[travel] Extreme interlaken Pt 3: Hang gliding

[mattbell]

I did the last of the three extreme activities on a rough day that promised an afternoon thunderstorm. Because I had a train ticket out, I had to go with a morning hang gliding session in order to avoid possible storm delays.

I chose hang gliding as my last activity because it would provide the closest possible experience to flying. In a hang glider, you are suspended horizontally, Superman-style, next to your tandem pilot. There's no motor, so your experience of floating above the hills is completely quiet. Hang gliders have an incredibly simple control mechanism. They are completely fixed-wing; you dive, climb, and turn just by shifting your weight and thus the hang glider's center of gravity.

The takeoff was incredibly smooth. The pilot and I started running down a hill and quickly found ourselves airborne. I giddily looked around at the landscape opening up below me, trees pointing their pointy tips up at me. It was a fairly relaxing experience. I didn't get any fear of heights as I felt securely strapped in.  Because of the lack of thermals, the flight was fairly short, and the pilot only had time for a couple of steep diving turns before landing. I was hoping to do more, but conditions didn't allow for it. I did get to experience enough that I know I'd want to play more with hang gliding in the future.

I'm amused that it took me several hours to realize why the hauntingly beautiful song “Walking in the air” had been stuck in my head all day. Here's the original version from the Snowman cartoon, and the rather good goth/metal version done by Nightwish.

It was very pleasurable and serene to finally fly nearly unencumbered like I occasionally do in my dreams.

Comments

[danea.livejournal.com]

We sat around Ft Funston watching the hang gliders a couple weeks ago after I went to the zoo, and it looked like SO much fun! But that is not how my dreams of flying go, which I've always found rather odd. When I dream of weightlessness or 'flying,' it starts out more like this...losing contact with the ground then moving further & further up.