Year 1 Hang Gliding

A year ago I embarked on learning to hang glide with Chris “Cowboy” Shaw, under the expert (if remote) guidance of Matt Barlow. He was so handsome; hair neatly parted, shorts pulled up to regulation height. I won’t bore you with the real early days, as the only thing interesting about those lessons was that we were joined by two saucy lesbians. For some reason they seemed to get the lion’s share of Matt’s attention. The order of the day was often “You boys do some glides down here, be safe, I’m taking the girls for a tandem experience.”

Anyway, after a few lessons Matt disappeared overseas. Our training began in earnest from that moment. Chris was so excited he immediately ordered a brand new Fun 190 skyfloater which arrived promptly 5 months later. Luckily I procured an ancient Buzz 154 to prevent Chris from spontaneously combusting with frustration. The vehicle was my old Mitsubishi L300 van (“Elle”). Paul Newton’s hill was the centre of the universe every weekend after that. The Buzz was thrown directly onto Elle’s roof at dawn and we would charge off down the driveway four or five hours later, that being, as I am sure you all know, about the minimum amount of time it takes to assuage a typical wife‘s feelings of abandonment. We soon discovered that a ridiculously high launch speed with total commitment is the only way to get a 2WD van round some of Paul’s steeper corners as we revved our way wildly up that track eight times a day. Yes, 4 high flights each, taking turns with the Buzz while the other one drove.

Those were heady days. We made sure we were extra conservative, well, compared to Icarus anyway. To avoid any confusion we had one simple flight plan that had to be strictly adhered to: Take off, fly around randomly, land in whatever paddock you end up at. Points were awarded for extra skills exhibited like remembering to remove your legs from the pod before flaring, and pinpoint landings directly on top of fences. Matt eventually returned weeks later and caught us red-handed on top of Paul Newton’s knob. It was a steady northwester and we were soaring happily, me on the Buzz and Chris on what he had dubbed the “Gaybloater” which had finally arrived. Matt’s bronzed, chiselled frame appeared below us on launch. I’m not sure if he was waving cheerily or shaking his fist, but as usual, we ignored him. We had advanced so far from when he had last seen us that he kind of had to “let us go”. There was a certain sadness I detected that day, as he realized he would get no more money out of us. Spring arrived early (July), and with the appearance of decent thermals, merely flying for five minutes and landing was deemed a failure. Not like the early days where anything over a minute in the air was cause to whoop with triumph before extensive video footage analysis and highly technical debriefings, usually along the lines of, “Did you see me work the lift band?” “No.” Chris definitely took the honours for the first real thermal flight. It was off my newly discovered site, Mt Duncan, and Chris was having his first flight there. He casually took off in the Gaybloater and drifted a few kms back in a thermal until he was a barely visible speck somewhere high above Picton. I was thinking, “Are you supposed to do that?”, wondering if he would be blown out to sea to land somewhere around Tahiti. But no, he easily flew back upwind to the take-off to yell some sort of abuse at me before carrying on exploring the whole Linkwater area from phenomenal height, seemingly able to corkscrew back up to cloud base at will whenever he lost significant height. Just to polish it off he then flew 6km upwind and landed beside my house. Not that impressive except for the fact he only had about 2 hours airtime before that flight.

That day marked the beginning of my “Anvil” period, that being the name Chris kindly gave me to reflect my gliding abilities. It lasted a few months, and I spent a lot of time in landing paddocks watching the “Lord of the Skies” soaring effortlessly, then stoically enduring lots of “helpful feedback” and tips about how to fly better. It would have been enough to break me but the Anvil period abruptly stopped one fateful day; We swapped gliders, (a gesture by Chris to, ostensibly, give me a chance at a decent flight, but more likely an attempt to crush me for once and for all. The result, he lost height and destroyed the Buzz in a scrubby gully, while I hooked my first ever thermal for a height gain of a few thousand feet. Aaaah, redemption is so sweet… As it happened, most of the damage to the Buzz was from the post landing “debrief” Chris indulged in. He had to lend me the Gaybloater until the Buzz was fixed, and my flying successes went through the roof, while he battled away on first a Desire (“Disaster”), then a Rage (No nickname required) and now a K1 (Gay1). His season since that day is best illustrated by what has become his traditional ritual upon landing which I have viewed many times from the air: You see the wing come to a halt and two seconds later a red helmet proceeds (via drop kick impulsion) 20 to 30 metres through the air, closely followed by a pilot sprinting after it for a second kick. On such occasions I felt it was only polite to soar another hour or so to let him discover how I felt all those times.

Post-Anvil, the flying since last September has been stunning for me. Living right here in Nirvana I have managed sixty odd flights and fifty hours airtime in the Fun 190. I am constantly surprised how flights turn out totally different than you expect them to. One cloudless day that looked fairly ho-hum took me from Mt Duncan 38km over three mountain peaks and the Wairau river to land just past the Waihopai Spy station. I was wearing one cotton sweatshirt that day and my harness wasn’t zipping up properly. I swear I was shivering so violently up at 6500ftthat my whole glider was actually flapping its wings. Another memory of that flight and many others is the wonder of the “low save“. Every thermal I’ve ever found seems miraculous to me in its ability to prolong my flight. But the sheer joy of hearing that vario unexpectedly start chirping when you are low enough to see the whites of the sheep’s eyes is hard to compare with anything else. But I’ll try; It’s a bit like being bowled in cricket only to hear a late “no ball” call. Or whacking a golf ball out of bounds and having it bounce back in off a power pole. Or waking up with the terror of remembering you had pashed-up Chris Shaw’s wife the night before then being relieved to find out she was too drunk to remember anything.

It hasn’t all been beer and skittles though. I had one terrifying moment at Magic Mountain during the XC Classic. I was just standing there minding my own business, watching a few take offs when suddenly before me a hideous apparition manifested itself in front of me. An ancient decomposing corpse had some how risen and was walking around mumbling incoherently. The most frightening thing about this creature was its dress sense. It was walking around in, how would I describe it, jacketless sleeves, made of faded fluorescent pink nylon. I ran terrified to Matt Barlow for protection. He stroked my hair in a soothing manner and said, “Relax Ben, that thing always turns up here, we call him: ‘Old John O’Neill’.”

Quote of the year happened at this same event. A cute Dutch teenage cycle tourist ended up camping beside us, and Guy Williams took it upon himself to show her some real Kiwi hospitality. One morning around the coffee stove he said to her, “If you come with me in my truck today, I’ll take you right up the Ahuriri.” Chris and I collapsed to the ground, paralytic with joy at this pearler. It was quite difficult trying to explain to this poor, innocent, good Christian girl why we were laughing, without actually going into biological details.

The second quote of the year was in a Linkwater landing paddock. I was de-rigging and this guy bikes up and says (and I swear I am not making this up), “Hang gliding eh? I prefer doing paragliding myself.” After a pregnant pause he then said, “So have you just landed or are you just about to take off?” Okaaaaaay…

Another great memory of that Omarama trip is being offered, after an earlier bombout, a second-chance flight by Tom Knewstubb and Hagen. Hagen’s son Jonas was in the van, he looked about nine, and I assumed he was tagging along to watch. Couldn’t believe my eyes when he starts rigging up a glider. It was extremely cool to see him take off and to follow behind him. Even cooler when he found a large area of lift where there shouldn’t have been any. I cruised that mother till sunset, thinking I was extremely skilled until the time came to descend: I couldn’t get down! I was throwing in tight slipping death spirals with one leg dangling out for drag, and the vario was still saying “up”. I had to fly about 500m away from the landing field to get out of the lift. As far as I could tell it was caused by two opposing winds colliding and going upwards. Sure enough, my eventual landing spot had wind 180° different from the windsock where I wanted to land. But the flight wasn’t the coolest thing about that night. No, it was in fact something far more special that I witnessed that night which will remain with me forever. While we were driving up Magic in the back of the van, Tom produced a sacred relic from under the seat, a treasure so holy that we all fell silent in reverence. It was a sort of tweed covered suitcase, custom made to fit two old style flagons of beer and six matching glass tumblers. Those Japanese tea ceremony masters have nothing on Tom when it come to creating a spiritually overwhelming experience. Each glass was lovingly delivered from its felt lined womb, polished on Tom’s Swandri, and held for filling by his highly trained assistant. Waves of nostalgia poured through me when I saw Tom tilt the glass to stop the head getting too big, just like Dad did in the old days. Thank you Tom for letting me witness such a moving event. You are indeed the Great Man.

As far as I can tell, there is only one thing wrong with this sport(and I think you all know what I

am going to say), where are all the chicks? Why do those paragliding guys get them all? It’s not as if we aren’t a fabulous looking bunch of studs! And virile! Look at John O’Neill, he’s still semi- erect and he’s dead! OK, I will admit that Tish is punching above her weight to raise the babe factor in our sport but she’s still only human. Maybe there are some in the North Island or something but I’ve never seen them. Even those saucy lesbians we learnt with disappeared shortly after Matt gave them their oral exam. But anyway, roll on Spring. Chris Shaw now lives next door after selling his vineyard for the sole purpose of catching up with the ‘Anvil’s’ airtime. I have bought a sleek racing glider for $200 with which I will exploit all that abundant Marlborough lift to explore distant mountains and valleys. I will also be developing some more take-offs right beside my house. I mean Mt Duncan is fabulous (NZ XC record) but for God’s sake it’s eight minutes drive away!