Sunday, November 8, 2009

8:00 AM – The alarm goes off, and I have no idea why. What day is it again? What was I planning to do…? Oh yeah, paragliding! Fuck. I get up and head to the university. On the way, I run into the guy who threw up on me six hours earlier (see “Yalayım, yalayım..”). He’s embarrassed… I think it’s hilarious. 😄

9:30 AM – After lots of packing, finally on the bus. Next to me is the girl who always gets super excited when she sees me because she loves speaking German!! Ehm… well, I turn around and sleep through the entire ride.

11:00 AM – We arrive in Çatalca. Clear skies, 23°C… 😊 Unpacking, carrying equipment up the hill, setting up. Some of the experienced paragliders start flying. Super impressive! They stay in the air much longer than beginners because they know how to use the wind. A beginner flight is usually just straight down and lasts maybe 10 seconds!

12:00 PM – A bus from another university arrives. But instead of setting up their paragliders, they start mowing the grass and ripping out thorn bushes from the landing area. We watch them from the top of the hill for about 30 minutes. Eventually, to protect our university’s reputation, we all have to go down and help. Great…

1:00 PM – Someone was dumb enough to leave a fully set-up paraglider with a harness on the hill. We only see it disappearing over the horizon. That’s just 3,000–4,000 euros gone. Turns out these things are pretty hard to keep from flying. 😄

1:30 PM – The beginners start flying. I was supposed to share equipment with Namik, another exchange student. He goes first. I watch him fly down several times, and we keep carrying the glider back up (doing that alone would be unnecessary masochism). Apparently, my instructor doesn’t want me to fly. Out of boredom, I spend half an hour helping someone untangle their glider from a thorn bush they crashed into.

3:30 PM – I’m getting nervous. Am I going to fly today or not?! But then Ahmet comes over and tells me to put on the equipment. Yay! Just as I finish, the wind dies down. Ahmet says we should wait. After 20 minutes, I have to take the gear off again. More and more people are going down the hill, and I start feeling frustrated.

Waiting for wind.

At 4:00 PM, Ahmet has to leave—for a wedding or something. The moment he’s gone, Hassan comes over. “Are you Patricia?! Okay Patricia, you are going to fly now. I’m your instructor.”

Uhh… without wind?!

“It’s okay, they told me you did well in ground training, so you can do it.”

By the way, Ahmet was the safety instructor. Not exactly reassuring… 😅 But hey, if Hassan says that someone supposedly said I’m allegedly good enough to fly without wind, that’s totally comforting, right?!

I barely register the short briefing because my heart is pounding so loudly. Another girl goes before me, but after a few meters, she faceplants and has to be picked up.

Now it’s my turn. I honestly don’t remember much, but it went something like this:

📡 Walkie Talkie: “Patricia geliyor… Are you ready, Patricia?! Okay… three… two… one… GO! Run, Patricia!”

I run. The first steps feel really heavy, just like in ground training, but I just keep going. After what feels like three steps, I realize—there’s no ground under my feet anymore.

Shit.

That means I’ve taken off.

I try to focus on the distorted instructions coming through the walkie-talkie and hope I can hide my terrible sense of left and right. I pull on the cables in my hands a little helplessly and somehow manage a slight right turn… then a left turn…

Suddenly, 15 panicked faces appear in front of me—I’m flying straight towards them. Relief when I miss them by two meters.

“FULLSTOP!!!”

Oh, am I already on the ground?! I pull the brakes, and suddenly, I feel earth beneath my feet.

Wait, what now? Oh yeah… run!

I run and run… A quick glance upward—the blue thing is still above me. I pull the brakes all the way down, and the paraglider collapses.

“Perfect, Patricia, you are amazing!” (Yes, he actually said that. 😄)

At that moment, I come back to my senses.

I went back up and flew a second time, but after that, the sun was already setting, so we packed up and headed home.

That was my first day of flying—10 hours of waiting and carrying equipment for 20 seconds of flight! 😄 But it was totally worth it!