Yes! To be a Santa Barbaran! The sheer number of outdoor activities available to the common person is mind-boggling. In the mountains you have options like hiking, biking, and fresh water swimming. On the coast there is fishing, surfing and kayaking. Whichever altitude suits your fancy; there are a variety of opportunities to improve physical and mental health through exercise in the natural environment. There are some sports that I love and others that I will try, but I have to say there is another category of outdoor sports that exists in my framework -- the 'I'm not doing it' category. Flying sports remain filed there for the time being as I would prefer to watch the masters rather than risk my cranium. Yet I stand in awe of the small community of local Para gliders and hang gliders who literally "fly" as their mode of exercise in the outdoors. If you drive up Gibraltar road, wind up past the rockslides of the past Winter deluge, past the ridiculous mansions filled with beautiful antiques no one will ever see, up the asphalt curves, until finally, you reach the west facing steep section of cliffs that is great for the hang gliding crew to get their kicks off. Their customized rigs are parked on the dusty pull-offs, that is a good sign that there is some aerial action to be witnessed.

It takes a serious commitment to take that plunge. There is margin for error, but it's not a margin that when compromised you get a second chance. But the freedom, the awe-inspiring fleeting incarnation of a bird, like Icarus, floating on nothing more than dreams and faith in device - it must be worth it! How else to explain people who regularly do wind vector checks online, wake up early when the readings are just right, gear up, and charge to the top of a mountain only to thrust themselves off a precipice with the intention of landing several miles away and thousands of feet below. If you aren't familiar with the countless tragedies, check these links. It will show a familiar story, two in a line of hundreds, maybe thousands of so-called Icaruses, people who just don't except gravity as a limitation, people who have some something inside that says: "I can!"




If you have happened upon Big Sur at the right time, then you have seen the scrappy, gray-haired flyer that tempts a hundred foot drop by paragliding the onshore coastal breeze at Plaskett Creek campground. Back and forth he swoops from twenty yards safely over the bluffs, to twenty yards out over empty space, past the limitations of earth and the safety of ground. I expected to see him every Thanksgiving at our annual campout as I had the previous several years. But this year he was gone. The rumor spread that he had a fall. Can anyone become a veteran of this fate-tempting, daredevil hobby?




And this is the proverbial final straw - as in, this is not my gig. Watching the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 1999 I witnessed what has to be one of the most insane journeys of all time. Not quite Shackelton, but it must have taken almost as much intestinal fortitude to even plan on such an up taking! Alun Hughes directs and authors the short film and book entitled: " From Nowhere to the Middle Of Nowhere". He also is whacked enough to hold a camera and ride tandem with renowned British pilot John Silvester on a paragliding/bivouac trip . . . over the Himalayas! On a paraglide? Are you kidding me? The treacherous storms and winds are bad enough, but to try to use them to your bidding and in order to land safely before nightfall? Absurd. They end up flying into treetops, crash-landing, crash-"take offing" and finding villages and people that have probably never seen white people. Much less white people who fly in from the sky with strange synthetic skins on. There is a hilarious scene where the whole village is standing at the top of a small hill holding the flaps of the paraglide and then laughing uproariously as the tandem fail repeatedly to get off the ground. But once they have there is an moment of epiphany where Sylvester is caught on camera, circling thousands of feet above what had once been their village take off spot, remarking: "They must think we're Gods!". Probably. But Gods don't die when they crashe. Always practice safety in all of your outdoor endeavors! If you would like to learn to fly in the southern California area click the link below.

ER Harris

http://www.sbsa.info/archives/citylegl.htm
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3914310,00.html
http://www.paragliding.net/
http://www.flyaboveall.com/
http://www.island-ikaria.com/culture/myth.asp