After years of playing and singing "The Eagle and the Hawk," of staring out airplane windows, of watching hawks in flight, I finally did what I'd been longing to do: I went 4,000 feet in the air on a hang glider. And liked it so much I did it again the next day.
I've gotta go to work now--gotta pay for that extra flight!-- but less than 48 hours ago I was where you see me here, hanging in a glider with an instructor named Rex. At this point we had just dived through a hole in the clouds. He warned me it would be fast and not exactly gentle, but was necessary to get us below the clouds so he could see to land.
Seeing where to land seemed like an important goal, so I didn't protest. But wow, it wasn't the beautiful, surreal, floating experience of the day before. I don't suppose anyone but Rex could hear, but I think I screamed the whole way down. So the photo is a bit deceptive, so calm and lovely it all looks.
(If you click to enlarge, you can see my tiny little legs on the right side. You can't see the expression on my face, and I can't imagine what I looked like at that moment! It was like riding a roller coaster without a seat.)
Anyway, more later.
If you have any questions about hang gliding, I'll try to answer them in what I write if you'll email them to me or send them via the comments.
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