France

Time seems to be flying in France, as it always seems to when you’re having fun. On Saturday the three of us met up in Geneva airport, and spent a couple days in Annecy. Annecy was beautiful – wow. It’s like you have everything there – a beautiful lake, amazing mountains, delicious bakeries, and endless paragliding opportunities. What else do you want in life?

On our second “official” day of our trip we flew from one of the busiest launches I’ve ever been to. Even considering it was a weekend, but I have never seen so many people at the same launch in a non-competition environment at once. It was insane. The amount of tandem pilots out there flying was crazy too – at any given time it must have been something like 30% – 40%. Tandems are big business out in Annecy.

I had a really nice flight, despite other pilots choosing to ignore every single aviation rule there is. At times it was a bit gnarly, especially with so many pilots doing their own thing in the air, but when I felt uncomfortable I simply found a new spot to fly. I cruised around for over an hour, buzzing a couple restaurants sitting on the ridge, and then landed fine. It was fantastic.

Unfortunately since then, the weather has not been on our side as it has been raining or overcast for the last couple days. Yesterday we drove away from Annecy to St.Hiliare which is where Coupe Icare is. All of the vendors are setting up their tents and this morning we checked out main launch, as well as a south launch. The main launch is a paraglider’s dream – astro turf all the way to the edge with space for at least 15 gliders. Brilliant.


Launch at St. Hilaire on right where white tent is sitting.





It’s so exciting to be surrounded by paragliding – whether it’s the shop owners, other pilots, amazingly maintained launches – it’s so cool to be a part of this. Tomorrow the festivities begin, so the fun has just begun. Can’t wait!

The Most Fun You Can Have Manoeuvring

Ok, I officially admit that I think I’ve caught the acro bug. After full stalling my wing 4 times and attempting SATS this weekend, I’m having difficulty picturing a life without doing these things regularly – they’re awesome!

The manoeuvres course with Chris Santacroce this year was fantastic as expected. I got in 11 flights over 4 days, and learned SO much everytime I got in the air. Accelerated asymmetric collapses, asymmetric spirals, b-line stalls, full frontals, full stalls, wingovers, SAT entries, and a couple almost-but-not-quite-there SATS made the weekend something else…

It’s funny, I completely psyched myself out of the idea of doing a full-stall after talking to some pilots during my travels; horror stories of being terrified while being thrashed around backwards, giftwrapping, and low reserve tosses made me cringe. But after replaying it in my head countless times, reading about it before I did it, and talking to pilots who have done it many times before, inspired me to try the full stall this weekend. It’s one of those moments when you’re as ready as you’ll ever be, so you suck it up and just go for it. I’m so glad I did! It wasn’t half as bad as I expected it to be, and actually thought it was kind of fun! Must be all that prepping I did…

My SATs are nothing to brag about because one rotation in a SAT doesn’t mean it’s dialled in yet, but man, learning how to do them was fun! Chris started me off with some SAT entries, and after exiting those decently enough, got me to do the real thing. I don’t quite have the body position and maybe mentally I don’t fully understand it yet, so the few times I attempted it usually resulted in one rotation in the SAT and then exiting for various reasons. This morning I spun my glider twice which was pretty wild, but kind of sickly enjoyable. You know when you land and you have that shit-happy grin on your face after flying? I was wearing one of those when I landed after spinning my wing, pulling the opposite brake, and then pumping out a wingtip with an amount of force I’ve never applied before – wicked fun!

Anyway, the course is over, and back to reality I suppose. One way or another I’m going to have to devise a plan to try some more maneouvers within the next few months because that stuff was way too cool. Meanwhile though, I have to start prepping for my (at an absolute minimum) 3.5 months away from home – I can’t believe I’m leaving again! On one hand I’m really excited, but on the other it’s getting hard knowing that when you come home you’re not there for long. The transient lifestyle certainly has its appeal, but home is where the heart lives…

But, off to bed to dream about asymmetric spirals, spins, and proper SATs! Paragliding Rocks!