Learning to fly

In the 1987 Pink Floyd video “learning to fly” a young man fixes a feather at his arm, runs over a cliff and starts to fly over a vast canyon. He then gracefully hovers above the canyon, watching his shadow following him on the ground. At the very end of the video the man can be seen in a hang glider, slowly circling the sky. That was my first memory of a hang glider and it has been with me ever since. Now, decades later hang gliders are almost extinct as paraglider have taken over. However, the picture of the graceful glider still lingered in my head, together with a wish to fly alike. After waiting 20 years, my dream was about to become true. On a sunny and slightly windy day in Queenstown, NZ, I drove up a smaller mountain, donned a harness, attached myself to my French pilot Jan. After a brisk walk we were airborne and only the sound of the passing wind could be heard. Like in the Pink Floyd video we circled in the sky, overlooking breath-taking mountains, distant lakes and green pastures while hawks were preying underneath us. Then my French pilot caught a thermal uplift and we went higher and higher while the Pink Floyd song played in my head. After a 20 minutes flight Jan banked heavily and we rapidly spiraled downwards. I felt the pressure in my stomach while my eyes got all watery. The landing was soft and gentle and this is when I felt that my my legs were slightly wobbly. It is true what they say about the first flight experience: before take-off you feel uneasy, then during the flight you feel the adrenaline rush. After landing the stomach feels woozy for a couple of hours while the endorphins started to flow and one enters a bliss. So I spent the whole afternoon in the glow of the flight, while the Pink Floyd song kept playing in my head. Awesome!

Comments

[Onn]

Cool... nice and beautiful :))