The Minorty View

I want to paraglide over snow, to take off and land on a snowboard. I picked up Outside, National Geographic Traveler and Condé Nast Traveler hoping to find some destinations for the winter. Nothing. Nice images of mountain sites, ridges in Croatia. Is there an LZ around there somewhere?

It’s tough being a minority in a consumer culture. None of the marketing is targeted towards you. We’re completely surrounded, invaded actually, by the sirens of the media and their financial backers: the advertising industry. We’re disenfranchised, marginalized, neglected, made to feel strange and worthless. Who are we anyway to want to see images of people like us in the major media?

Out of the mainstream, it’s frustrating to read magazines that are clearly targeted towards adventure travel and find no reference whatsoever to paragliding. The images are spectacular, especially at this time of year when ski travel advertising is extremely prominent. You see pictures of the Whistler, Sun Valley, the Grand Tetons of Jackson Hole, and the natural question you have is: is that ridge windward? Is there an LZ there?

Online is a different story: you dig your own tunnel that’s so rich and narrow that you might suppose there are hundreds of other pilots competing to beat you to the mountain. However, the mass media makes it very clear: paragliders are a minority relegated to the "extreme" sports category.

The reality is the mass media is really missing it. If you look at the average demographic of a paraglider, at least here at Torrey, his is a pocket the advertisers should be directing their funnels to in full measure: somewhat older (or scion of the wealthy), plenty of disposable income, a regular traveler with perhaps more than one frequent flier account. It’s strange. It’s such a rich media buy.

Reading the only 2 paragliding magazines I know of, Paraglider and Cross Country, either these guys don’t pursue the big buck accounts or the Four Seasons in Hawaii really doesn’t want paragliders to visit the big island. All the ads are for powered paragliding. I suppose the margins on those machines are high enough to justify an ad spend.

I’d like to say I’m insulted, but I’m not. I think I’m just discovering something in its infancy. When media buyers discover who I am and how cheaply they can get to me, they’ll be there.

The resources just aren’t there for traveling paragliders. If you google a locale and the word paragliding you’re left to your own to pick up the scraps and carve out a vacation for yourself. Perhaps ski resorts should be offering free tandem flights as part of their packages or there should be a column in travel magazines for people who use their bodies on vacation. That’s what I thought Outside was for.

My guess is that it will start online. Once someone hits the right combination it will take off. Google has a great video paragliding site. That’s a start. Now where exactly is everyone doing this? Where are the links to the nearest hotels, resorts, car rentals, plane tickets, etc?