Long Haul

(thoughts on travelling by Bill Bryson's wind dummy)

SO YOU'VE arrived. You're on holiday. You've finally made it to that paragliding paradise at long last after 3 months of painful waiting and all those long weeks surfing the net and staring at the photos. If the truth be told, some nights you've even fallen asleep dreaming of getting here. This year, yet again, you've chosen the perfect location for your level of flying and the type of distances you want to do. This years gadget is safely tucked away in the rucksack, all shiny and new, and you even brought the manual just in case configuring it gets a bit too complicated. Over the last couple of weeks you've had your wing serviced and the reserve repacked, even the batteries in your instruments are brand new. Everything is in order. Things don't get any better than this. Life is sweet.

Stepping off the bus you sense a change in the air though. Phew, it sure is colder up these hills than it was in the city, but that's ok, you'll be used to it in an hour you tell yourself. You tie your fleece around your waste, throw your rucksack on your back and with a quick check of the hand-drawn map from the fly-guide you head off down the road. You're striding out purposefully, keen to get there. You're keen to get that first flight this evening, even though it'll only be an evening float, nothing special, it'll be the perfect opportunity to clean out the cobwebs and get a feel for the new geography. While striding down the road you take the opportunity to get a good look at the village, your new home for a week or so. It sure is a beautiful little place and the locals always look so relaxed, nothing like back home. Your mind races ahead as you look at the lifestyle the locals must have. If only you could make a decent living here, sufficient income to upgrade a DHV-2 every couple of years. You're thinking fast now. It's an option, you could do it, there's nothing to stop you, you'd milk goats for a living if it paid well enough. You would, you swear you would. It's only work and think of the benefits of living in such a relaxed environment with all that great flying on hand, it would be paradise. You promise yourself that you'll give it more thought later in the week. Right now though, you need to find that fly-guide and get up those mountains for that evening flight. Your stride lengthens as you press on.

You pass a bar and notice a couple of paragliding posters inside the door. Wow, you've found it already. This is clearly where you'll be spending a couple of hours every night swapping stories with your new flying buddies over 2 or 3 glasses of the local beer this week. Nice cold beers too, not like the usual stuff back home. Maybe you won't like it at first, but it'll grow on you and by Tuesday you'll wonder why you thought it tasted funny when you first tried it. In fact you can almost taste it right now, cool & refreshing, washing away the dust of a good days flying. Rounding the last corner on the little map you see the house you're looking for. You dig deeper. Your head droops. You're almost charging up the road now. You're full of excitement and enthusiasm now, maybe even a touch of adrenaline is beginning to flow from the shear anticipation of getting up those mountains in an hour or so. You lift your head and your eyes wander up to the hills where you see a steady flow of light cloud. They're nothing to worry about, you say, almost out loud. Even though they seem to move differently than the clouds you're used to, they don't look threatening and they're probably there every day. You'll quickly understand them, you know it, and the fly-guide will confirm all your ideas, he lives here, he flies with them every day. You force yourself to look away from the hills, you're only 50m away now. Then it happens.

Unexpected and without warning a wall of water hits you. No! Not now! Oh yes. It's pissing down. Right here, right now, 50m from the front door. It's not just light rain either, this is a downpour. Where did it come from? You didn't see any base cloud coming over or any of the normal warnings, this seems to have appeared from nowhere, there wasn't even a light shower preceding it or anything. Put quite simply, it has suddenly and quite obviously started wazzing it down. You run straight up to the front door of the house but it doesn't help much, you're soaked already and your rucksack is dripping.

Banging on the door to get them to let you in won't help much either. You know it. Yeah, maybe it'll get you out the rain, maybe you can dry your rucksack before it soaks in, but that's not what's worrying you. It doesn't help to ease the shear dread that's creeping up your spine. This isn't the first time this has happened is it? You know. Deep down in your heart, you just know. It isn't going to stop for 4 days.

This holiday, just like every holiday, is time off work. Time off work, that valuable commodity, something you don't have much of, so maybe you should turn around now and use these valuable days elsewhere. Maybe you could head to the coast or down south or even get another cheap flight somewhere else. Let's face it, you could be back at the airport in 3 hours. But you won't, will you? You can't, all those sundrenched photos you've been staring at for 3 months are telling you that tomorrow it'll break and then you'll be flying those XC's that you came here for. Will it break? Will you still be thinking these thoughts in 3 days while drinking coffee and watching the rain out of the kitchen window? The almost forgotten painful memory of last years trip where it didn't start raining until 3 days into your holiday come rushing back. At least last year you had the chance to get a feel for the conditions and get comfortable in the big air before your holiday was ruined.

When he opens the door... if he says it... you swear you'll hit him.

The door opens, and a smiling face greats you and shakes your hand. Before you is a man who's clearly happy with his life, he looks relaxed and comfortable and is genuinely pleased to meet you. Oh no, he did it, he glanced over your shoulder. He checked. God, he's going to say it.

"Hi, come on in. Do you fancy a coffee?", he says in slightly broken english, "What luck, eh? You know, this is the first rain we've seen in 2 months. You should have been here last week. Classic conditions."

"Black with two sugars, please", is all you can manage.

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1968 "Neil Armstrong missing ladder" gag" videos