I inflated the wing, walked to the edge of the cliff and stood there kiting the wing and looking out over Lake Michigan with a 130 ft drop to the beach. As the wind pulled at the harness, I took another step onto nothing. I only dropped slightly as I shot out into the open air. I have never ridge soared with such light winds (5-6 MPH). After a short trip along the ridge and back I realized I had traveled out of the main updraft and could no longer maintain altitude. As I came into the landing on the beach there was a man looking at rocks along the water’s edge with his back to me. When I finally set down, I was about 15 ft away from him and kited the wing down away from him. Another moment passed before he realizes I was there. Perplexed he asked “Where did you come from?”
I quickly packed up my gear (too quickly) and headed down the beach to meet up with Ken. As I walked the few hundred yards to the parking lot, I couldn’t stop smiling. The feeling was and is indescribable.
As I setup for another launch I realized my gloves were missing (electric gloves with batteries that I spent way too much on). I had left them on the beach. Ken headed for the truck to drive back down to the beach. I setup, inflated and headed straight off the cliff. I penetrated thru the lift, turned out over the water and headed toward my LZ. On the previous approach, I had been focused on the man, I did not remember the landmarks where I had landed previously. As I flew by a different, older man, I shouted: “I forgot my gloves”. By the time I saw the gloves, I was close but overshot them.
By the time we setup for a 3rd run it seemed like the wind was switching and losing power. 4 MPH and the flight was similar to the 2nd. I landed in almost the same place. The older man was returning down the beach as I was finishing packing up. He asked if I found my gloves and then walked with me to the parking lot. John (I think) had flown helicopters when he was younger and said he had recently been thinking about getting into paragliding. “As soon as you flew by me, I committed to learning to paraglide.” He has Mariyan’s info.
