Whether or not...

If there's one thing that preoccupies paraglider pilots it's the gift that keeps on giving; the endless conversational smorgasbord that is the weather. Yes folks, not only can we bore for Britain about being 'aviators' we can also do your head in with  mutterings about microclimates, frontal systems, convergence, inversions, convectivity and cloud tops. We have, indeed, looked at clouds that way.

Find a group of plots on the hill and listen in - they'll be easy to spot, huddled together, slowly advancing towards hypothermia and jabbering away about this cloud or that cloud; about whether it's going to get windier or whether grey, orographic whispiness will develop. They'll point at the sky and consider the implications of ice formations at 35,000 feet and they'll look far out to sea to try and read the wind in the waves.

Sometimes they will spook each other with tales of errant pilots, who turn up on the hill, quickly check out the current conditions, launch and fly... and then die horribly, sucked up into a vigorous cumulo-nimbus cloud. Or be picked up and dragged bodily backwards into the turbulent rotor-streamed air because of an unforeseen gust on take-off. Or... or... or...

Most pilots have had or seen an accident requiring medical attention or air ambulance evacuation, but it's almost never the fault of the weather. It's almost always pilot error and one of the gravest errors is being taken in by the phenomenon of 'ground-suck'. Just as a big cloud can suck you into its white embrace, the weather guru can persuade you that flight is too dangerous to contemplate and it's not unusual to find a gaggle of pilots sitting on launch in perfectly flyable conditions, waiting for a wind-dummy to show them the way.

Often I am that dummy because, having once made a living as an aviation meteorologist, I know that most of what most pilots know about the weather is bollocks. I'd rather be flying. So here's a short clip of me doing just that:

CLICK ME

Poetry in Motion

Sometimes words just won't do it.

So today, I'm going all zippy-gobbed and just uploading a very short clip of exactly how one goes about tossing oneself off.

This is the westerly launch on Babadag mountain, at 1700m above sea level - I joined the 'nearly-a-mile high club'!

Olly Olly Olly!

Oludeniz - Olly - Turkish paragliding paradise where the cool kids come to play – yay! When I say cool “kids” I am entirely correct in the use of the outmoded vernacular because the average age of yer actual paraglider pilot is, well, it’s about my age. And last time I looked I was in my fifties.

It’s a sport entirely suited to we crusties involving, as it does, a fuck of a lot of sitting around, waiting. Waiting for a ride up the mountain, waiting for a slot in the ever-variable weather, patiently waiting your turn on the crowded take-off. Oh and patiently listening to the far-too-comprehensive site brief from the old hands who forget that at our age it’s nigh-on impossible to take in more than one piece of, er... you know, oh what’s the word I’m looking for? Anyway, here's a pic of the lagoon at Olly taken from my headcam:

At every paragliding destination I have ever been to I have been told “This is the worst weather we’ve ever had! Normally it’s as predictable as night and day and we fly whenever we want, wherever we want!”Last week was always absolutely brilliant and thus typical and somehow this week, the week I am here, is always the worst it’s ever been.

There are only two logical explanations for this; either paraglider tour operators are inveterate liars or I’m a Jonah!

Anyway, despite the “appalling weather” (judge for yourself from the pictures!) we’ve had some spectacular flying. In particular, I’ve not long landed from my sunset flight through clouds, in company and intact, which is always nice.

Away from a decent Internet connection it’s been hard to keep abreast of the news and impossible to engage on Twitter beyond a brief ‘hello’ from time to time. I can’t even upload video via this service – bandwidth of an under-nourished gnat’s pubic hair! As a result, I am entirely unaware of whether or not there is still a Euro, or whether Greece is still a part of it. I have no idea if the Falklands or Gibraltar are still British. I don’t even know how low my pitifully few shares have sunk this week. Instead I have slavishly served the needs of a non-European tourist trap while simultaneously indulging myself - It’s a tough life, but someone’s got to live it.

Normal service will be resumed on my return!

Turkish Delight

I'm not all there, There, that is; where you are. I'm all here, 'here' being Ölüdeniz in Turkey, for a week of tossing myself off a dirty great lump of rock into an azure sky above a turquoise sea, over and over again.

Lest you faint away at the sheer manly audacity and the godlike heroism of my deeds and imagine me to be of superhuman mien and other-wordly prowess, let me let you into a secret. I forgot to re-charge my new camera, so today's footage is a bit, well... rubbish.

But I'm putting it up anyway! This is team-leader, Brian, doing his best cat-herding impression and attempting to brief us "Olly-virgins" at the 1700m take-off.

The flight was terrific, but wind conditions contrived o keep us on the ground a long time before launching - which I did superbly, I might add - and then put us in the bar afterwards. Tomorrow I will do better - promise. until then my blogglings I bid you a balmy sea-breezy farewell and a jolly fine evening.

It's Digital, Man!

I can't be arsed with all this Greece nonsense. They are going to be enslaved, exiled or invaded and there's nothing any politician really cares about it, so long as they can stay in office by pandering to the uneducated, egocentric wiles of their increasingly dumbfounded electorate and keep telling them what they want to hear. Why change a winning formula?

So, sod the economies and the concerns of Greece, Italy, Spain Ireland and whichever knave in the house of cards is next on the world stage, professing to have the first clue as what is needed. Sod ‘em all and let’s look closer to home. Good old Blighty.

The UK is a pretty affluent country, you know? Of course we got troubles – who don’t, innit? – but Birmingham didn’t seem to think so yesterday. From the teeming masses out on the spend I saw little sign of a country in crisis.

There is nothing – and I mean NOTHING for sale in the Bullring that anybody actually needs. From the bizarre bubble-wrap skin of Selfridges, to the plethora of games and gadget shops, sunglasses huts, coffee emporia, perfumiers, chocolatiers and jewellers, there is sweet F-A that anybody needs to live on. For a country that’s supposedly broke it’s doing a great job of looking like a consumer paradise.

Every other outlet sells mobile phones with enough computing power to get man on the moon, or run an army from exile; the sheer capability of these things is truly awesome. But look who’s really using them and for what purpose.

The digital native, it is said, needs no formal knowledge-based education, for all knowledge is at the fingertips. What use is there in teaching history, geography, the sciences, language and maths when you can carry your brain in your pocket? (Something, incidentally, that men have been doing for millennia.)

Educationalists posit that ‘digital immigrants’ (that’s us crusties, folks) have trouble teaching digital natives because of the proliferation of a new language and new social paradigms. Educationalists, it seems can always come up with another pseudo-scientific reason not to educate. This, however, is a simple case of the tail wagging the dog – who is supposed to be teaching whom?

If the aimless, lardy simpleton waddling along New Street, glazed eyes fixed to a tiny screen, is an example of the digital native (and it certainly is) then you have to ask yourself at which point this genius is going to transform our brave new world.

For every Alpha entrepreneur, using technology in a new and interesting way, you have a million drooling Deltas using the same technology to order pizza. Aldous Huxley’s novel, while not great literature, was nevertheless prescient… and far more stuff needs cleaning than inventing. As long as you keep the drones happy, the world keeps on turning. 

Hmmm, (shudder at the thought) maybe the Eurocrats know what they're doing after all?