THE WALRUS AIRBORNE

I did this task by flying over Pacific Coast Highway dangling from a paraglider, having cadged a lift from a professional who I hadn't seen in four years. This will be a long praxis, so the proof video is shown up front (with my feet as evidence), and then I'll get into the serious explaining phase.



Quick note on paragliding. First of all, it is not to be confused with hang gliding. In hang gliding you have a solid wing and you lie underneath in a prone position. Paragliding has a large, flexible, parachute-like cloth wing, from which you are suspended. To an observer it looks like the flyer is sitting in a tiny chair with his or her legs sticking out like a giant and ludicrous prawn cocktail.



It is less versatile and arguably more dangerous than hang gliding, because you need to have very exacting wind conditions, but paragliding has redeeming features. For one thing, unless you are using a motor, it is almost perfectly silent, and gives an almost flawless imitation of what my imagination conjures up when asked to think of flying.

Here is how I was able to borrow one.

I'm lucky in that I know a flyer. His name is Claude, and he runs a paragliding business in Malibu (website: http://www.uptimal.com/Malibu_Paragliding.html). He trains new paragliders and also has a very lucrative business doing tandem rides, from a hilltop in Malibu, for $180 a go. To say he is a good friend would be pushing it a bit. I got to know him when, at the age of fourteen, I saw him flying, decided I absolutely had to try it, and relentlessly followed the poor fellow around for two days until he offered me a ride. Here he is flying someone else.


Flying with him at fourteen was an astonishing experience. I had vivid flying dreams for about a year. There are pictures of me with an oversized grin soaring about with him, one of which made it onto his website. I loved flying. I have always wanted to do it again, but (until this task), had neither flown nor talked to Claude since. (Photograph rather blurry, sorry)



So I felt a little sheepish about calling up Claude, four years having passed, and asking him to fly me free across PCH. I could, of course, have bought a flight, but I was not only disinclined to spend the money but felt it was in conflict to the SF0 spirit. I wanted help freely given. My four-year-out of date memories of Claude gave me a picture of a man tolerant of eccentricity and generous, but I wanted to approach the situation with tact and caution.

I drafted an email explaining the task and asking Claude if he could fly across PCH with either myself or a pocket-sized statue representing my avatar. My idea was that if he would fly me, great; but if not, he could fly a miniature walrus in combination with someone else's hired flight; which wouldn't affect the paying customer's flight but would still take me metaphorically across a freeway.

To my surprise I got a somewhat confused response saying yes, absolutely he could, and when would I want to do this? I say confused, because he did not specify whether he was willing to fly me or a statuette. I was, naturally, hoping very much that he would agree to fly me and not a statue, not least because I do not and never have owned a pocket-sized walrus statue, and was not entirely sure where I would go about procuring one. I briefly toyed with changing my SF0 name to something more accessible (seriously! where the hell do you buy a walrus statue in a hurry?) but decided that would be cheating.

A flurry of emails followed in which we agreed on a time and a place in Malibu to meet, but I never got confirmation of whether I or my nonexistent statue would be flying. On the morning of our meeting I decided I urgently needed some sort of statue in case he really had in mind flying my avatar across PCH instead of myself. I got busy with copper sheet and solder. Luckily I used to weld copper into little animal statues as a hobby. I haven't done it in years, but I did produce a fairly serviceable walrus and a few quite painful burns in an hour's work.



Our meeting was impeded by the fact that Claude was not on the paragliding training ground where he had told me to meet him. Secondly, as I was wandering about the bluffs in Malibu and realized that either Claude or I was in the wrong place, a 5.8 temblor hit Los Angeles and all the cell lines were swamped for a very frustrating hour, so I wandered Malibu with a walrus statue in hand for a while.



Eventually I got through on the cell and learned that Claude was flying in another usual spot. I joined him, thanked him for agreeing to meet, and asked him whether it was myself or my statue that was going up today. He was a bit perplexed I had brought a walrus statue and explained that he was willing to fly me. The walrus statue was unnecessary.

Claude was deep into training a newbie, who, when not doing confusing things with lengths of string and paraglider fabric, was a professional photographer named Jake. Unfortunately, what became clearer and clearer over the course of several hours was that the wind conditions were terrible. The wind was far too strong. Jake kept trying to launch, and for his pains was dragged around, flipped over, and generally abused by the environment. I watched his white t-shirt slowly become brown and amused myself by taking videos of his efforts. Some of the videos are a bit choppy because I had to dodge.



Claude is an intensely meticulous flyer. He is not generally too loquacious, but gave me a detailed twenty-minute lecture on the air movements above us, simply extrapolating on the data provided by watching a seagull sixty feet overhead. After a great deal of reflection, he announced that he was sorry, but he wouldn't be comfortable flying anyone who wasn't about a hundred pounds heavier than I. After watching the landscape seriously owning Jake, I agreed. So we agreed to reconvene the next weekend.

The next weekend I met Claude without incident. I watched him fly a few tandem rides and got talking with one of the customers: a rather nice Texan nurse. Jake was also flying that day, as well as a man with a very impressive beard who looked like an elderly rockstar. Claude entertained me in between flights by explaining hazing procedures for the Malibu paragliding club, when it was in its infancy. Apparently in the club's early days there were no women members at all, so the group would respond to any aspiring member by all pretending to be gay.

After hot hours, Claude agreed that conditions were correct, and we launched.

Ground disappearing beneath my sneakers...



Claude extended our flight, out of charity or because he too was having fun, and we crossed PCH several times and flew over the ocean.



I took videos of our shadows on the freeway and ocean. Landing was the only part in which I felt remotely airsick. A lot of tight passes over the landing zone.I tried holding the camera directly in front of my chest, so it was taking footage wherever I was pointing, but this led to some very confusing videos. I'm sure there are better ways to take vids from a glider, but I do not know them.



Claude is really a clever guy in his job selection. Here is someone who gets to spend most days gently soaring around Malibu's coastline, who is able to provide many people with the most magical experiences of their lives, and who actually gets paid for it.

I think manned spaceflight is a bit like paragliding. We really don't need to send humans into space for most purposes, as robotics have advanced sufficiently, but it's psychologically and aesthetically powerful. Paragliding is similarly time-consuming, difficult, and at times dangerous, but we do it for much the same reasons.

Final note. To the pedants among you: Yes, PCH is actually a highway, not a freeway (though it has the imposing title of Freeway 1 on most maps). I think I followed the spirit of the task if not the letter.

Final final note. I owe apologies to Tac Haberdash and Waldo Cheerio, who gave me the idea for this task. I was originally planning to do this in collaboration with them, but figured, callously, that flying over PCH would be tricky enough for myself without bringing both of them into the equation. And thanks to Cheerio who helped me process the videos.