Infectious Tandem Paragliding

September 22^nd, 2014

Before I left for my trip around the world I had enrolled in a tandem paragliding course with my instructor Claudio.  In Canada, you are technically only supposed to take someone tandem paragliding for the purpose of instruction but of course this usually isn’t the case.  However this does mean that to get the tandem certification you also have to take an instructor’s course.  Just yet another hoop to jump through.  I didn’t quite finish the courses before leaving for my travels but I felt confident enough to start the tandem business in Goa as it is a relatively easy site to fly.

However now being back in Canada my main initial goal was to obtain my proper HPAC (Hang gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada) rating.  I contacted Claudio and figured that I needed to do at least 5 tandem flights under his supervision and aid him in some instructing of paragliding students. 

I lucked out in that the weather during September was exceptionally good for Vancouver Island.  My first “guinea pigs” were my good friend Tony (who flew tandem with me in Goa) and his neighbour Kevin.  Both flights went quite well, both the launch and the landing although Claudio did have a couple of pointers for me, which he should as that’s why I’m paying him to be my instructor. 

About a week later, Sonja, a German woman I met in Goa, happened to be in Victoria so I took her and her travelling friend Maraike for flights from Mt. Prevost in Duncan.  Each time Claudio had some feedback but I felt like I was progressing, this mountain tandem flying did have some extra nuances than the easy ridge soaring flying in Goa.

Not quite relevant to the paragliding, but here's Maraike on the beach at East Sooke Park near Victoria...what a gorgeous day!

A few days later I took Becky, the daughter of my good friend Sean’s mother-in-law’s best friend (if you can follow that).  We had a more challenging launch.  In Goa, I always told my passengers not to sit down until we were high in the sky and I told them that it was okay to do so.  I would explain to them that it’s like a plane trying to take off and all of a sudden the front wheels retract.  It makes it much more difficult for the pilot to take off.  Claudio suggested that shouldn’t tell passengers what not to do but what to do, as this is what they will think about.  So this time with Becky I didn’t tell her not to sit down, and guess what happened…she tried to sit before we took off.  We did get off, but barely.   Claudio then took a friend, a Slovakian nurse named Lanka for a flight and then we headed off for lunch. 

Ready for takeoff:

Our takeoff:

From our point of view:

In flight:

Coming in to land.  There was no wind so we came in quickly but I could have done a better job timing my flare:

After landing:

Instead of another high flight I suggested that we go to the nearby training hill, a farmer’s field with a small grassy hill and large landing field where one can have a 10-15 second flight.  This way I could possibly punch out 4 take offs and landings.  I first took Becky and as we ran down the hill, the paraglider got ahead of us due to me not braking early enough and we tumbled over and started to get dragged down the hill at a quick pace.  I had told Becky to wear pants for the flying but stupidly I was wearing shorts (Do as I say, not as I do!) and I could feel the friction of the grass on my left leg.  We eventually stopped and thankfully Becky was alright.  My shin had sustained a nice grass burn but no big deal…at least I thought at the time.

I was impressed that Lanka was willing to take the next two mini flights with me and even more impressed that Becky got back on the horse and we had a decent little flight.  The ladies were happy with the day…as was I.

My grass burn:

A couple of days later I was attending a first aid course as part of my tandem certification.  On the second day we practicing bandaging a wound and I figure hey, why don’t we do a real one and redress my shin.  The instructor saw it and remarked that it looked like it was healing well.

Oddly enough, that night I went to my friend Mark’s for dinner and crashed there as our friend from Seattle (Kevin) was in town.  We had a good party night and in the night my shin felt a bit funny and I was limping a bit in the morning and it was swollen.  If I pressed against the skin it took a minute to push back out…strange.

Kevin, Sean and I headed off on the ferry to Pender Island to play disc golf, which I hadn’t played in years.  It’s like regular golf but you use a Frisbee disc, it’s in the woods and it’s free to play.  The holes range from 30 to 70 meters long and over the course of the day we played 63 holes.  I have to admit that I was hurting during the last nine holes and felt like I had a slight fever on the ferry ride back to the ferry.

Arriving back in Victoria, even though the group was meeting at Mark’s again for a games night, it was obvious I needed some medical treatment.  I lucked out and found a clinic close to Sean’s (where I was staying for a few weeks) and the doctor stated that she was glad I came in as it could be a serious infection.  She prescribed some painkiller and more importantly some antibiotics.

The next day my lower leg progressively grew redder so Sean was kind enough to take me to the Emergency Room of the General Hospital.  Yup, I had an infection.  A cute nurse gave me an IV and I was instructed to go to the Jubilee Hospital in the morning where they have a ward specifically for infections like this.  So sure enough I spent the next three mornings in the hospital hooked up to an IV for half an hour and the infection started to abate.

Houston, we have a problem:

In the hospital, starting to get better:

Okay, on the mend:

I felt damn lucky that this happened now and not a few hundred years ago, where this kind of infection could have meant the loss of the limb (sawed off in a barbarous way) or even death.  I’m glad I live now, and not back then…