Paragliding from France to Switzerland

I have been so spoilt by Karin during this trip. The trip around Lac Leman was already amazing, you can see the pictures of the trip on Facebook, but with this paragliding thing, all I did was express a wish to go paragliding and well, Karin just arranged it all. Karin you are WONDERFUL. Big Hugs. So, how to describe my paragliding experience? To begin with, I thought, this will be great. I will be taking off, we’ll be in the air, then we land. It’s tandem paragliding so how hard can it get? Someone else does all the hard work, and I just enjoy the view. And besides, it amused me that I would take off from France, where Mont Saleve is, and land in Switzerland.

Actually, what happened was that when we reached the top of Mont Saleve, from which we were to take off, a few things happened simultaneously: 1) I realised (finally) how high we were, about 1500m. Well, that’s plenty high for me. 2) The pilot I was allocated solemnly said he didn’t speak English. My Internal Control freak flared up, and in the process shut down access to the French part of my brain so I couldn’t say ‘in any case, please explain everything to me before we go’. Since I must have stood there gaping, Pilot man just said, ‘don’t worry, you run a bit and then there will be a bit of drop and we’ll be airborne’. AAAAAAAAHHHH. I have to run into emptiness aka thin air? This is not normal behaviour. Of course it was too late to chicken out now. Chickens can’t fly.

Meanwhile, Min, who was also paragliding, was being given lots of instruction by her pilot, and I was slightly envious but my French language facility had just closed down hadn’t it? So instead I went into a debate with my inner control freak about how on earth I was supposed to entrust my life to a stranger who doesn’t speak English and sanguinely says ‘trust me’ because he is ‘serieux’.
Here is Min flying:

Then, probably because God noticed me silently freaking out, the wind died. It was like He was saying, ‘Keep breathing and when you are ready I will send the wind. Finally the wind returned. I did an embarrassing battle cry and dashed down the slope like a duck waddling into the air. Suddenly we're airborne, and I'm thinking crap............

While pilot man says, hang on, you're not yet secure in your seat and I’m bitchily thinking crap that is because you didn't brief me properly before. Of course, since my French facility was temporarily suspended, plus he was holding the controls I was not about to make any smart comments. In any case, since I’m writing this, you all know I didn’t die.

Being airborne - - well, different people have different experiences. Min, adventurous and sporty, was probably thrilled with the technicalities of it all. I had had no briefing and couldn’t even commence the discussion. So I can only report on the sensation of being airborne. Tandem paragliding is pretty weird. You’re putting your life in someone else’s hands. Literally. To be in a situation where I have to trust someone else is not good for me. When Pilot Man took his hand off the cords to point out Lausanne to me, my internal freak finally remembered enough French to say, err, don’t take your hands off the cords!!! Aagh, this man holds my life in his hands, and he just took one hand off. Oh Crap......

I did manage to relax enough to survey the view. I don’t know how. We flew over the forest by the hillside. We saw a tiny little chateau nesting on an outcrop of the Mont. We even saw Mont Blanc. We saw the Jet d’Eau. We saw the Whole of Geneve, and beyond. I noted that chaque maison a une piscine, which is even more evidence, in my warped survey, that Geneva is full of wealthy people.

On being airborne, we spoke about being like the birds. My internal control freak muttered 'Icarus', and I slapped her down. Instead I thought of Haruhi, who said that to fulfil her dream, she had to go through many experiences. So in the same way, if I want to be a writer, I must go through many experiences too.

Then, gradually, we got closer to the ground. Pilot Man pointed out that you can tell because the temperature gets warmer, and it was true. So I started worrying about the landing. Did I have to do more duck waddling? Pilot man said ‘no problem, it will be nice and easy, you’ll see. I didn’t entirely believe him, but in fact, as he promised, it was incredibly easy. The gentlest of landings. It was more like floating down. No hard bump like with an airplane. I was laughing madly when we landed, because this was the biggest surprise of all.

Karin was there to greet me, with her camera. She had filmed the last two minutes of my flight. Sugoi! I was flapping with excitement, now that I was back on land. Woo Hoo! Looking back on the footage that Karin took, I was really uselessly flapping while Pilot Man calmly undid the straps for me. I am such an idiot. Min said afterwards she thought Pilot Man fancied me. Probably a good thing for me, because maybe otherwise he wouldn’t have put up with my crap. So you see, Sunday was a great day out. Quite unlike any other I've known, and the paragliding was far, far by far better than flying an airplane.

Thank You, God for being with me and making all this possible.