My Favorite Places on Earth, Part II

I've written of this feeling before, here. Once more I find myself in a place that makes my shoulders settle pleasingly in relief with that feeling of being at home, even though not at home.

Fremantle, Australia and in particular this one coffee shop, The Merchant on South Terrace Street, represents a small slice of a grand adventure of my life; not only my involvement in several different kinds world class ocean racing events, but the kind of traveling I've somehow found myself unwittingly but happily flung into these last five years or so.

The first time I passed by The Merchant once in town, it was full and overflowing with people onto the sidewalk tables. It was a Sunday, one of the first warm and sunny ones of this boreal spring. I waited a day to enter it to relive memories. Late Monday morning, it was as empty and as welcoming as I'd always remembered it.

I am home (for a week).

The World's Best At Anything

Years ago a friend visited me in Groveland, Florida one spring during the height of an international hang gliding competition. Perhaps ten of us left the airfield one night to eat dinner at a restaurant. From the comfort of our seats I took her around the table, explaining who was who.

"That's Manfred, from Austria, who's been World Champion a few times and who is pretty much unchallenged as the best hang glider pilot in the world. That's Oleg, from the Ukraine. If he's in a competition and Manfred doesn't win it, Oleg will. That's Christian, from Italy, current World Champion in the Class V hang glider subcategory. That's Alex, also from Italy, who was World Champion before Christian. That's Kari, three times Women's World Champion, that's Corinna, who has been World Champion twice in the past..."

My friend interrupted me and, with a clear tone of feigned indifference, ask, "And I should be impressed because....?" She looked at me, seemingly satisfied with her wit, and waited for my answer.

She had a point, yes, but I thought I did, too. "How often," I responded, "do you ever get to meet the world's best at anything?" She had no reply but just nodded her head in contemplation.

It's often been a source of amazement to me at how I've somehow found myself rubbing shoulders with the international elite of the hang gliding world. My explanation has always been that I know Jamie and Jamie knows everybody. Still, it seems a privilege to have found myself in the company of the people I have these last five years.

Somehow this same luck has followed me over into the sailing world, where I've found myself sharing beers, working shoulder to shoulder, and having heart-to-heart talks with the elite of the ocean sailboat racing world.

I met Dilip Donde, from Mumbai, India, in September of 2006 while working on Sir Robin Knox-Johnston's shore crew for his solo round the world yacht race. The two are polar opposites. When Robin strides into a room, his confidence and even arrogance takes over. A web article aptly describes Dilip thus:

Sometimes the most quiet and unassuming people do the most amazing things. Commander Dilip Donde is one such person. He’s quiet and sparse, his language and manner without any unnecessary flourishes and frills. Perhaps if you saw him in a crowd, your gaze would stop at him for a moment, and then pass on.

And yet he is now posed to become the first of his nationality to sail solo around the world. Already he has surpassed the sailing achievements of any one individual from India.

I am no Robin, that much I know for sure. But I'd really like to think that I am very much of the same mettle as someone as kind and gentle as Dilip. And so to see him following his dream and actually making it happen inspires me far more than the exploits of more typical headline makers.

It reminds me of the time I had the chance to meet and chat with John Denver many years ago. He was one of the most well known pop musicians of the 70's and yet in person he was no different than anyone I knew...except that he'd sold millions of records.

Who we choose to become does, at times, truly seem to be within the scope of whatever our will has the confidence to manifest, nothing more. This thought inspires me greatly.

A week ago Dilip noticed my comment on Facebook that I would be coming to Australia and wrote me, inquiring when and where. It turned out that we had, by a good stroke of luck, we had just a few hours of overlap between my arrival in Fremantle and his departure from it for a 5000 kilometer sail to New Zealand. I warned him that, having just recovered from a mysterious illness in Thailand, I might not be the best person to have contact with just before departing solo onto the ocean for a month. He countered, however, with, "Don't worry about infecting me with tropical viruses! I have developed a natural immunity since the last 42 yrs!"

We had the time for a tour of his boat and a bit of catching up before a small crowd showed up to bid him farewell.

I was happy to be in Fremantle, happier still to be there to send off a good man on the next leg of his accomplishment.


You can follow Dilip's progress at http://sagarparikrama.blogspot.com/

Hot Thai

The plan had long been to spend much of this winter in Australia (summer for them) for the hang gliding competition season. The question had been just how much time and when to actually show up. When Gay invited me to join her for a week in Thailand at the conclusion of her own vacation there with her daughter, the answer was found.

We met in Phuket on October 24rd, upon which I was whisked immediately into a waiting car, and driven around the Phang Nga Bay to Krabi. There we waded out to the boarding ladders of a long-tailed boat to be ferried to a small resort on Railay Bay West.



We spent the rest of that day and the next swimming and rock climbing (a first for Gay) and contemplating scuba and other plans for our other days there and elsewhere in Thailand.

On my second night in Thailand, however, I woke in a sweat and spend my remaining five days there fighting a fever, peaking a few times at 39.4C, seeing little else than the linens in my face and occasional blurry views of the ceilings.

So much for my philosophy of willing illness away. Gay, far more pragmatic, came equipped with a medical kit sufficient for anything short of minor surgery and lovingly took care of my useless slumping lump of a body for the rest of the trip.

We did manage a few days in the north in the city of Chiang Rai, but I saw little more than my pillow.

Still, of what I saw, it was beautiful.

Mind the Gap, Part II

Yes, there's about a five month gap here, of which only June through August has stories to tell. Someday this space here will be filled in with tales of:

France...


Spain...


Turkey...


Slovenia...


and Austria.


Until then, time moves on.

East Coast Championships

Annnapolis

My last adventure with Zhenya before she returned to Russia and I headed to France was one more hang gliding competition; the East Coast Championships in Ridgely, Maryland.

Ridgely is only 60-90 minutes drive from Annapolis or Washington, D.C. to the west and Ocean City or Rehoboth, Deleware and other beach resort cities to the east. In the end, we visited all of them on the days when weather did not allow flying (dragging New York state resident Dana along on the quick and rain-drenched tour of DC, the first visit to the nation's capitol for both the Russian and the American).


In Ridgely, Zhenya was her usual amicable and popular self with this new crowd of people. As she wrote herself afterwards in her own bi-lingual blog:

Each time, coming to a new location, you look around and everything seems strange, but you know that in a couple of days you will love this place. Then you will leave, cry, and be bit envious of those who remain. And maybe they envy you ....
Well, it's ok, so much fun ahead:)


Slide show below.

Turning the tables

We've returned to my trailer in Florida for a week before heading north to Ridgely, Maryland for Zhenya's last competition in the States, after which she'll return to Russia.

Zhenya has dedicated her final days at this airpark to learning to fly the Dragonfly, something in which only two months ago she was thrilled to simply get a ride.


She soloed two days ago. Her instructor even made of movie about the event (found here.) Afterwards she given carte blanche to take one up whenever she chose. Believe me, she chose often.

This morning she rose so early to fly that not another soul was stirring on the airport. After pulling a Dragonfly out of the hangar and preparing it for flight, she returned to my trailer and poked her head in.

"Can you come out in a bit and make sure I'm still alive?" Usually there had been many Dragonfly-qualified people about to passively oversee her flying but not this morning. I understood her concern and, once I'd make a cup of coffee, I walked out to the grass runway carrying the coffee in one hand and dragging a chair in the other. I sat down just off the side of the runway to take a few pictures of her alone in flight. After a few landings and take offs, she taxied over to me. "Do you want to take some pictures?" she asked.
"Yes, I am," I said. "I've taken quite a few while you land."
"No," she said. "I mean up there. Do you want to come along?" She nodded her head towards the empty back seat.

I've been flying aircraft since I was 14 and, though I've never been checked out in a Dragonfly, I have no doubt I could fly it right now without instruction. That's the logic. The emotion of that moment, however, was very, very different. It felt like I was being offered a ride on the back of an eagle's wings where my faith was far more important than my skills.


Our twenty minutes of darting between and around the low clouds of that morning felt like the ride of a lifetime to me. It felt like the greatest dance I have ever shared with anyone. Moreover, the tables had been turned. It was a gift to me...the gift of flight I'd been giving others ever since I got my license on my 16th birthday.

Life is good.

Coast to Coast

Zhenya and I had planned to head to Schwängau in southern Germany right after the Jamie's Flytec Race & Rally so that Zhenya could participate in the Pre-Worlds, the warm up competition the precedes the actual Women's World Hang Gliding Championship at the same location by a year. Logistical issues, however, seemed to dictate there would be a good chance Zhenya's glider wouldn't make it there in time for her to compete until the last two days of the meet, and perhaps not at all. So we canceled a slew of airline tickets and opted to head to San Diego instead, where Zhenya could join Jonny Durand in participating in the Torrey Pines Gliderport Flight Fest.

When Jamie, who lived and worked many years in San Diego, heard of our change of plans, she was quick to change her own and join us.

Zhenya's good friend Mita (the familiar form of Dimitri, as Zhenya is the familiar form of Evgeniya) makes the fifth person we've crammed into a hotel room for two. When I met him last October back in Chelyabinsk, Russia, he talked of his plans of coming to the States for four months, long before Zhenya even pondered the idea. By a coincidence of events, he had selected San Diego as his destination and, by a further coincidence of timing, Zhenya and I were able to pick him up at the airport.


The five of us, hang glider pilots all, are now enjoying the combined pleasures of both a familiar (Jamie and I) and a new (Jonny, Zhenya, and Mita) location. Only Jonny and Zhenya are flying, however. The rest of us are happy to just share the company, location, and spirit.

Flytec Race and Rally

Russia's Zhenya Laritskaya and Australia's Jonny Durand ready to launch

We're in the middle of the second competition that brought Zhenya to Florida; the Flytec Race and Rally, conceived of and organized by Jamie. Flytec produces the most popular hanggliding instrument.

This unique event stages each successive task every morning from the airport that had served as the previous day's goal. In this manner, this competition is working its way north from La Belle, Florida, the location of last week's competition, to Lookout Mountain in the southeast corner of Tennessee, home of one of the east coast's most well-known hanggliding sites.

Jamie, in addition to running the meet, is driving for her boyfriend Carl and two other friends. I'm far less ambitious, content to drive for Zhenya alone. Often Jamie and I will use our GPS navigators to locate Starbucks along the route where we can track our respective charges (using SPoTs: Satellite Personal Trackers).

David Glover, who is assisting Jamie with running this meet, made the video below of the second day of competition. Among other things, it makes gentle fun of the morning Zhenya set up her glider wearing a white bikini.


Here's a video made by Australian competitor Jonny Durand (top ranked pilot in the world at the moment), much of it filmed while in flight. It gives you a fair sense of what the competition is like, both on the ground and in the air.


Here's another short one by David Glover that also gives a feel for the competitions.


Here's five minute video of a few of the competition's better pilots filmed by the helmet-mounted videocam of Bobby Bailey. Bobby is the designer of the Dragonfly, the first ultralight with both enough power as well as the ability to fly slow enough that opened up the possibilities of hang glider aero-towing. This, in turn, truly opened up all the possibilities of hang gliding in general.

Bobby is one of the few pilots that hang glider pilots would trust to fly close enough to film this kind of footage. Jeff O'Brian is the pilot who drags his leg on the lake before landing. Zhenya makes a few appearances both in the front seat of Bobby's Dragonfly and in her own hang glider in the air. The loops and spins filmed at close hand are of Jonny Durand, who is probably the only hang glider pilot Bobby trusts to do such things so close to him. Though it's easy to miss, early in the video Bobby even flies close enough to Jonny to touch his wingtip.


Lastly, here's a :33 video of Jeff dragging his foot across the lake, taken from the ground. You'll see Bobby in his dragonfly in hot pursuit. If nothing else, you might get a feel for how casual flight is to so many people who frequent this airport. A general aviation airport is like a small military establishment with rules, procedures, lines not to be crossed, and the threat of law hanging over everyone's head. Here it's like a skateboard park with everyone flinging themselves into the sky with abandonment, thoroughly enjoying the discovery of what else they can do that they haven't done before. I've seen two people killed here, one just 100 meters from where I stood during an act of recklessness that we all unfortunately encouraged, and one from a freak accident that felt more like the random act of chance than anything that could have been avoided.

Still, we all love to fly. It's about living.

Through the Eyes of Another

Zhenya flew into Orlando on April 12th. It's her first trip to the States. She's here for almost a full month; ten days of preparation and two separate week-long hang gliding competitions. We are in the middle of the first, on the edge of Lake Okeechobee, Florida.

Hosting her has been an unbelievable treat. Being able to witness and experience her enthusiasm for adventure and all things new is like being both with a golden retriever who loves everybody and whom everybody loves, and with a wild horse crashing through the waves of the surf.










Even if you don't speak Russian, her spirit is still evident in her blog.


Zhenya's was delighted to escape from the last vestiges of a Siberian winter and fly directly into the heat and sunshine of Florida in April. In all of our journeys around the state, we usually drive with the top down, her face often obscured by her billowing hair.

Last winter while conversing online, I mentioned that the way her hair fell on her shoulders last summer as she ran around the various European hang gliding competitions (where we met) often reminded me of the majestic beauty of the mane of a horse.

"Like this?" she responded and sent me this photo.

It's hard not to like someone who refuses to take themselves too seriously.

Mind the Gap

A few months ago a friend in Spain wondered why my blog had fallen silent. I told her that I was too busy doing so many things to have the time to post them. She responded, "You do it right, enjoy the moment, carpe diem!!!"

There is a hug gap and perhaps four notable adventures between the previous post about Iceland and the one before it about Russia (Sailing down the coast of Florida, Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru, Christmas in Haiti, New Year's in Norway).

In the next few months I intend to fill that gap...slowly.

Returning to the Past

Rekjavik, Iceland

I lived in Iceland from April of '80 to April of '81, during my last of four years in the Air Force. I had a remarkable experience in that year, unlike most other military personnel stationed there who seemed to be simply waiting to go home.

Being stationed there was considered a hardship, a "remote assignment," something that most people were asked to do only once or twice in a 20 year career. I, on the other hand, volunteered to go. It was a unique chance to live in a Scandinavian culture (a life-long interest for me). Once there, I bought a used car. This, in addition to my minor knowledge of Danish (the second language in Iceland) allowed me to make the most of this chance to explore Iceland.

I'd always wanted to go back.

Last Summer my English friend and former "Saga Insurance" team mate Charlie was pondering an unusual way for her and her boyfriend Jake to celebrate their 21st birthdays, both at the end of March. Somehow the idea of Iceland came up and somehow I got invited to join the adventure.


Boy, do I love my life. With friends like this, how could I ever be bored.


We rented a car and set out to circumnavigate the entire island counter-clockwise, with a day or two in Reykjavik at the beginning and end.






In my year in Iceland in the installation we called "Rockville," not far from Keflavik on the tip of a rocky peninsula, the summers were never that hot and the winters never that cold. Any snow fall was small and would melt away in a few days. Such, I had thought, was the way it was in all of Iceland. Icelanders say, with accuracy, that Iceland is green and Greenland is ice. Yes, but in the north in late March, we would discover, it is still very much a land of snow and bitter cold.




One goal for both Charlie and Jake was to witness the Northern Lights for the first time. When I lived there a year, I had many opportunities to witness spectacular light shows in the sky, often while soaking in a natural hot springs pool in a lava field. Sunspot activity was at a lull during our adventure and, however, so the best we got to see was a dim green glow on the northern-most horizon two nights out of our week there.

Jake put together this video the one night we decided to drive a small distance from our hostel in Vik to find a clear northern horizon and brave the huge drop in temperature in the evening to stand outside our car to steady our cameras on the roof for long exposures.


The last thing I did before heading home was to drive out to the small Air Force Station where I spent a year of my life. The entire station consisted of perhaps 100 enlisted personnel and 10 officers, I among them. Our job was to use our radar to monitor Soviet aircraft (always Tupolev bombers) flying between Russia and Cuba. I was an Intercept officer, guiding our fighters on their intercept until they could see the target aircraft themselves with their own radar. Our fighters would escort the bombers through our NATO air space, both parties offering friendly waves and taking photographs, and then head back to Iceland.

The end of the cold war ended the necessity of this mission so my small station was decommisioned years ago. It's still visible in this Google Map satellite photo but, much to my chagrin, it has since been razed to the ground.


All that's left are the concrete foundations.

I took a picture for my daughter's sake of what was left my small Officer's Quarters where she was conceived (above).

I can hear her now, thousands of miles away, repeatedly punching her index finger on an imaginary button and saying, "Eeewww. Daaaaaaad!! Ding ding ding ding ding!TMI! TMI! (Too Much Information!)

Moments later I returned the rental car to the international airport a few kilometers away and boarded my plane to fly home.