The Most Fascinating Sport

I’m learning a sport that requires me to lean heavily on my imagination, to build my ability to visualize invisible things, and to control my body in very subtle ways that have huge physical consequences.

Am I at Hogwarts? Nope, I’m learning to paraglide.

Paragliding is a sport where you take a large square “wing” (you’d probably call it a big square parachute), pull it up into the wind, and run off the side of a mountain. It’s not the same as “parasailing”, where you’re towed up on a circular parachute behind a boat. We paragliders are pretty sensitive to the difference between the two, let me explain why.

Your job as a paraglider is to find air that is going up faster than you are sinking.

Air going up is called “lift”, and air going down is called “sink”.

Lift (air going up) can be “orographic”, which means it come from wind hitting a mountain or hill and deflecting upwards, or it can be “thermic” which means it is warmer than the surrounding air and rising because, well, without getting deep into physics, warm air rises.

When that warm air rises, we call it a “thermal”.

Paragliding is a sport where you’re literally riding the wind.

Back to the imagination requirement: Because you can’t actually see wind or air, you have to imagine what is happening to the air all around you. As you imagine, you have to constantly ask questions.

Where are the thermals? Thermals “trigger” from certain spots, usually where a patch of ground is heating up faster than the ground around it. If you see a dark spot of ground you might glide over there to see if a thermal is rising above it.

What is the wind doing? If you’re on the side of a mountain, is the wind coming directly in to the mountain and creating strong lift as it flows up? Is the wind coming in at an angle and sliding off the side, creating much weaker lift?

Just as important as where the air is going up is knowing (and avoiding) where the air goes down.

All this requires a huge capacity to imagine what might be happening, to visualize it so you have a clear model in your head, and then to fly that model.

On top of that, because you can’t see any of this stuff, you have to quickly and constantly react to the input you get from both your wing and your position in the air, reevaluating your model, correcting and updating it on a second by second basis.

Whew, that’s a lot of brain work!

On top of that, you have to actually fly the wing smoothly. You’re hanging by a set of risers, one that goes to the left side of the wing, and one goes to the right. You have a set of brakes, and by pulling on one side of the other of the brakes you can cause the wing to turn. You can also turn by shifting your weight, or leaning, to one side or the other.

All those small movements, braking, leaning, turning, must be performed exceptionally smoothly and precisely, which can become difficult as you get into “active” air.

Each one of those things (imagination, visualization, and physical movement) has potentially “big consequence.” Paragliding is a reasonably dangerous sport and is especially unforgiving of mistakes. While you do have a reserve parachute to throw if your wing collapses, it’s not a fail safe mechanism.

The “big” consequence is another reason why I’m growing to love paragliding. I like things that actually have repercussions. Unlike most other things in my life, if I make a mistake or two in paragliding it could kill me. That existential battle focuses my mind, and the act of flying gives me permission to forget about everything else.

Some people meditate, some people manage stress through walking their dog or going to the beach. I like all of those things, but for me, nothing compares to flying off a hill and into an invisible, unknown, and so far (as a beginner) fairly unpredictable world.

The icing on the cake (for me, an active young man) is that I usually have to hike up a mountain with the wing in a backpack weighing 30 lbs or so. I LOVE hiking up hills, and the reward of being able to fly off at the top rather than crushing my hips and knees on a fast running descent is worth the eustress created hiking up.

Paragliding only has a few hundred thousand participants in the world. In the US we have around 5,000 active pilots. In Europe it’s closer to 100,000. I like the fact that in America, which is usually the biggest and the best at any given thing in the world, paragliding is still a small little niche sport populated by weirdos, wind-lovers, and adventurers.

That’s my kind of niche! As much as I’m growing to love the sport, I know it’s not for everybody. If you think it might be for you, get on the Googles and search out a good school or instructor nearby. See you in the sky!

How stoked does flying make me? That's me in the red shirt (video by @captainobviou3):