November 26th, 2010
I was determined to get in the air at the next opportunity that Mother Nature would provide and it looked like it would be today. I hiked up to launch in the early afternoon and there were three Ukrainian pilots with one of them ready to take off. He had a few failed attempts and on one of them he almost took off with a small cravat (one of the paraglider lines was going over the top of the wing...a potentially very dangerous situation). Another guy launched as I talked a bit with Aleg, a happy sweat drenched guy with a bad haircut (short black hair with a minor mullet). I let him go next since they were there before me and none of them were able to stay up for very long, the wind just wasn’t quite strong enough.
The Ukrainians prepping to launch:
And he's off:
Another guy wandered up to launch and it was an older French guy Jacques who is a tandem pilot. He’s a diminutive grizzled guy and he was planning on flying his tandem glider by himself so he actually had a chance to stay up...provided he could get into the air first. I helped him resetting his wing as it was big and heavy and he did take 3-4 attempts before finally forward launching off the hill. Jacques was able to climb above the ridge and in the end probably had about a half an hour of flight time. Me however...not so lucky. I made 4-5 passes of the ridge, hugging super close to the terrain but I just couldn’t maintain my height. I landed on Keri Beach (where you’re supposed to but this was my first time of my 3 flights to do so) and began packing up my wing.
Jacques in flight on his tandem:
Part way through the process, a man walked up to me and said that the police chief wanted to talk to me. Hmm....I’m guessing he’s not wanting to compliment me on my landing technique! I asked if I could finish packing up first, did so, and then walked into the covered beach bar where the chief, a man in his forties wearing glasses and short sleeved collared shirt and slacks, was surrounded by a bit of an entourage. It wasn’t obvious that they were the police as none of them were in uniform. He was already talking to a few other pilots asking whether we had permission to fly here. This was news to everyone. He claimed that we had to go to the Panajim District Magistrate (about 80km away...probably close to 2 hours away...probably a full day trip) to get permission. Strangely he wasn’t telling everyone as Aleg was sitting a few tables away and wasn’t spoken to at all. What a bummer...all that for a 2 minute flight! I’ll have to see what I will do about the situation...
The night before at the Olive Garden I was introduced to two tandem pilots from the Manali area (in the north of India...which is where everyone who works at the Garden is from). Ram, a highly energetic and friendly guy, and his friend (I never quite got a hold of his Indian name but that’s okay...I think he said 2 words the whole time) both probably weigh barely 120 pounds wet. Well they were also getting scolded by the chief and Ram did not look nearly as happy as he did the previous evening. The whole police crew left and I sat and had a beer with Aleg and a bearded sixty something British guy Steve. Some other guy, maybe Spanish, came up to us and asked whether we had seen the two Indian tandem pilots as their gear was just sitting alone on the beach. Later I found out that it was Ram and his friend’s gear and I hadn’t noticed that they were taken away by the police and spent at least one night in jail! I guess their situation was a bit more serious seeing as they were doing commercial business without a licence and being Indian, you don’t get as much leeway as foreigners (at least that’s my impression). Poor dudes...
No comments:
Post a Comment