WE RECEIVED an anonymous advertisement, apparently clipped from the pages of last weeks Flying Times and it clearly shows there are some pretty low-minded pilots out there. We've scanned the ad and included it here, so you can fully appreciate the depths to which some will stoop to gain even a fraction of a point in L/D. Please take a couple of seconds to read it, if you haven't already seen it.
"Ah would do it wizout hesitation, englishman", said Patrick "DeHair" Berow, French superstar & Ginger Team member in slightly accented english, "I would 'ave no problems sellin any of my relatives for an improved glyde to gol, wouldn't you do zee zame? Have you no idea how early you could leave zee thermals you fool? Just imagine bein able to go 50m before zee rest of zee peloton. Zeriously, englishman, what can you do wizz your aging granny anyway? It's not like she can drive zee retrieve anymore, grandparents are well past all zat sort of thing. Putain de merde! What iz all zee fuss is about?"
This brief interview with a top pilot shocked us quite frankly, we thought we had stumbled upon something in very bad taste, something immoral, but clearly others were thinking this was the norm. We started wondering if maybe we were being a little over-sensative, maybe we were too conservative, maybe we needed another interview.
Who better to talk to than the guys accepting these ads, the other publishing pro's, people who handle ads every day. The pimps. So we got Joe Slowfield, editor of "SkyDings" the BHAP monthly magazine, on the horn and asked him a few direct questions. He told us, "The bit I don't really get, is who wants an old grandmother? I'm missing the scam on this one". He continued, "Read it back to me again, will you. Mmmm, it does seem a little bit direct, but hell if their paying cash who cares?"
"This ain't scuba diving we're playing with here, son", he continued, "It's not like we've got half a million punters in every country round the world just waiting to sign up, try the sport and then buy the magazines for the next 10 years, you know. This is paragliding, me old mucker, and there aren't many of us about. If someone mails in an ad with a cheque, phones in with their credit card number or even drops in the office with some hard cash, we'll print it. Don't you boys at Pie do the same? How do you cover your costs? How do you pay your staff?
Back at the office feeling alone in a world of commercialism, surrounded by sharks and profiteers, we opened the dictionary at a random page looking for hope in a grey world...
Scruples (noun): a unit of weight equal to about 1.3 grams
We guessed that anything weighing less than 2 grams must be pretty small and easy to lose. That won't happen to us, we said confidently. Here at Pie our readers are safe, we keep ours safe in our trouser pockets. Errrr....
Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1947 "Chuck Yeager Speed Camera" photos
Funnier than the 1947 "Chuck Yeager Speed Camera" photos