I met Deano back in September in St. Hillaire, France for the Coupe Icare free flying festival. He was a friend of friends (an English crew of pilots I spend a week with earlier in the summer). Deano is a nomadic paramotor instructor who plies his trade primarily in Europe but will go anywhere his services are required. I immediately hit it off with this straight shooting, stand up guy who’s always in a good mood and excited to go flying. He’s kind yet humble; having experienced some amazing adventures in his life such as kayaking solo down the Ganges for many nights until he reached the holy city of Varanasi to having a near death experience in a bus on the “Highway of Death” in Bolivia.
One morning in Arambol I was up relatively early to go to the Internet cafe and knock off a few errands. Walking along a bumpy path I had a glimpse of a figure walking on the main road that resembled Deano. I picked up my pace and reaching the main road I saw a man stop and turn around and sure enough “Deano!” It was fantastic to see a friendly, familiar face at this point in time. We hugged (something that I tried to instil on my English flying friends back in Europe!) and quickly caught up on each other’s news over breakfast. He was planning to spend six weeks here...sweet, a good flying buddy (I guess I should call him a “wing man”).
Post flight beer after a tandem with Vincent and Isabelle:
Now, surprisingly, six weeks is up. We shared Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year’s Eve together and many paragliding flights, dinners, drinks and laughs. Just two days before he was scheduled to leave, we decided to take a rare day off from paragliding (at least for him) and rent motor scooters for the day. This was also significant in that Deano had not been in a combustion fuelled vehicle of any kind since he’d been here...good on him! We had a fantastic day cruising around in the countryside, purposefully trying to get lost. The further removed we got from the main roads, the friendlier the people seemed to be...coming out and waving at us, yelling out “Namaste”. Unfortunately my camera was acting up that day so I don’t have any photographic evidence of our day...but it was a damn good one.
Christmas Eve drink:
Christmas dinner:
Deano friendly with the local kids:
Deano giving Mallory some pre-flight instructions:
Deano kiting flip:
Chilling out at the Oasis restaurant:
A man on a mission to fly:
Waiting for the proper wind:
Kiting:
Testing the winds:
Flying Deano:
A fly-by:
Deano landing at the Olive Garden:
So now I bid Deano adieu...for now. He’s now going to more than compensate for his fuel eco-friendliness as he’s off to England (home) for 3 days, then to Arizona in the States to run a paramotoring competition for a couple of weeks followed by returning to England only to hop back in a plane and head to Nepal for some great flying...a lucky guy (but so much for the eco-friendly aspect!).
Deano and Ram:
It was a pleasure hanging with you for the last month and a half Deano! Peace Brother.
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