Umbria

I think it was about a year ago (just after getting back to the States last fall) that Jamie excitedly told me that Monte Cucco had been selected as the site for the 2011 World Hang Gliding Championship. Monte Cucco is a hill above the small town of Sigillo in the Umbria region of Italy, a place we both knew well and loved. As the competition would be in August of 2011, the "pre-Worlds" (the dress rehearsal of the competition to iron out problems) would be in August of 2010.

Furthermore, Jamie eagerly added, the Italian meet director had asked her to come over and be a staff member for both the pre-Worlds in 2010 and the Worlds in 2011. "Soooo...." she concluded, "why don't you and I just make of full summer of hang gliding around Europe in 2010 and 2011?!"

You'd think Jamie was my girlfriend, seeing how much influence she seemingly has over my plans each year. It's just that we travel well together and she comes up with some really great ideas all the time (like our adventure in Peru in November of 2008). It's hard to say no.

This, then, is how I ended up buying a used car in Europe last May to provide me with both cost-effective transportation and a home of sorts for this and next summer (half the time I'm sleeping in the back). I now own a high-mileage car on three continents.

These trips are centered around this and next year's competitions in Italy but, hey, while I'm here, I'm going to enjoy the whole continent. Everything of these last three months, then, has basically been just a prelude to being here in Italy

I think it was sometime last January in Australia that I was standing with Jonny (from Australia) and Corinna (from Germany) when it occurred to me I hadn't really given myself a job for the pre-worlds in Italy. Both of them would be there and so I offered to drive for them, something I often do for both.

Jonny had found a B&B to house the entire Australian contingency (six) and there was room for me as well, so I chose to forgo roughing it in my car. It was well I did. This farmhouse was unbelievably beautiful and our husband-and-wife hosts became great friends. The farmhouse had just finished a ten year period of renovation (we seemed to be their first guests ever) after it had been damaged and condemned in an earthquake just over a decade ago. It was spectacular, full of ancient oak beams and stone walls (photo at the top and below).


On the two days when conditions weren't conducive to competition and no tasks had been called, Jonny switched our roles and drove me up the hill to fly while he drove my car back down to meet me at the landing field.

The beauty of Monte Cucco is that it is one of easiest and safest hills from which to launch. It has huge, smooth, and gently sloping grass fields, so big that if you could run 200 meters before actually being required to take off (a rare luxury). You could even change your mind altogether after ten seconds of running and abort the launch and end up with nothing worse than grass stains on your pants. In some extreme cases (Mt. Buffalo, Australia or San Cassiano, Italy; two places I have seen but did not fly), the consequence of not committing to a launch the moment it's started can be death.

On the Sunday after the competition ended and before I'd left for my next destination, the conditions were perfect for top-landing. I went up and had a blast! You could launch, fly around, then land exactly where you'd just taken off, and either move off the launch to the side to set the glider down for a rest or merely take a few steps forward and lift off again. Zhenya was there and, having already top landed, took a photograph of one of my numerous relaunches.



Jonny is known for his dedication to producing daily videos during competitions (such as this one from the first day of the pre-worlds Italy). On one of the non-competing days when Jonny took me up the hill to fly, he attached his camera to my glider and, later down at a cafe, trimmed the footage on his laptop down to a three minute video in the time it took me to sip a coffee as I sat next to him.

What I love about this film (below) is that it shows two of my favorite aspects of hang gliding. First, when you launch, you just run a bit, then the glider lifts off your shoulders, then it plucks you off the earth as the ground falls away and, there you are. You're flying. The simple and natural aspect of this appeals to some side of me. Then, after drifting around in the sky for as long as you wish (or, if the lift is weak, for as long as you can), you simply come down and take your feet out of the harness and step back onto the ground.

In truth, it can be more complicated than that. Of all serious accidents, I'd estimate that 70% occur on take off and 25% occur on landing while only 5% or even less occur in flight.

Then again, most often it really can be that uncomplicated. We fly simply because we choose to and, most importantly, we can.

Silver Linings

Following the Europeans in Àger, the plan had been to jump up to Basel Switzerland on my way to Sigillo, Italy (site of the next adventure) for a unique 25/50/75 birthday party for Ashanta, Dolores, and Dolores' mother. A puzzling oil leak developing with my car, however (purchased for this and next summer's extensive plans in Europe) dimmed my confidence in its ability to make the high speed all-night drive this would require to arrive on time.

So instead, once it was fixed, I opted take the time to slowly limp to Laragne, France ("B" below), gauging the car's health at every gas stop.


Laragne is a place I'd thought I'd said goodbye to last July, after the 2009 World Championships (part of last summers string of adventures so full that I've never gotten around to writing about them). After what felt like so much time spent there over the last two summers, it seemed I'd never have a reason to return. The coincidence of it being very close to the geographical midpoint of long journey gave me a reason. At midnight, I drove into the hang gliding campground (a landing field is half of the facility) and fell asleep in the back of my station wagon. I felt very much like I'd come home.

In the morning, the proprietor greeted me like an old friend.

I was actually particularly exhausted. Driving for the Dutch team, in addition to being as much fun as I'd known it would be, had also been surprisingly hard work. Most days I'd spent six-eight hours in my car climbing up and down mountain roads full of switchbacks, extracting my half of the Dutch team out of very hard to reach places. Sometimes I wouldn't get back to headquarters until 10:30 p.m.

For that first day, I was content to do nothing but sit and read, raising my head to stare at the mountains now and then.

High winds were pummeling the region, keeping the local pilots down. The result was a show for us cloud connoisseurs that would rival the double rainbow internet meme (if you don't get it, you won't get it). Lenticulars were building in layers above us during the day and, most spectacularly, during the moonlight night. While I could capture the daylight show, I could not capture the night's.


Lenticulars (if you don't know about them, read more about them here) are stationary, forming on their leading edge as fast as they dissipate on their trailing edge...and yet they are dynamic, too. They change shapes and forms subtly so that a glance back at a clould you saw ten minutes before will be, as they say in Thailand, "same same but different."

Many times that first night (when the winds were the strongest and the moonlight the brightest), I would see people outside with their heads craned skyward, stopped in their tracks and mesmerized by the moonlight phenomena.

Àger, Spain

The European Hang Gliding Championships were in Spain this year and, after spending a week here last year, I planned to return. I really had no reason to be there beyond the desire to return to a place where I knew many of my friends would be and that I'd felt I really hadn't had enough of a chance to explore the last time around.

Also, the two owners of the Port d' Àger, a newly renovated hotel I'd randomly found on the internet last year became such good friends that I wanted to come back simply to stay with them once more. Jordi and David, two brothers from Barcelona, had taken a huge chance on their belief in the beauty of their region and, ignoring the world economic downturn, had gone heavily into debt to buy and renovate an old farmhouse into a beautiful hotel and restaurant. Their bank tells them that they are among the small percentage of clients who makes their payments on time. I admire that kind of courage and success and, in addition to all the other reasons, I wanted to return to Àger if for no other reason than to make my small contribution to their solvency.

Last May, just after arriving in Germany, it only then occurred to me I had no real job at the competition in Àger. I was sipping coffee with Dutch friend Daphne when this thought came to me, so I turned to her and asked if the Dutch team needed a driver.

This was how I came to be one of the two drivers for the Dutch team.


Like any hang gliding meet, it's always a great time for me to be around great friends; Slovenes, Russians, Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Aussies and Colombians (even at the European championships), and more.

Davos, Switzerland

Working my way down south from Finland to Spain, I stopped in Basel to stay with the Swiss to help with a construction project. I worked just long enough to realize how unaccustomed my body and bones had become to real work (the sledgehammer-swinging, dust-snorting, bricks-falling-on-feet kind) when they called a break to go fly at Davos (photos above and below).

One just has to marvel at not only the rarity of a mother-daughter hang gliding team but of the unending beauty of Switzerland.

A few more days of dusty sledgehammer-swinging and I was off to to Spain.

Changes in Latitude, No Change in Attitude

I've always had a particular interest in northern cultures, especially in northern Europe. I've had extensive experiences in Iceland, Denmark, and Norway, a few experiences in northern Russia and, over the years, have had a few scattered days in Sweden. Until ten days ago, however, I had never set foot in Finland.

In the manner that the seemingly random aspect of my life typically unfolds, I stumbled across Finnish friend Virpi a few weeks ago while passing through Switzerland. Neither Jamie nor I had any real plans or commitments between the World Championships in Germany that ended on the 23rd of May, and the European Championships in Spain that begin on the 11th of July, so we had pondered the idea of spending the last half of June together in Norway. I've always enjoyed Norway (the little bit of competency in the Danish language I still have can pass for Norwegian, too). Most importantly, Jamie has yet to visit there.

When I mentioned our vague plans to Virpi, she suggested we instead join her and her boyfriend Kari at the Finnish National Hanggliding Championships in Jämijärvi (it's not near as complicated to pronounce as it looks).

When I mentioned the idea of Finland instead of Norway to Jamie, she decided that, rather than any kind of northern experience at all, she needed heat and sun more than anything else. So she opted to jump on a cheap flight to Malta while I e-mailed my commitment to the Finnish meet organizer to be part of his ground crew.

As a result of the opportunities provided me by being stationed in Germany in the Air Force right out of college in 1977, by 1980 there were only two countries I hadn't visited in western Europe (i.e., west of the now happily defunct Iron Curtain); Finland and Portugal. The intervening years had yet to change that status.

Arriving with Virpi and Kari by ferry into a Helsinki port a few days before the competition began, they headed one direction for some family commitments while I headed another to explore a bit on my own (armed with a list of suggestions from them). We met up in Jämijärvi a day later.

During the next week I spent the first part of each day either studying Finnish history online or taking short trips to nearby sites of interest to me. In the afternoons I would retrieve pilots who'd hadn't made it back to the airport.





The evenings were spent first the sauna, and then often enough afterwards gathered around a fire in a circular hut with the center of it's roof open over the fire, roasting sausages long into the next day (though I rarely made it past midnight).

These two photos were taken at 11:00 p.m. at the post competition sausage roast at an open fire that would accommodate the crowd (the circular huts were too small).



It never really got much darker than this every night I was in Finland.

Kari won the competition, becoming the Finnish Champion for the second time. The "SM"on the cake stands for Suomen Mestari; Finnish Champion

In Finland, towing by ultralights is not yet legal (and may never be) so Finns have made do with car towing. Though I had all my hang gliding equipment with me and I was given many opportunities to give it a try, a few emotional scars apparently just couldn't be overcome. The friend who taught me to car tow 15 years ago was killed only weeks later while attempting to teach someone else. Aero-towing merely makes me attentive. Foot launching makes me nervous, something I've been working to overcome this last year with more and more experience (as I've written). Car towing, however, has always just simply scared the heebie jeebies out of me.

Apparently it still does. A time or two I thought I was emotionally ready but in the end I chose to pass on every opportunity I had to fly in Finland, hoping I'd feel more up to the next day. That day never came.

No matter. The real reason I was there was to finally get the chance to explore Finland, and to do so in the company of good friends.

Two years ago, six weeks in Russia resulted in my consumption of more vodka in that month and a half than I had sampled in the previous 34 years of being of drinking age. Similarly, this trip to Finland has resulted in my experiencing more saunas than I probably have had in all my life before.

Sauna is, as most probably already know, a Finnish word to begin with. I did not experience one single Finnish dwelling that did not have an extensive and complete sauna facility (sauna, changing room, and rinsing room, and more).

Though there were no frozen lakes to dip into through a hole in the ice as I had experienced in Russia five years ago (and no lake at all in Jämijärvi), I still was happy to drop into the merely chilly lake (17 degrees Celsius) at Virpi's family's summer cottage house. We spent a few days there before heading back to Europe on the 29th.

Finland seemed so related to places I've been in recent years, but that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Looking on a map, it all makes sense.

While the earth changes dramatically traveling south to north (as I experienced by changing 1800 straight line kilometers of latitude from Borso del Grappa in Italy to Jämijärvi), the make of the land can be quite consistent east to west. Yulia's childhood home in Velikiy Dvor, of which Finland reminded me, was almost directly east from Jämijärvi, less than 800 kilometers way. Oslo, which seemed to carry much of the same feel as Helsinki, was almost directly west, again only 800 kilometers away.

In all my travels around the world, I am again and again struck by how much both the Earth itself and we as a people are far more alike than different.

On Foot in Italy

I learned to fly sailplanes when I was 14, forty years ago. In all that time since, being towed into the air by another airplane has seemed the most natural way to fly. Though I first learned hang gliding by foot launching on the dunes of Kittyhawk 18 years ago, it wasn't long before all the hang gliding I did was aerotowing in either Marlyand or Florida.

Foot launching, then, has always intimidated me. The opposite is usually true for most hang glider pilots. They are intimidated by the high energy of being towed that seems to always be searching to find a way to go out of control. So we laugh at each other's concepts (misconceptions?) and do it the way we feel best.

So many of the most amazing hanggliding sites I've visited in Europe of the last eight years in the process of crewing for friends have been foot launch sites, something I last felt qualified to do 15 years ago. I've envied my friends as they flew above spectacular mountain ranges so I spent some time in last fall in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, re-learning foot launching so that I could fly where I wanted in both Australia last winter (summer there) and now here in Europe.

The fruits of this effort have begun to show, both in Slovenia last week and now, here, in Borso del Grappa, Italy. After I left Slovenia, I met up with Jamie and Carl, who'd left England the week before to drop down to the continent for a bit of warm weather flying before Carl returned to work on his oil rig.

If you'd care to see what kind of adventures flying couples get to have together, read Jamie's article on their epic flight there.

Monday Jamie and I joined up with Amy, a friend from the States passing through Italy, for a bit of hiking in the Dolomites around San Martino di Castrozza. When the clouds parted now and then, we had great views of stunning rocky crags. Amy and Jamie seemed more intent about the mountain's flowers, however.

Most na Soči

Driving from Austria to Slovenia takes one through a corner of Italy before descending into a spectacular network of valleys. I came here to be with two friends, Matjaz and Nena.

Their home has a terrace overlooking the blue waters of the Soča river. Their town, Most na Soči, means "Bridge on the River Soča."

I finally got the chance to fly for the first time here. Matjaz and I launched seconds apart late in the day and drifted over the spectacular valley in the diminishing light. The camera I'd set up on the back of my glider (visible in the photo below) took only a few pictures while I was still on the ground before it shut down, but Nena captured the moment for me.





Last spring here, while snow still covered the tops of the 2000 meter peaks nearby, Matjaz captured a flight on video that he made from this hill we flew off. Edited it down to six minutes, it's set to the evocative music of the movie "Avatar." I don't know how many times I've watched it but it must be at least 50 times. To me it captures the stunning beauty of this sport of hang gliding. It is so simple, the way we fly, and yet so profound in its expression of the often forgotten unlimited nature of our existence. We can fly. We truly can. Matjaz takes off a small hill as casually as if descending a few stairs, and finds the right air currents to climb, climb, and climb until he is soaring across the pyramid-shaped face of the snow-covered Krn Mountain.

We can do amazing things, we human beings.

Run, Forrest! Run!

This last week in, around, and above Zell am See, Austria has had me thinking over and over again of a line from the movie Forrest Gump;

"And so I met the president...again."

When the hugely significant becomes commonplace, it's hard not to trivialize it.

Looking around me each day, I find myself thinking, "Here I am amidst some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet...again."


There's a small hang gliding competition going on.



I'm here not to fly, nor even crew for someone, but merely to be with friends who are (such Belgian Jochen and Russian Yulia pictured here).

A bit of reflection revealed that all of the hang gliding competitions I was involved with last summer and will be or already have been this summer are centered around Austria in a manner of sorts. There's Áger, Spain (near Barcelona) to the west, as is Laragne, France (near Nice) and several places in Switzerland. To the south in Italy there is Bassano Del Grappa (near Milan) and Monte Cucco (closer to Rome). To the east, there is Tolmin, Slovenia (near Ljubljana). To the north in Germany, there is Tegelberg (near Munich).

I've spent last summer, then, and will spend this summer crisscrossing Austria on my way to or from some hang gliding site. This means a lot of time of driving through breathtaking mountains and unbelievably quaint and inviting villages...again.

Something about this has inspired me, apparently. Finally I've actually been able to motivate myself to start running again in the mornings...down manicured trails through majestic and whispering forests, in view of a horizon of white-capped peaks. I'd imagine it's hard not to feel inspired here.

Swiss Mix

My Swiss friends invited me to join them in their country for a mixture of hang gliding competitions and just simple hospitality. Freddy and Ashanta live in Oberdorf, near Stans, the kind of place probably most of us imagine when we think of Switzerland (just above the top of the tree in the lower center of this photo taken from the summit of Bürgenstock).


Jürg and Dolores live in Basel; one of Switzerland's major cities and yet it remains as inviting as a village.


I'll be back here several times over the summer. It often feels like a dream to be there strolling those streets and paths, though I can't say if it's natural beauty or the dear friends that make it such a magnificent place for me. Probably both.

At least I, for one, had fun

The 2010 World Championships never happened. Out of 14 days scheduled for competition, not a single one provided weather good enough for a flyable task. For 80 of the world's best pilots pilots who traveled from around the globe, it was a bitter disappointment.

Each day either the cloudbase was too low (often lower than the launch ramp on Tegelberg), or the wind was too strong, or it was raining, or it was snowing, or storms threatened from one side or another...always something. On only a few days was the weather good enough for the pilots to even merely launch for a short, local flight. Down below in the valley, it was green and spring time. Up on the launch ramp, however, it was more winter than anything else.

For me, however, it was still a great time. With so many of my best friends in the world all in one place, what's to complain about?

I'd fall asleep each night contentedly exhausted, and wake still too tired to go for the morning run I'd been claiming for weeks that I'd finally start doing again.

On our last day there, Daphne attached a GoPro camera to her foot and held her regular camera in her hand to combine the footage for the video below of our ride down the summer time toboggan run. Such was how we occupied ourselves on the on the ground.


Here's a glimpse of the other days:

...with benefits

One of the benefits of being involved in hang gliding competitions around the world is that, since most hang gliding involves leaping off a mountain, I get to experience some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet.

Right now I'm in Schwangau, Germany, better known as the location of the Neuschwanstein Castle, the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle.


I'm here to drive for (l. to r.) Daphne, from the Netherlands, Claudia, from Columbia, and fellow American Jamie. The three of them are competing in one of the three classes of World Hang Gliding Championship running concurrently off of Tegelberg, a mountain just out of view of the Neuschwanstein castle. They also have been my companions (both individually and as a group) of many adventures over these last years.

Those are just three, however, of perhaps 30 people I know taking part in this competition, of which close to 15 could even be termed some of my closest friends. The other night while sitting at a table, literally squeezed left and right between the affectionate shoulders of Swiss mother and daughter Dolores and Ashanta (pictured here later in the evening with Zhenya as well), I could not help but gratefully contemplate my blessings of human compassion in my life.

Last Sunday, May 9th, was the last practice day before the competition began. I attached a camera to Yulia's hang glider and set it to take a picture every two seconds for what she knew would be just a short flight. It began to rain just before she landed so that by the time she came down over the Neuschwanstein castle, rain drops had spotted the lens cover.



Rain has been a problem. Of the four days that have passed since the competition began on Monday, the 10th, none have been flyable. Yesterday, however, a German pilot found a small window of opportunity for a personal flight and strapped a camera onto his glider. Daphne took the trouble to edit his 27 minutes of footage down to a three minute glimpse of the beauty of flight, this region, and Neuschwanstein.

Through the Eyes of Yet Another

I was only in the States for five weeks, three of them spent delightedly hosting Yulia for the period surrounding Florida’s two spring hang gliding competitions.

As recorded a year ago, I spent the previous spring doing much of the same with Zhenya. Over the last two years I've had many adventures with both Yulia and Zhenya overseas (such as my trip to Velikiy Dvor in northern Russia with Yulia recorded here). It's always good to have the chance to return the hospitality I've been shown in so many different countries by so many different people.

The trip to the States was short, however. We both departed May 5th for Germany; her to compete in the World Hang Gliding Championships, me to join her and other friends at that competition as a way to begin a full summer of plans overseas.

Money is a renewable resource, time isn't

I'm home, arriving this morning in Orlando at 5:30 a.m., where Jamie picked me up. You've just got to love a friend who will rise at 4:30 a.m. to pick you up at a place an hour from their home and then drive you to a place yet another hour beyond.

Jamie hung out as long as I could stay awake (until 2:00 p.m.) then made the two hour drive back to her home on the coast just below Cape Canaveral.

This evening (awake again) I've just read her blog entry posted yesterday in which she comments,

Science Daily reported recently that buying life experiences is much more likely to produce long-term happiness than buying material possessions.

No wonder I always feel so overwhelmingly blessed.

I live in a trailer (when I'm not living in a tent or a car or on somebody's couch). I've just spent five months in Australia and only brought back a couple of hand-made mugs from Beechmountain Pottery and a really cool 12 volt portable shower pump (thanks, Scott!).

Ah...but the experiences. Priceless.

Life is good.

Strzelecki Lookout

Okay...so maybe I'm not finished with my Australian adventures just yet. Scott and I scoured the local sites this afternoon and found that only at Strzelecki Lookout were the winds were right.

I launched first and Scott soon followed. In the air I found that Scott, one of world's top pilots, was doing everything but flying backwards to get some in-flight pictures for me.

A few more days of errands, goodbyes and such, and I'm off to the USA...for only about five weeks.

Yengo National Park

Biamie, the Aboriginal's creation god

For my last adventure in Australia before returning home, Scott took me for a weekend of camping and mountain biking just west of Newcastle. Here I had the chance to view a side of aboriginal culture that few non-Aussies get to witness; the stone carvings and cave paintings of Yengo National Park.

These aren't historical sites you'd find in a guide book. In fact, Scott pointed out that there usually weren't any signs indicating where a road lead until you'd driven a small distance down it. You had to know what you wanted to see and where it was beforehand.

To view the cave depicted in this photo, Scott parked at a campground and, after we set up our tents, suggested we go for a walk before it got dark. We moved to one end of the parking lot and, after Scott indicated to me that a path started where we stood (I never would have seen it), he said, "You go first." After I'd walked a very short distance, he said, "You missed it." I turned around to see him indicating a cave only a few meters off the path I'd just walked.

If you don't know someone who knows, you'd never find any of these fascinating sites. Scott believes this is intentional, designed to protect these culturally significant sites from the fools such as the ones who'd carved their initials next to aboriginal art thousands of years old.


Yengo Mountain, Biamie's stepping stone to heaven.

Bathurst

I picked up Chris at the Sydney airport at the crack of dawn Saturday, returning from her assignment with the U.N. in Chad, Africa. After three months of austerity on a level most of us cannot conceive, her first thought was fresh seafood fresh seafood fresh seafood.

We went straight from the airport to the fish market in Sydney and filled a eski ('cooler' in the States) full of seafood to consume over the next few days. The first order of business upon reaching her home here in Bathurst was a feast of prawns, oysters, crabs, and something I'd never seen before called Balmain bugs (next to the crab in the photo). They were kind of like small legless, armless, clawless lobsters with less taste.

These last few days have been unusually rainy, leaving Chris content to rest, recover, and slowly reabsorb the joy of her own home. I'm content to read, study, and write and enjoy her company for a bit before my last few adventures in Australia finish up and I head home.

I'm a bit sad to have missed all the snow in the northern hemisphere this winter that I've been reading about (be it in the States or Europe). Even so, these days of endless gentle rain here in the comfort (both spiritual and physical) of Chris' home have left me in much the same peaceful mood so exquisitely depicted in this beautiful movie of snow in Moscow.