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!).
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.
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.
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.
Friday night, after flying back from the Gold Coast, I resumed my living-in-a-car existence and drove to Brighton-Le-Sands, a small town on the other side of Botany Bay from Sydney's airport. There I could spend the night on the street in my car and be well placed to pick up Chris the next morning upon her return from Africa.
Strolling the beach along Botany Bay in the evening's light rain before I turned in for the night, I found a place that seemed most fitting to enjoy a glass or two of wine.
I most often prefer to spend as much of my time as possible in a setting like Jonny's home town of Beechmont: in simple buildings surrounded by forests and hills with perhaps a significant city no closer than an hour away. There are times, however, when being amidst a conflagration of civilization actually does appeal to me. There are some places/settings/feelings than cannot exist without a massed population to justify them. So often, lately, I've thought about how much I miss something like a good dinner with a good friend on a sidewalk cafe on a summer night on Washington, D.C.'s Connecticut Avenue, just north of Rock Creek. Ah...city life.
Sitting alone tonight in Australia's late summer amongst the subdued ambiance of an exquisite restaurant, I got a hint of that feeling. Additionally, I felt a great sense of my good fortune in life to experience such moments in such diverse places around the world. Opposite me out an open window the sand was only a few meters away with a tranquil bay of seawater at its edge. The quiet and almost non-existent lapping of the bay's water on the narrow beach running along to my left was equally as evocative a kind of music as was the murmur of peaceful conversation all around me to my right.
I was alone but I didn't mind. Perhaps it would have been impossible to coordinate my emotions of the moment with another. Solitude, while not particularly sought, does occasionally have it's advantages.
I don't know Sydney well but I do now know a place I'd return to on some summer night just to be there...just to sit...just to absorb a kind of energy that makes me feel blessed and content.
Until 2006, I'd never been to Australia. Until last November, my complete Australian experience was three visits to Fremantle.
As much as I enjoy Freo ("Fremantle" in local speak), so many other friends who've traveled in Australia or actually live here kept telling me that I haven't really seen Australia until I'd been to the east side.
One of the reasons for this extended stay here these last few months was to explore all the places I've been hearing about. Prime among these was Jonny's region; the Gold Coast.
The view above is from Jonny's back porch, looking down from Beechmont to the coastal city of Surfers Paradise. Below his parents, Jon Sr. and Judy stroll on Palm Beach, with Surfers Paradise in the background.
In addition to the natural beauty of the coast, hills, and water falls (photo at right: Purlingbrook), I was also fascinated by the ubiquity of grey headed flying foxes; huge fruit eating bats with wingspans over a meter wide. Months earlier one evening in Newcastle, I'd seen the sky full of them moving from their roosts to nearby fruit orchards. It looked like the flying monkey scene from the Wizard of Oz.
Jonny knew the location of a colony near Cannungra and took me there to see them.
There were hundreds in every tree I could see on both sides of the road for a few hundred meters. While Jonny and his sister Gemma remained in the car, anticipating a barrage of guano if they all took flight in the same instant, I walked down the road awestruck.
My stay was brief and, though I brought my hang gliding harness, the weather brought either pouring rain or adverse winds, so no flying was done. I did, however, get to at least see where I might have flown, had the conditions been right. Beechmont launch
Scott and Monica hosted me once more for a long weekend of fun in Newcastle. One of the coolest things we had the chance to experience together snorkeling in a large tidal pool full of temporarily captive fish. It was like having one's own private aquarium as big as an Olympic pool.
The last time I was in Newcastle it was mid week, which limited Scott and Monica's ability to play. This time around I came on a weekend specifically to play, be it fly, swim, surf, sail, or whatever else came to our minds.
Two other friends of theirs from Germany, Ernst and Sylvia, just happened to be in the area as well so it was a weekend of a fivesome waking up in the mornings as a group and pondering just what kind of fun we would have that day.
Something I got to do that I've always wanted to try but haven't yet (on an imaginary list of probably 100 things) was welding. While Scott and I worked on a modified electric bike that he was constructing from various parts (some of which he was fabricating and welding himself), he gave me the chance to try to join two pieces of metal. I did, yet when I finished, he took one of the pieces in his right hand and pulled it off. "That's not welded." I tried again. Same result. I tried again. Same result. The fourth time I poured so much molten metal on the joint that the two pieces glowed for some time after I'd finished. When it cooled off enough to touch, Scott tried to separate them and couldn't. High fives. I'm a welder now. No matter that the two original pieces were distorted by all the heat they'd been forced to endure. They were welded.
Ah...boys and their simple pleasures.
The winds and weather didn't cooperate during the weekend but on my last day there, the morning I was flying out to Queensland's Goldcoast, everything lined up perfectly. Scott and I jumped in his car, let some air out of the tires, drove out onto the dunes near his house and squeezed in an hour or so of dune gooning on Redhead beach.
I had my own helmet in his car but once we set up his glider (mine is still being repaired), he just handed me his helmet and said, "Go." Scott has created harnesses for both his cairn terrier and beagle that enables him to take one of them along on flights (hence, the helmet's ornamentation). Once airborne and horizontal, his dog will just climb onto his back and enjoy the ride.
We played until I blew a landing and broke a downtube. Scott, ever the gracious host, offered to run back to his garage to get another but my flight up north was only a few hours away. It was time to finish playing with all of our toys.
After so many years of supporting others who competed in hang gliding events, I've finally come to the point of wanting to compete in one. I've been flying sailplanes for 40 years ago (since I was 14), powered aircraft for 38 years, and hang gliders for 18 years. In all that time, however, I've only flown for the singular joy of the amazing experience of being up in the air, carving turns, climbs, and descents through space however I choose.
I'm not generally competitive by nature and perhaps even quite the opposite. Yet I do see the merit of bringing the best out of ourselves by competing against others. And so I set my glider up with 57 others in Manilla, Australia on the first day of the NSW Titles. In this competition, the highest placed finisher who is also a resident of the Australian state of New South Wales is declared the State Champion.
Being a bit too involved in the competition to take photos myself, every picture here and in the slide show below, excepting one (its identity will become obvious) was taken by my driver, Gaynor Schoeman.
Of the seven possible days of competition, the weather cooperated for five. I flew the first four but, having trashed my glider by landing in a tree, was forced to miss the fifth. In 51st of 58th place at that point, missing the last day altogether still only dropped me to 57th. I actually beat somebody.
Tree landings are not so terribly uncommon in hang gliding. I know someone who has had three in the last two years. They usually come about when an intense sense of competition overrules logic and judgment. As I'm not that competitive, there should be no reason I'd ever land in a tree. Or so I thought.
In retrospect, I can find at least six consecutive errors in judgment which compounded each one before it and concluded with me spending two and half hours hanging perilously 20m above the ground. It would take too long to explain all of them but one surprises me the most: excessive competitiveness, i.e., as I was so determined not to land, I stayed too long in a place that, from it's topography in relation to the current winds, should have provided me the lift I needed. It didn't and by the time I finally gave up, I was already trapped.
When I landed on the trees and seemed to be stable, I nevertheless shot my left hand out to the nearest significant branch I could find to hold on. An extension to my radio's PTT (push-to-talk button) is attached to my left index finger and activated by pressing my thumb against it. In grabbing the branch, I had also unknowingly pushed and held down the PTT. The pilots on my frequency (I was told with a laugh that evening) where treated to about twenty seconds of heavy breathing and profanities.
My dilemma was witnessed by many of the pilots waiting to launch on the ramp at the top of the mountain and some of those already in the air. Once I determined I was stable and finally released the grip on the branch to my left, this also released my PTT. Only then was Gaynor able to call me and ask if I was okay. Advised that I was, she and a friend of mine from Norway, Thor Landgraff, drove down to find me.
Once below me, Thor made the wise suggestion of deploying my parachute over the nearest major branch I could reach to ensure that, if the branch holding me gave way, I would not fall completely to the ground. Before I let the parachute go completely free, I made sure the bridle attaching it to my harness had enough wraps around the branch to ensure it would lock if I fell.
The most notable aspect of the rescue was Thor. I was so high in the tree that there were no substantial branches near me that anyone could climb. Furthermore, the local volunteer unit that responded within 30 minutes had the equipment and ropes needed to bring me down but weren't really up to the task of climbing the tree. The alternative was waiting for a ladder truck from the nearest major town's fire department (an hour away). Pondering this, Thor graciously volunteered to don a harness and climb the tree himself. He got to within five meters of me and, after a lot of effort, finally got a line to me.
It would have been a much bleaker afternoon and perhaps evening as well, had Thor not be there with his wisdom and enthusiasm.
So many lessons learned, some of them for the second time in as many months (e.g., how foolish it is to cling to the hope of lift while your options of escape diminish by the second). Though I still contend that the most dangerous thing I do is ride two-wheeled vehicles (responsible for three episodes of broken bones while all my other activities have left me free of injuries), I know I'm very lucky to have escaped this with nothing but ripped sailcloth and broken aluminum tubes.
The glider will be fixed in a week. I, on the other hand, have no consequence except a profound experience which hopefully taught me a thing or two (or six).
I bought a Ford Falcon station wagon here in Australia just before Christmas. Though Chris has been so gracious as to give me her small Volkswagen to use while she's away in Africa (for almost the entire time I'm here in Australia), I still needed a car to which I could subject the typical abuse a hang gliding vehicle must endure...and one big enough to accommodate five people, five hang gliders, five flying harnesses, and more.
The Russians have been using it these last few weeks but now they all have gone home (excepting Zhenya, who's still working at the Moyes factory). So I've parked Chris' car back in her garage in Bathurst, caught the train to Sydney, took possession of my own car once more, and have begun living a kind of life I've been wanting to live for some time; that of a vagabond with means.
There's no shortage of friends here who would give me a place to sleep and, even if that weren't so, I could still afford to stay where I wanted. But what I wanted to experience was a life of chosen simplicity, something a bit like my year on a boat from '07-'08 as I circumnavigated the earth.
This time the goal is merely to experience various places I enjoy here in Australia with a sense of being as low maintenance as I can. So I park by the sea (different places each night so as not to be too intrusive into what are often residential streets) and sleep in the back on a pad, waking at sunrise without effort as the light begins to pour in.
This morning found me at Bronte Beach, north of the harbor. In the night I'd been woken by the sounds of heavy rain but, rather than being disturbed, it was actually very pleasing. When I woke, it was still raining. I left the car, barefoot and bare-chested, clad only in boardshorts, and walked along the beach in the warmth of the air and the coolness of the rain.
Bronte, like so many other beaches in Australia, has pool built at the edge of the surf that is, in effect, a man-made tidal pool. There is no need for plumbing, chemicals, pumps, or maintenance because the pool is naturally flushed out and cleaned each day at high tide.
It was high tide this morning just after I woke, it turns out, for time to time I watched the people swimming laps be momentarily disoriented by the waves that would breach the walls and pour foam and turbulence into the lanes.
I joined them for a while, swimming a few laps without goggles, opening my eyes in the saltwater to orientate myself as needed, then took a cold shower in the public showers nearby and strolled the beach once more, feeling strangely animal-like and natural, cool rain falling on my bare skin, content with the simplicity of my needs.
I dried my head and chest and put on a t-shirt (leaving my boardshorts to drip dry), then went to a coffee shop on Bronte Road to enjoy the feeling of cleanliness and warmth so simply attained while I sipped a latté, watching the rain continue to fall.
It was, in truth, an illusion I created for myself. Warmth and dryness were, if not just a car's door away, then also an open door away. Bill and Molly live in Bronte beach and it was nearly right in front of their home that I was living my private fantasy. All I needed, were I to feel any true sense of distress, was to simply knock on their door.
Still, I had the freedom to live this way and so I wanted to. Though I'll be at friend's homes from time to time as my final weeks in Australia come to a close, I'll also be living this way whenever I can.
Twelve years ago, before my daughter left to go to college, I had told her that once she moved out, I was going to move out, too, and live in a van down by the river, just like the Chris Farley's "Motivational Speaker" character.
This entire trip to Australia had many purposes and goals. All of them, however, grew out of the notion that the eastern part of Australia is home to two of the worlds most significant hang gliding competitions; Forbes Flatlands in the beginning of January, and The Bogong Cup just a few days later.
Bogong is the state of Victoria's highest mountain, on a ridge just outside of the town of Mt. Beauty. In terms of landscape, the seven hour drive south to here from Forbes in was like passing from Flagstaff, Arizona to Burlington, Vermont in the same amount of time. In the last two hours, as you drive up into the mountains, the land turns from dry and arid to a breathtakingly lush and verdant setting.
Mt. Beauty is a ski area, for pete's sake. I didn't even known any part of Australia actually had enough snow to ski. Mind you, it's no Aspen. From what I've seen and read, I'd equate the probable skiing conditions to northern Maryland (which means minimal at best). Still, it's more than I imagined possible in Australia.
Eight days had been allotted for tasks at this meet. Unlike Forbes, which is an aerotow comp, this was a hill launch one. Each morning the site with the best angle of winds (from four or five within a range of 30 kilometers to choose from) was selected and a caravan of cars and trucks loaded with hanggliders, pilots and drivers (like me), headed up the hills to set up and launch. A task was set, once the task committee reached the top of the hill and had both internet and visual references to contemplate, and the pilots were off.
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate so agreeably as it had at Forbes. There we had eight straight days of flyable weather, with the ninth day and last day available cancelled, perhaps, more out of pilot exhaustion than anything else.
At Bogong, the pilots flew only two out of eight days.
As the driver for the same four Russians as I had been in Forbes (Zhenya, Yulia, Anton, and Marat), this gave me a lot of rest from my accumulated exhaustion of driving for many long and consecutive tasks at Forbes, where I would often cover three or four hundred kilometers down bad roads in the process of picking up the pilots along the way or at a distant goal, then not arrive home with them until close to midnight, unfed and too tired to do anything about it.
For the pilots, however, the imposed rest at Bogong was a rather frustrating time. They came to fly.
We amused ourselves with horseback rides, fishing trips to mountain lakes, and a number of other things that a resort area was quite ready to offer. One striking aspect I found was the ghosts of forests on several mountain tops, the sites of huge forest fires only two years back. Most of the structure of the trees had remained and, in those two years, the charred bark had fallen off to reveal sentinals of steel gray wood. From a few kilometers back in the valley, the hills looked as if covered with a silver fur. Up close, each individual sculture was hauntingly beautiful.
Of the perhaps 20 people who have made this Australian adventure such an amazing one, only a handful actually live here. The rest, now that the Bogong Cup is over, are heading back home to various countries around the world.
Originally, so was I. My three month tourist visa expires on January 31st. My request for an extension, however, as been approved. Though I've been allowed an extra three months, I do have commitments back in the States in late March, as well as many plans for April. This, then, gives me another seven weeks more to enjoy in Australia.
The boat I sailed around the world on from '07-'08, Uniquely Singapore, was renamed "Cork" when sponsored by Ireland for the '09-'10 edition of the race.
She is no more. The 21.7 meter (68 ft.) yacht sank here a day ago, during the race from Western Australia to Singapore.
I 'liberated' the ship's bell from her before I was the last to leave the boat at her homeport of Gosport, England. It's bolted to the wall of my temporary home (a trailer) in Florida. I suppose I should do something significant with it now.
The Forbes Flatlands is the premier hang gliding competition in Australia. The conditions are so perfect and consistent that many days, by the time all four of my pilots had been retrieved and brought home, it was close to midnight. The next morning I'd wake up at dawn, go for a run if I had the energy (only 2/3 of the time) then head for my favorite coffee shop for good coffee and a simple breakfast, then head for the airfield for the beginning of the tasks.
That coffee shop indirectly provided me with the highlight of this week here (full of so many other good times). The daughter of the owner, Amy, took an interest in all the new people visiting her town and our activities, so I invited her to come to the airfield when she had a free day. She did and, as the events evolved, got to take a ride in a Bailey-Moyes Dragonfly with Bobby Bailey himself.
Her delight was unconcealable. Imagine if you'd never been flying at all and your first introduction to the air was in the front seat of an open cockpit ultralight, drifting along just above the tree tops with nothing around you but the warm, summer air. After they landed, Bobby told me she'd flown 90% of the flight herself.
My reward for being the mediator of her adventure was a week of the warmest smiles and energy whenever I'd come by the coffee shop and, perhaps, a life-long friend.
Such is the times I'm having here in Australia though, in truth, this has been the case for a string of countries over the last few years.
People. It's always about people.
I've neglecting having my camera at hand much of these last two weeks here so I'm relying on Ashanta's photos (except for the last one of her) in the slideshow below to give one a hint of the experience here.
l. to r., Yulia, Anton, Bobby, Zhenya, Marat, myself.
I ushered in the new decade at a campground just outside Forbes with the four Russians I'll be supporting in the up-coming competition at the airfield here. Just before midnight we were were joined by Bobby Bailey, designer of the Dragonfly ultralight that makes aero-towing possible for hang gliders and, therefore, competitions at sites like Forbes: flat but so full of the kind of lift that makes flights over 200 kilometers common.
One surprise the Russians had for me was a calendar published by Aeros, a Ukrainian hang gliding manufacturer. Seems pilots in Russia and Ukraine and a few other places will be staring at my butt for the entire month of May.
The photo was taken in Solvenia last August, where I knew many of the pilots, among them Claudia Mejia (pictured) from Colombia.
One that always pleases me about the hang gliding community is how international it is. At various times over the last year. This Christmas was a perfect example. I spent Christmas Eve and morning with a group of four Swiss friends (mother, daughter, and their two boyfriends, l. to r. Fredy, Dolores, Ashanta, Jörg) and then spend the rest of Christmas day exploring a dune soaring site with (below, l. to r.) Zhenya (Russian), Noma (Japanese), Gerolf (Austria) and Kathryn (Irish).
This December has been one of as full of flight as I could ever fantasize, be it from cliff sites like Stanwell Park, where one flies hundreds of meters above the surf, or at dune soaring sites, such as Redhead Beach near Newcastle, where I flew with my wingtip only a meter or two away from the sloping sand dunes, then choosing to stop and hover, then levitate back down to earth whenever I chose.
With all my time in the air and even more among the best of friends, this has been one month of endless days of happiness; hanging out with Curt and Louise in Stanwell, Scott and Monica in Newcastle, the Swiss, and so many others.
I had a two hour flight yesterday off of Stanwell Park's Bald Hill, cruising up and down dramatic cliffs pounded by exploding surf 700 meters below me. Absolutely stunning. Absolutely glorious.
Zhenya was there, too, in her new job as a test pilot for the Moyes factory. She was testing a prototype of the smaller version (for women and lightweight men) of the same glider I just bought.
Though I took the photos above, I didn't make the video below. But it was made at the same place I flew. Take it's five minute length and multiply it times 24 and you'll have an idea of the amazing experience I had yesterday.
Today was a bit of simpler fun: dune gooning at Wollongong beach (90 minutes south of Sydney). I made this short video of Curt surfing the wave in the air off the bushes at the end of the dune.
I just bought a new glider. The full story is in the Oz Report (details below).
Somewhat embarrassingly, I now own three hang gliders. They each have different roles, however. One is like a top-of-the-line road bike from a few years back, built for the best speed and performance at the time but, in today's technology, only well above average in performance. Another is like a very good mountain bike; capable enough but sacrificing speed and a bit of performance for strength and durability.
This new one like a beach cruiser; as simple as a glider gets because sometimes simplicity is an advantage.
Davis Straub's Oz Report is probably the most widely read hang gliding e-zine on the internet. It began perhaps ten years ago when Davis, an American hang glider pilot, was traveling and competing in Australia. He started putting posts on the internet to keep his friend back home informed and, once back home, began posting on news-worthy events in the States as well. Eventually anyone in the world with anything to say about free flight (or a few other of Davis' special interests, such as going barefoot and internet technology) need only send Davis an e-mail. More likely than not it would appear verbatim on the Oz report.
I've long been submitting pictures for Davis, as I'm usually free to photograph what most pilots are too busy being involved in to record.
An odd experience (pleasing, I suppose, if not surprising) I've had lately that first occurred last summer at the World Hang Gliding Championship in France last summer is that someone I've just met in a hang gliding related activity and chatted with briefly will ask me, "Wait a minute. What's your full name, Tim?" "Timothy Ettridge" "Oh, yes. So you're Tim Ettridge. I've heard of you." "Really?" I've always asked. "How?" "I don't know," is the usual answer I'll get. "I just have. Something to do with hang gliding, I suppose."
My only plausible explanation is a subliminal recollection of the byline of photos I've submitted to Davis over the years, as well as my reoccurring appearance in Jamie's blog, which many hang glider pilots read as well.
Recently I opened the Oz report index of back issues to discover this:
This was new. I'm actually the subject in the Oz report?
The story is this. A low-slung three wheeled land sailer was always sitting by the clubhouse at the Gulgong competition where the pilot briefings where held in the mornings, as well as escape the searing sun while waiting to launch.
On most days there wasn't enough wind to get it moving. In that picture you'll see my hand on the wheel. I'm trying to get it rolling by pushing on the wheel so that, once it starts moving, it's momentum might be enough for the wind to keep it moving. Usually this wasn't possible. I was, in fact, becalmed most of the time.
There were three days during the seven days of competition, however, where the tasks were canceled because of too much wind. And on those days, I could hope in the land sailer and zoom around all over the field. It became kind of an indication, then, of the likelihood of a task. If I could get that thing rolling on it's own, it meant that it was probably going to be too windy to launch or fly. Me being becalmed was a good thing.
A recent experience while flying here taught me a few valuable lessons I thought worthwhile to share. The same episode led to my purchase of a glider.
I'm based now in Bathurst, Australia at the home of my friend Chris, with whom I spent last Christmas in Haiti. Her home, a two hour drive west of Sydney, is happily situated in the very center of everything I want to do in my remaining two months in Australia. The next two competitions are either a three hour drive west or a two hour drive southwest. Additionally, some of the best hang gliding sites in the world are a few hours drive southeast on the coast.
Months ago, Chris generously invited me to use her home as a base in between each of my forays out into a different area of New South Wales. Only days after I arrived here, however, she was unexpectedly given an three month assignment in Chad, Africa by the U.N.
My role now is not so much a guest but a caretaker in a very quiet house.
After taking Chris to the airport, I took the chance to spend a few days with friends in Sydney, as well as visiting the Moyes Hang Glider Factory.
Other than Francis Rogallo, who invented the aerodynamic shape that evolved into the first hang gliders, probably no other name is more well known in hang gliding than Bill Moyes. In the '60s, Bill was instrumental in the development of a foot-launched and free flying glider originally based on water skiing kites towed behind boats. He opened up his own factory in the early '70s. Not only are his gliders still considered to be among the world's best, his son Steve eventually became a world champion in hang gliding championships.
In the 80's he teamed with American designer Bobby Bailey to develop what's now known as the Moyes-Bailey Dragonfly, the first ultralight powerful enough to tow a hang glider and yet able to fly slow enough to make being towed something even low time pilots could learn. Last spring Zhenya had the chance to be instructed in how to fly one by Bobby Bailey himself (here).
The Dragonfly transformed the sport of hang gliding, taking away the need for a hill to foot launch off of and allowed hang glider pilots to fly wherever the lift was best. This opened up the possibility of world record distance flights (currently over 700 km) in places like the south of Texas and permanent hang glider flight parks in the flatlands of Florida, such as the one where I now live (though I'm rarely actually there).
Walking among the endless rows of tools, machinery, and clearly recognizable hang glider and Dragonfly parts, I felt like a kid in a candy store.
