pawperso

woohoo! so my flying studd finally got here, a week late, and it cost me 650 to get it flown out to johannesburg, but i dont give a shit, now i can get thrown off african mountains by complete strangers!

so im out in the bush, about 4hrs east of joburg, at a place called barberton, they are holding the south african paragliding nationals here, so im just bumming about and getting some cool flights. its not a massive hill but its pretty good for flying, only problem is the landing site. its only about 3kms from the launch, but unless you gain hieght in a thermal after launch, youre pretty much screwed and wont make it! which isnt normally a problem, but if you land short here you either land in the middle of a fucking prison, or in a load of thick bushes and wait to get eaten by a fucking lion or something! haha im ellergic to lions, they bring me out in big claw type marks and missing limbs!

yesterday i had an awesome flight, got thrown off on the first attempt and managed to play about in the air and catch some thermals, gaining a bit of height and kinda staying at the same level as the take off for about 10mins or so, then i got bored and decided to fly over to some rocks and try to get more thermals from there, bad idea!
halfway there, i must of hit a HUGE thermal, now thermals are basically the air on the ground heated by the sun until they rise up into the air, a bit like the bubbles in a lava lamp, they can be quite strong and lift you 1000ft up, but this coloum of hot air rising is obviously surrounded by cold air coming down (remember convection kids?!) so at some point you are halfway in the thermal, half the wing is getting lifted up in the hot air, and the other half is getting pushed down in the cold air, not very pleasant!
Anyway, i kinda missed all the hot air and ended up in the cold air rushing down tom the ground (called "sink"), fuck! i lost about 500ft in less than a minute and was looking at nothing but the roofs of the houses coming up at me! i thought i was fucked for sure, and that if i was lucky id be able to land on the road!
luckily i manage to land in the school playing field! or more accuratley, the fence at the end of the school playing field! nice one!
all the kids came running out to see me, which was so cool, and they were asking loads of questions and were worried id hurt myself hitting the fence. i hadnt, but when i tried telling them that i couldnt walk they thought it was cos id broken my legs or something on the fence, not from falling off a cliff two years ago! it was kinda funny trying to explain to them!

so now im airborne again and having a good time, not even booked my flights down to Oz yet, so not sure when ill be leaving for there.

catcha later beatches!