Hang Gliding Over New Zealand Provides New Perspective

The moment I saw the brochure for tandem hang gliding in my youth hostel, I recalled my turbulent hanggliding experience in college. While studying for my final exam in Vertebrate Zoology (study of large words), a friend of mine named Karen stuck her head in my room and said, “Doug, let’s take a hang-gliding lesson.” Since I was cramming for a very important test, I insisted we not leave until I’d finished the sentence I was reading.

As we drove 30 minutes out of Colorado Springs, I asked Karen a few questions.

Me: “Is hang gliding the sport where they pull you around behind a boat with a parachute and bounce you off the Holiday Inn?”

Karen: “No, that’s parasailing.”

Me: “Is it the sport where you jump off a mountain with a rectangular parachute made out of wrapping tissue?”

Karen: “No, that’s paragliding.”

Me: “Is it the sport where they strap you to an oversized kite and you jump off a mountain?”

Karen: “Yes.”

Me: “Turn the car around.”

But five minutes later we were each coughing up $40 for the twohour course.

After being issued harnesses and well-worn hang gliders, we carried the gear up a gentle hill. The idea was, we were supposed to run down the hill with our gliders, launch ourselves into the air and fly a few feet off the ground until we reached the bottom of the hill. Then we were supposed to start from farther up the hill and fly higher until, eventually, we would be starting from the top of the hill and achieving orbit.

That was the idea, anyway. What actually happened was that I ran down the hill with my glider, never actually left the ground and felt monumentally stupid. On the second try, I ran faster, lifted off, ran a little more, then flew a few feet off the ground, tried to adjust my altitude and nosedived into the ground, swallowing six tablespoons of top soil in the process. I repeated this sequence of maneuvers several times until my mouth was fertile enough to grow a geranium.

After a few more freestyle landings, I asked the instructor to take me up with him, figuring that hang gliding would actually be a fun and exciting sport if I could just fly a bit higher and land less painfully. He said he didn’t have a big enough hang glider, but perhaps the real reason - and I can’t blame him - was that he could see I wasn’t gifted in the flying department and he wasn’t feeling particularly suicidal.

So, when I arrived in Queenstown, New Zealand’s South Island adventure tourism capital, I called up the tandem hang-gliding company and asked for a ride, mindful not to mention my prior hang-gliding experience when they asked if I had any. I did say I was a poor journalist and asked for a press discount. The man on the phone told me there was no way in (frightfully hot place) I was going to get a press discount, so I ended up forking over $100 for my flight.

Richard, my hang-glider pilot, was my link to life. So, as we drove up the side of the mountain we would be jumping off, I found I was becoming more and more friendly until I was practically drooling on the man. “It’s nice to meet you. Really! And that’s a beautiful hang glider. I love the design,” I babbled.

Richard’s hang glider was a flying advertisement for American Express. It looked like a giant credit card. And while these cards might be fine for buying a hang glider or covering any medical expenses I might incur as a result of attaching myself to one, they don’t instill much confidence as the major component used to achieve flight.

Richard explained what I was supposed to do: basically, nothing. Which was fine with me. “Just don’t trip me while we are running during take off,” he said.

Understandably, this would be a very bad way to start our flight off a cliff. So we practiced running together a couple of times.

“OK, are you ready?” asked Richard.

“Yes,” I replied weakly, now that I was standing three meters from the edge of the cliff. We started running and, due to my overconcentration, I was still running well after we had left the ground.

“You can stop running, now,” Richard said.

My mind tried to process the situation. I was lying on my stomach several hundred feet off the ground strapped to a piece of material the thickness of a Glad sandwich bag and hugging a man named Richard whom I’d only known for 45 minutes.

We circled around, looking for thermals, which is a hang-gliding term for updrafts of hot air, or Mother Nature’s flatulence. Thermals cause the glider to go higher, resulting in a longer ride, which seems to be the main object of hang gliding. (Really good hangglider pilots can fly for upwards of 30 hours. How they relieve themselves is totally beyond me.)

How did we find the thermals? There was a Nintendo Game Boy-sized computer mounted on the cross-bar that made annoying beeps whenever we gained elevation. Unfortunately, thermals tend to be very small pockets of hot air, so to stay in the updraft we needed to make tight little circles. After about 10 minutes of this (coupled with the beeping), I was getting extremely nauseous.

“Let’s go straight for a while,” I suggested.

“But then we’ll start losing altitude,” Richard said.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” I said.

When we straightened out, I began to enjoy the serenity and the scenery. But after about a minute, this became too boring for Richard, who decided, for my enjoyment, to do a few stalls. He pushed forward on the cross-bar, which drove the tip of the hang glider up, making us lose speed until we had completely stopped in mid-air. Hence the name: stall.

The exciting part came after the stall: The glider went into a nose dive.

“Richard,” I said, after recovering my stomach, which had moved up into my larynx, “have you noticed that we are plunging toward Earth at a very high speed?” “Yes,” he replied, “now watch this.” And with that, he steered the glider into a sharp bank turn. The best way to describe it is that the solid nylon glider was no longer parallel to the ground as it should be, but instead perpendicular to it.

“Try to relax,” said Richard, sensing my firm grip on his back and now making a sharp bank turn to the other side. At this point, Richard put my hands on the cross-bar and took his off, thus handing the controls over to me, as if that would help me feel more comfortable. I flew the glider for about 10 centimeters and then, feeling just slightly underqualified, handed the controls back.

Richard brought us down safely after only two more stalls. As we approached the grassy field, we lifted our legs, arched our backs and let the wheels on either end of the cross-bar touch down.

I would describe it as the sort of adrenaline-pumping experience one associates with taking a Vertebrate Zoology final exam after only 15 minutes of studying.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Directory of Hang Gliding & Paragliding Home Pages: http://www.mainelink.net/SKY ADVENTURES/myhom13.html “The Air and Space Catalog: The Complete Sourcebook to Everything in the Universe.” Makower, Joel. Random House 1989. “Hang Gliding and Parasailing” (history, how to get started, safety, competitions and glossary), Will-Harris, Toni. Capstone Press 1992. New Zealand Tourism Board, 501 Santa Monica Blvd., 300, Santa Monica, CA 90401. 1-800-388-5494, (310) 395-7480; fax: (310) 395-5453. “New Zealand-A Travel Survival Kit.” Lonely Planet Publications 1996, $19.95.