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It’s a pretty big bag, I said to myself. It’s a heck of a big bag. I sat comfortably in my leather chair, coffee at hand, mentally gaging the size of my luggage and imagining logging it all halfway across the globe. A suitcase, conventionally sized, and a B.A.G., as in Bloody Awfully Gargantuan.
That, mind you, was no ordinary bag. It contained, neatly folded and already asleep for way too long, my wings. And there as always lies the rub. Wings are not small. They grant you freedom but never let you forget that freedom tires biceps and abuses luggage allowance charts.
I tried to reason with my muscles. It’s quite a miracle that in such a modestly huge bag fits all I need to autonomously get myself airborne and remain so for hours. My right bicep twitched. 30 square metres of fabric, a 12 metre wing span, and only 6.5 kilos. A bargain. My back muscles pretended to spasm: what about the harness, eh? And the reserve, and the helmet? Sure, the harness was responsible for most of the weight and volume. But this was no mountain gear. My Firebird harness is quite comfortable and come to think of it, I’d be sitting in it pretty much the same way I was lying in my leather chair.
I instinctively crossed my legs to minimize aerodynamic drag, patted the right side underneath the armrest where the reserve parachute would be packed, then raised my hands in mid-air and grabbed a hold of the brakes, pulling gently on them until I could feel the glider intimately and achieve finesse-max. I was gliding smoothly through the still air of my living room at 30 or 35 km/h, scanning the space around me, my inner eye looking hungrily for paraglider food, a bubble of warm air rising through the champagne of my flight…
There was never really before a doubt about bringing the paraglider with me anywhere. It’s just become a ritual; I go through the motions, hesitate for the form, and then close the bag, tag it, and go. I’ve never regretted it, even when a weather system turned nightmare prevented flying for an entire trip.
Flying has always been for me a solo affair. I used to plan my days around it, and my nights around my days. It was all about flying, the rest being secondary and barely tolerated. I walked around looking at the sky and thinking like a bird. I never had a second thought about it.
This time, however, will be different. Flying will have lost its priority and been transcended by something even more powerful. It will have to be kept checked, controlled and temporary. It will have to wait. I wonder if I will feel different, airborne, knowing that among the eyes trained on the blue and white speck of my wing far up in the South African sky, a pair of green diamonds is actually waiting for me to circle down and come back to the land of legged creatures, and that of our common dreams.
There is only one way to find out. The bag is closed. Tagged. Ready. Just so bloody big.
4 Comments
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1 - Marie says:
« Good thing we have a bloody big car to transport it in...
Date of comment: 2008-01-12 05:04 •
» -
2 - Vince says:
« Yeah, but keep in mind there will be four of us: the bag, you, me and my ego... »
Date of comment: 2008-01-12 12:32 • -
3 - Marie says:
« No my Love, the ego is going to live in the caravan we’ll tow behind us. It can cook, right, and knows how to use gas without blowing itself up? »
Date of comment: 2008-01-14 09:27 • -
4 - Anonymous says:
« If I were you, I’d worry about the gas, Marie.
Date of comment: 2008-01-14 15:20 •
He’s ready to blow up now, imagine in a
few days...
Well, maybe paragliding will cool him down................................
»
« Marrant, ton style n’a pas changé depuis les dessins que tu faisais à 12 ans... :) »
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 09:14 •« C’est malin tiens! That must be because neither has my mental age...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 09:17 •« Nothing to do with this post, but I was looking again at your last HDR photos and I noticed that, finally, you have protected your work. I didn’t want to patronised you on that (I sometime work on IP matters) so I kept my mouth shut but... it’s done now.
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 12:13 •Good thing.
now, I’m in the blue with your drawing, did you get censored ? [is that good English wording]
B »
« Thanks Brigit, I used to embed the watermark some time ago and stopped after loosing my old hard drive, but it’s now recovered. Not that anybody would still my humble shots, but hey, it makes me feel important...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 12:17 •We will win the battle against censorship! (Just kidding, it’s an inside joke between Marie and I...
« Hab your lawyer call my lawyer regardeen’ the use ob my ligheness arn whad passes por your blarg...
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 12:39 •Feleecitions an’ no hard, hehehe, feeleen’s. OK? OK.
Your Leedle Blagh Dude-frien’, weeth Represention: you cannard cadge me weeth my pands down, man!
Escuse me. I need to throw some feesh arn the marchers... »
« Oye Estorbito loco, pensé que te pondrías feliz por saberte famosísimo. Pero bueno, te llamará mi avocado. Ojalá encontremos un compromiso. ¿Quiza si compartimos a quién adoramos...?
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 13:42 •« Ah. Beence, you can share my pelleds anytime. I adore them... »
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 15:17 •« Very funny Estorbo, but I said « quien », not « que »... You’re going to have to be more generous than that...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 15:42 •« Fine!
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 16:14 •Taghe hor! Hab hor! I doan’ wan’ hor no more!
An’ WHO ees the crazee lady weeth the paraglider, man? Ees amazeen’.
When you taghe me paraglideen’ I weel refuse to sign a release. An’ I wan’ treeple meenk insulation, OK? »
« Another item not dealing with this post but something I found that I thought you might find of some interest...and may not have already read. :)
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 13:54 •http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2007/october-november/above_and_beyond.php?page=1 »
« Craig: Thanks for the link, I had read a post about it somewhere else, but that’s a much better article. Proves one thing: when your time hasn’t come, it hasn’t come. Bloody hell. 10 miles from the cloud and she still got sucked in!
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 16:44 •Estorbo: great, I graciously accept your offer then, thank you. You are a most honorable cat. And I’ll take you paragliding any time you want, I don’t even need a tandem wing for you. We’ll just stay away from TCUs and CBs.
« You the Man. OK, good. Do I need roadfoo’ por the fligh’? »
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 16:02 •« Yeah, actually bring a few pellets, food that is, we can do without the ice ones...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 16:13 •« Beence! Ba ha ha ha! Beence! That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. That Estorbo is just something else, even if flea-ed.
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 07:47 •Brother you have a new nickname as far as I’m concerned.
Beence! »
« LOL not sure I’m so thrilled about that, but hey, it’s always better than Vinnie Two Slices in St. Lucia...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 16:15 •« Beence!!!
)) »
Date of comment: 2007-10-12 03:05 •C’est à tomber par terre...
Et en plus, Brig, ton fils va pouvoir dire’Uncle Beence’...Il ne colle jamais...
« Ah les filles, c’que vous êtes marrantes, quand-même... Et on peut aussi transposer en français: « C’est quoi ce beence? »
Yeah, well, I know, tiré par les cheveux... »
Date of comment: 2007-10-12 03:11 •« Ouais, tiens c’est vrai, j’y avais pas pensé à ‘Qu’est ce que c’est que ce Beence??’...
Date of comment: 2007-10-13 06:01 •Ça va devenir lourd, chui sure au bout d’un temps, mais pour le moment, sorry, I still think it’s funny! »
« Bon, pour les neophites and our favorite English speakers, we are now referring to an expression used in French as an equivalent to « a mess » and made famous as the closing line of a very silly comedy called Les Visiteurs, with Jean Reno. The spelling is different but it sounds exactly the same...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-13 14:00 •« So would you say that you’re a mess right now?
Date of comment: 2007-10-13 15:29 •Thanks for the explanation: I really didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.
Jeez. If this drawing got a lot of comments wait for the GRabbits! »