While I'm listing video links, there's one I've been meaning to post here for some time now.
I'm a relative newcomer to sailing. Various forms flight have been the truly dominating extracurricular focus of my life until lately (as earlier posted here). I should therefore give hang gliding a mention on this blog, particularly when such a great video as the one linked at the end of this blog is available on the web...and I'm in it!
This is a story about Corinna Schwiegershausen from Bremen, Germany, who has accrued three Women's Hang Gliding World Championships. For me, it's also about her father, Dieter.
I've known Corinna from her regular visits to hang gliding competitions in Florida each spring and her close friendships with close friends of mine. I first met her father Dieter, however, when I traveled to Greifenburg, Austria in June of '04 to crew for Norwegian-born Australian resident Tove Heaney at the biannual Women's World Championship held there that year.
Dieter is quite the distinguished gentleman that I'd think many Americans imagine to
be found sprinkled around most European countries; gracious, kind, and charming. Cyndi traveled from London for a weekend to experience the madness at that hang gliding world championship in '04 and was utterly charmed, as well.He is also quite a dedicated father, crewing for Corinna with such a fastidious attention to detail at every hang gliding competition in which she competes that he can reach from his home in Germany.
Dieter speaks good English (his daughter, a flight attendant for Lufthansa, is quadrilingual) but we usually converse in German. Corinna once told me that he had a special fondness for me since, of all her friends from outside of Germany, I was the only one who spoke German. I was eager to see him again when he came to crew for Corinna at the World Championships held in Florida in May '06.
At that competition, I'd planned to take my usual role of assistant (lackey) to the meet director for the morning's task committee meetings and pilot briefings. Afterwards I would be spending the day on standby to crew for whatever elite pilot needed to be picked up. Certain pilots are so good that the chance of them not making it to the goal are slim, so they don't really need a full time crew on the ground to extract them out of various
farms, fields, swamps or forests when they land short of the task's goal. All of these elite fliers know Jamie (shown here giving me a sunset tandem ride a few years ago) ...and Jamie knows me. All winter leading up to the one spring competition I always attend, I'll get a calls from Jamie, "Uh...can you crew for Alex and Christian?" A few days later "...and Jonny?" A week later, "...and Nick?" Only yesterday I got the first such phone call for this spring's main competition in Florida (which I'll attend one day late after seeing Sir Robin off in Norfolk); "uh...can you crew for Primoz?" she asked.(Bless you, Jamie. Happy to help)
If, on any given day, even one of the five or six pilots who have my phone number stuffed in a pocket actually needs a lift, it's unusual. I'm happy giving them the peace of mind to just fly the task without distraction. Through this process, as well, I get to associate with the elite of the world of free flight.
It is, I've come to realize, much of what has happened to me in the world of sailing; show up at the right place at the right time merely eager to help and learn...and the next thing you know you're rubbing shoulders and even drinking beers with people others only read about. How cool is that?
In the weeks leading up to the Hang gliding World Championships last spring, Corinna was concerned about the health of her father. Even though, as a senior flight attendant, she could ensure him a cozy first class 747 seat for the flight over, it was still questionable if he could endure not only the journey but Florida's heat and humidity.
Touched by their care for each other as well as identifying with the father/daughter bond through my own enviable relationship with my daughter Raine, I offered to give Dieter the bed in my rented air-conditioned trailer while I would sleep on couch (...in a trailer I rented for a few weeks because the trailer I actually own which Jamie rents already had Corinna encamped upon the couch on which I would normally sleep when visiting). I also thought I could help Dieter navigate the confusing Florida roads while he crewed for his daughter.
That was the plan until it became evident that Dieter could not come at all. My job rose, then, from Dieter's host and guide up to being the sole crew member for Corinna, two-time and defending world champion.
See how it works? You just show up, offer to help, and the next thing you know women like Corinna are leaping into your arms as you drive up to their hang gliders at goal because they're the only one who made the goal. Ah, but I'm ahead of myself.(That happy scene was filmed but unfortunately didn't make the cut into the video linked below.)
Taking Dieter's place was, of course, impossible. I just did my best to offer all the enthusiasm I could. More than anything else, I think, my contribution was to enhance and support her state of mind; offering her the confidence that someone was there to take care of anything that would otherwise distract her. Even something as simple as helping her wheel her hangglider on it's cart out to the take off area saved her from being drenched in sweat right before launching and climbing up to the cold air at altitude.
One of the best things I had to offer, however, she could not use, despite her strong desire to do so. I have a good espresso machine I'll haul anywhere I travel by car, so I've been known to be the only source of the one true latté available anywhere within miles of a hang gliding competition, something Corinna would normally partake of with delight. Women, however, do not have the option of urinating from a hang gliding harness in the air as easily as a man can during what can often be a six or seven hour flight, so Corinna reluctantly declined a latté each morning. She did, however, eagerly partake of the tofu smoothies I would make for myself each morning (as I have been doing for generally the last nine years). She began calling them her secret weapon, for she claimed that such a breakfast and such a breakfast alone allowed her to take off on the morning's task feeling content but not overly full and energized as long as need be until she could land.
"You're not making these for anyone else, are you?" she once asked with half-serious intent.
Corinna won again, her third title of World Champion. It was a feat even more remarkable since her normal flying is in the Alps of Europe, something requiring a different technique and skill than the flatland swamp flying of Florida. The first morning after the award ceremony, she stopped by my trailer for breakfast. "And," she said, "this time I want a latté!"The link below is to a 20 minute video produced by Charlie Jöst, an wonderfully affable German video producer I met in Austria in 2004 at the previous World Championships (below. Sorry, Charlie...it's the best picture I have of you at work). It's of a high enough quality that you can watch it full screen.
In this version it's been dubbed into English. The footage is excellent, truly giving one a good feel of what it's like to fly thousands of feet up out in the open air hanging prone beneath a wing.You'll get two quick glimpses of me in it. That I'm in it at all and haven't been completely edited out is probably attributable to Charlie's appreciation of my help for Corinna.
You'll find me the first time about four minutes in, helping Corinna push her glider out to launch. About 20 minutes in near the conclusion, you'll get a second glimpse of me as the two of us chat with Steve Morse (guitarist for Deep Purple) after Corinna landed at his airport.
Charlie Jöst's "Golden Girls"
