All On My Own

A huge congratulations to the three newest graduates of the iP2 Novice Paragliding program! Ducky, Jim, and Simon were all people we'd been carpooling, kiting, and flying with frequently, so my little personal flying team of Russ, Craig, and I has been hoping to have many adventures with them post-graduation too. To that end, we've been plotting our first supervision-free flights, hopefully for next weekend or the weekend after.

Russ and I have been flying with iParaglide since our graduations, because Russ has been acting as a landing coach every flyable weekend. It has its advantages, not the least of which is an automatic non-flying driver in the form of our teacher, but it means that we don't necessarily feel like fully independent paraglider pilots yet. In order to really feel like we've graduated, we need to fly without our teacher around.

I did take one step towards that feeling recently. I was the last of our group to launch on one of the rounds. As I was setting my paraglider up, our teacher headed down to pick the students back up for the next round. For the first time, I was on my own: I was going to launch without my teacher within sight. To further increase the pressure, there were many experienced pilots on launch, including some tandem pilots and teachers from another paragliding school. Luckily, the conditions were ones I am very comfortable with - low winds for a forward launch - and there was one friendly face on launch: Mark, a pilot I flew with last year when he was finishing his novice paragliding license as I was starting mine.

After we both landed, Mark told me that it was a good launch, but I already knew that. I brought the paraglider up evenly, checked the wing well, and ran down into a smooth flight. I even got a bit of lift as I played around in front of the ridge.

The next step is a new novice flying adventure. Our teacher isn't going to be at the mountain next weekend, so, weather permitting, it'll just be us, with our shiny new Novice Paragliding Pilot certifications, making our own decisions, launching and landing ourselves... and being pilots!