Let the eagle soaaaar

May 9, 2006

like she's neeeeever soaaaaared befooooore

crooned John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, in what is the worst song sung by a politician yet, and yet strangely that's what went through my mind as I took off and flew slowly, with considerable trepidation, towards the windsock jutting out on the cliff to the right, unsure of what scene would unfold afterwards, provided that I cleared it with enough altitude to begin with. Mussel rock beach is the place where the San Andreas fault crosses into the Pacific after traversing hundreds of miles inland, and while the flyover states dream that someday a big enough earthquake will make California, or at least the bay area, split off into the ocean, in reality, it's mostly the houses in the Westlake district, that sit precariously atop the eroding 700 foot cliffs that rise from the beach, that might end up in the ocean. I rounded the corner with enough altitude, and a dream-like scene, at once beautiful and intimidating, unfolded: very little beach due to the tide (DO NOT ever land in the water, screamed the voice in my head from all of the site orientation), the cliffs, the houses, the powerlines, the busy roads, and at least a dozen or more colorful paragliders and hanggliders soaring the cliffs lazily. Luckily, the vario started beeping in a crescendo, and I started gaining altitude. The rate of climb picked up as I passed by a large section of the cliff from which 15 houses had tumbled a few years ago in a landslide. The gouged-out shape of the side funneled the air up nicely in a Venturi effect and in the fullness of time, I climbed to a 1000 feet, and above the houses and the playgrounds, and the busy highway 1.

Mussel Rock paragliding site, Pacifica CA

(All pictures courtesy of Andy Stocker: http://www.astocker.com/paragliding/index.html. Soon, I will be generating some of these)

For an hour, I went back and forth, about 2 miles, along the coastline marveling the scenery, and getting to know my glider much more. I experimented with crab angles, speed to fly (slow in lift, fast in sink), the speed bar. I veered over the ocean to burn off altitude, and veered back to the gouged out cliffs to regain, always remembering that you don't want to get too high here because of the wind gradient. I turned into the wind, and my sunburned face into the setting sun, and relished the feeling of the glider almost being "parked" in the air, as the windspeed almost cancelled my airspeed. My friend Mihir came 40 feet below me, causing me to do a quick S-turn, just to be super conservative about a midair 'incident'. When the phone rang, about an hour into my flight, I guessed it must be Jo. My hands were numb from the cold, my legs were trembling from the anxiety-driven decision to keep them hooked into the speed bar, and my shoulder muscles were going to sleep from the constant battle against the wind. It was time to come down from my first soaring flight along the wild California coastline! And while eagles mainly soar on land, I do have a good idea now what a seagull or pelican feels like as it cruises the coast.

The houses on the Westlake cliffs

Westlake Cliffs

BAPA Elk mountain fly-in

May 1, 2006

This weekend, there were several social getogethers that Jo attended. The get togethers all went off well, but I wouldn't know for I was away at the bay area paragliding association (BAPA) fly-in at Elk mountain for the weekend. Many thanks to Jo for letting me do this, and for managing these get-togethers without me.

I had two great flights, and on one I managed to soar again (get above launch), although only by a few hundred feet this time (about 3000 feet above ground, and 4600 mean-sea- level). Unfortunately, I had found a great thermal and was going up at a mellow 400 feet per minute as per my brand new variometer, when I heard someone shout on the radio "get back down NOW". I heard this preceded by my name I thought, and I decided to leave the thermal I was in and fly away from the mountain. Unfortunately, I had misheard, and the yelling was for someone else (Graham actually), and I misheard "Graham" for "Praveen". Lesson for next time: IGNORE THE FRIKKING RADIO! I still rue what might have been another long soaring flight, cut short to only 20 minutes by this, since I could not find any other thermals to work. At least I soared; many of my friends didn't do as well, and didn't get above launch at all. Again, I think I can say that I "outflew" most with comparable skill and experience levels.

Anyway, the scenery was great as usual, with the snow-capped Mt. Snow range to the north, Clear lake to the south, the long clear creek meandering through the valley, the mountains still a velvetty green with bursts of purple flowering trees here and there, and the ocassional horse grazing peacefully near its barn. I had great launches and landings. Almost 20 pilots were there, and I did my second launch with about 12 of them watching. Usually this makes me a bit nervous, but my friend said that I had a "textbook launch" each time. We camped there for the night, exchanged humorous tales as the libations flowed freely, and, as the mercury dropped, huddled around an enormous bonfire that BAPA has a known tradition of building (> 700 lbs of wood) and watched the flames leap into an inky black sky with its plethora of stars.

We got skunked out on the evening flight on saturday, dashing our hopes for a smooth glass-off (in a "glass-off", the ground gives up its heat as the day cools and the sun sets, and generates a very wide cushion of warm rising air that creates very smooth lift, enabling you to stay up for a while with little effort). It was blowing like a hurricane up there (well 14 mph on a mountain top is pretty much a hurricane for most of us), although a few of the ballsy advanced guys did launch and have great ridge soaring flights. Sunday morning the winds were from the west and cross, and we para-waited for it to straighten out.

Meanwhile, Enlau Conner, a well-known daredevil pilot, took out his motorized paraglider, took off from the LZ (landing zone), and straffed us, taunting us with his buzzing motor. All we could do was watch as he and Guisseppe in another para-motor had the air all to themselves and exlored the valley to their hearts content, skimming the tree tops and doing powered wing overs and spiral dives. I really hope that there will be an electric version of this one day; the thought of a noisy propeller on my back and tank of gas on my butt scares me just a wee bit.

Soon, there was window of about an hour when it straightened out and 15 of the 20 launched; a regular runway up there! We went back for a second but by then the LZ was cooking (too turbulent to land), and lots of turbulence in the air as well, so we called it a day. Some stayed back for another shot at the glass-off, but I and many others headed home. All in all, another great flying trip and more things to log. Lessons learnt:

1) Turn OFF the vario for the drive up the mountain. The constant beeping here is infuriating.
2) Don't hear things on the radio!