lit up the engines, we all found something to grab and the boat flew off.<br /><br />The canal here is a lake, yet a series of green and red buoys mark the middle channel where the big boats must go. And these are BIG boats. Call them ships. Ships the size of shopping malls. They were sitting around here and there, waiting for the traffic change from Pacific ward to Caribbean ward. <br /><br />We passed two massive cranes used to maintenance the lock doors. There were barges dredging with shovels that could eat houses. AND there where thatch roof huts with dug out canoes pulled up on the shore before them. We made a short stop to throw bananas to the monkeys hanging around in the trees but they must have been full. It’s a sad day when you can give away bananas to monkeys!<br /><br />We whipped by all this with hair flailing, Don running tape the whole time, trying to capture the blurs going by, until the police pulled us over. Well, there was this problem about someone getting off the Earthrace between locks thereby disrupting the fabric of the universe of the officials that run the locks.<br /><br />Andrew our captain, is a pilot for the canal. That is, he boards the ships before they enter the canal and guides them through. So He knows everyone and starts showing his credentials. Some of the officials are smiling and saying “Hi” and then there are the scowling armed dudes. Now, the boat is stopped we’re filming like mad. There are whispered conversations as other people get heavy the the heavies. Eventually everything is resolved and we get to the Caribbean locks. <br /><br />There are huge ships everywhere waiting to enter the locks. A lot of waiting is going on including us. There’s the problem, we need to catch a plane back to the island tonight. Because we filmed the EarthRace today we didn’t film the island. We have to film the island tomorrow so we must be on the plane at four thirty. I do the math, forty minute back across the lake, a half a hour to the airport, it’s three now... Twenty minute later the EarthRace comes out of the locks.<br /><br />Ok, google “Earthrace” this is James Bond’s boat! It’s long and sleek and has two outriggers on both side attached by flying buttresses. It’s made to go through waves, completely submerging rather than going over the top. It’s a spaceship on the water. <br /><br />We cruise up to it. There are shouts back and forth, “Go to channel four” “You got beer?, you’ve got beer!” “Send over the girls” “Nice beard!”. As the officials are already giving us the hairy eye ball over the illegal de-boarding, nothing passes between the boats. Instead it’s time to blast off to the far locks. And off we go. We are racing along with this crazy looking boat. Our skipper knows his job, we get front shots, rear shots, left side, right side. Everything is going great till we cross wakes and everyone is thrown sideways. I’ve been trying to steady Don and warn him about the rough spots. I’ve got time to yell “hang on” and we do. But even with both hands I still can’t keep from bouncing my face off the pole I’m hanging on to. <br /><br />Finally back at Gamboa the boats stop to chat a bit. They go on to the locks and we go to the boat ramp. There is some disappointment. Keith and Don were to go on the Earthrace and interview to crew, get their story. (They were shot at in the Caribbean and have the bullet holes to prove it.)<br /><br />It’s now five. Are we getting on the plane at four thirty? No! We race off in the car to get a plane to another island and talk a guy into taking us in a small open boat, at night, thirty miles out into the ocean back to San Jose.<br /><br />It’s night, the air is warm. There is a hazy half moon overhead. Lightning flashes on the horizon. The bio-luminous plankton make our wake a wide swath of light filled with sparks. Behind us is Panama, somewhere ahead, in the dark, is our island, but right here is a world removed. Keith pulls out his phone, “I’ve got coverage!” And calls home from way out in the PacificBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07494077189041666261noreply@blogger.com0