When I come down I’ll be a better pilot

Flight 30: A new day brought enormous anticipation. I’d had 3 tows and was about 300% the pilot I was the morning before.


Teamwork ensures maximum tows.

The morning’s lecture was about stalls and spins. The thought of deliberately stalling your wing is insane. The fact that you’re up in the sky safely flying due to the aerodynamics of a fully inflated canopy is a miracle. To pull the brakes beyond the sustainable angle of attack and force the air out of all those cells will remove the wing from above your head. In fact, the force of the air leaving those cells pushes the wing behind and possibly under you. You fall to earth accelerating at 32 feet per second per second.

The pictures on promotional materials from paragliding vendors make this kind of incident look worse than a point-blank bullet. A full stall causes you to go into a full fall. That was on today’s curriculum.

Gabe spared no details in describing what would happen, including how the wing would return over head and how to re-inflate it.

The main thing here is the feeling: knowing what it feels like to free fall and restore.

As it took so much time to set up my video the day before I decided I had two choices: be the first or last in the tow order. I quickly set up the camera and asked to be the first up. I gained an enormous amount of cred from capturing the previous day’s events on HD video. Everyone was fine with my going first, or there was still some fear.

I had some fear. Fear is a natural part of flying. People don’t fly naturally: we don't have wings. To free fly well requires some physical retraining, reprogramming really. As I stood waiting for Robin to begin the tow I checked in again with all my internal state. There was fear but it was not a “No” signal from within, just plain, natural hesitation at being hauled 4000 feet into the sky.

I had an inspirational thought: I’m not doing this for kicks, I’m doing this to become a better pilot. I’m facing the worst possible scenarios now in a safe environment so when I encounter them on my own I’ll be prepared: When I come down I’ll be a better pilot.

That was the mantra the soothed all my anxieties, I mean, they vanished.

I’ll pulled the tow cord and the top, took my 90˚ turn signaling to Gabe below that I was ready and dug in. We did a few collapses to start out. I ripped the shit out of those A’s getting more than a 50% collapse from left, right and center. Then it was time to stall.

I double wrapped my brake lines and started pulling down, down down. When Gabe said “Push it through!” I locked my arms down in place. It’s hard to stall an Independence Marlin. The wing is designed with vents 2/3rds of the way down that open only on stall which simulates the extra flaps of birds that open as they land.

It’s a beefy wing, but, if you pull on those brakes with an extra wrap and hold it the air will rush out of the front of the wing, through the cells, and you will begin a free fall.

First you feel your head fall back slightly. The wing loses it’s air as it fall behind you so you begin to follow that path. Soon the pressure on the limp canvas pushes the wing back above your head as it tosses like a flag around above your head.

I heard Gabe count “1… 2… 3… 4… 5… Okay, half release. Now full release, arms straight up”. The wing fully inflated on my half release and surged. I didn’t apply any brake as I’ve handled many surges by this point and this looked like all the others. I had survived my first full stall.

Gabe said, “Great job on the first full stall of the day!” I was pumped. Then he said, “Okay, let’s do it again to make sure we weren’t dreaming.” I was dreaming alright, but this was a good dream, better than a twosome with Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson, on acid. I sat up straight and began to push down on the brakes. Down a second time into free fall, counting 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… half-release and then full release.

These wings are amazing. I’ve said it before, the are the ultimate technology of our age. Nothing from Apple or Motorola can come even close.

Then I did a b-line stall. This is the elevator-down maneuver. It's amazing to watch on video as you just go straight down. I pulled on the b's initially and had a tough time. You're literally doing a pull up, and I weigh 210. I redoubled my commitment and gave them a pull. Again I heard Gabe count and then I popped them back up. Another successful maneuver.

Gabe had me do some wing-overs. I’m weak on the left side of my wing-overs. I’ve got to work on that. I did some spirals and came in for a landing. I didn’t want to stop. I was like a kid in the playground. I just wanted to keep playing.

When I landed I gave Gabe a bear hug. I told him about my self-fulfilling prophecy and my mantra: When I come down I will be a better pilot. It’s my new mantra when I face irrational fear. When I face real fear, and I do know the difference, I will not fly. But, 99.9 percent of the time it’s just the jitters, it’s just the crape we face every day that keeps us from truly living. That’s the very issue I came here to face, and I nailed it!

Flight 31 was my 5th tow. I ran through the same routine now looking to build some mastery rather than bare essentials. I can feel the time to shift weight more in my ass than in the view of the edge. Gabe’s instructions are to look at the outer wing, that is when you’re turning right shifting right you’ll look left to watch the top part of the wing as it’s lines begin to go limp; that’s when you weight shift to begin your left. To me it was the feeling of the lines communicated to my ass that gave the signal to begin my next turn. I counted on that for this wing-over and did a much better job.

I thought as I completed this run that’s what I’ll look to next time and see if I can nail this with a progressive, even wing-over.

As it turns out the gusts really picked up. When I got rigged up for tow #6 they were blowing around 15, perhaps gusting to 20. When Robin laid on the throttle I picked straight up in the air, but made not forward movement. My wing collapsed backwards and I fell down about 20 feet, still 10 or so feet in the air. I was going for it. I figured as I got over the lake I’d keep rising, especially with some speed bar. Gabe called it off and asked me to kill it. I landed safely but was a bit confused. Apparently it all looked horrible. After all I’d been through up in the air the actual most dangerous situation that I had been in – close to the ground – felt like nothing at all. I was surprised that Gabe called it off.

We packed up to go do some thermal runs. Towing was out of the question for the rest of the day. It turns out the winds continued to build, well beyond the point of safe flying for any of us. The SIV clinic was over.

8 Rim Road

Back at the home we reviewed that tapes more like returning victors.

I’m a much better pilot than I was 2 days ago. I’ve had many people tell me that nothing is more valuable than attending am SIV clinic, well, it’s true. I’ve grown in many ways. In many ways I’ll never be the same. This was a beautiful growth experience where the rewards far outweighed the risks.