Hang Gliding!! Mom and Dad's Europe Extravaganza, Part 7...

The next day dawned bright and clear, and we decided to give hang gliding another run. We were successful! It was sooooooooooooooooo fun! It's the closest way to being bird-like I'll ever be, and oh, the freedom of soaring.....!

The landing field is green and clear.

Helmet Heads

Mark, my Dad, and me, prepared for departure...

A good-bye kiss...

Mark prepares for take-off.

As we were riding up in the van to the take-off location, Bernie (the lead pilot) told us the order of take-off would be the order of our birthdays. So I said, "ok, that's easy...Mark (June 13), then me (June 14), and then Dad (June 15)!"

Just as Mark was ready to take off, a cloud rolled in, and so the waiting game began before we could safely take off. And so, while we're waiting, you can see the promotional video from the hang gliding company we used. It shows what the take off is like as well as the beautiful setting of Interlaken:

Still waiting for take-off.


I give a safe-flight shaka to Mark

Get ready to run....


And he's off!


Yahoo!


Soaring with the birds..



Whee!!

Coming in for the landing...

And now Mark is the star of this super-exciting hang-gliding movie experience:

Awesome!

Dido (my pilot) and I were taking our time setting up the glider, so we broke the order of take-off. Dad was up and ready to fly! Here he goes!...

Walking to the take-off point.

Waiting for the perfect moment.

Can you find him?

It's a bird...no, it's a plane...no....it's Super Dad!

Soon to be back on solid ground...

Sorry, Dad, I don't have many photos of you because you took your photo CD home with you! What did you do that for?? :)

So, it was my turn next. So far I had been doing very well, keeping the butterflies under control.

I got the best helmet, hands down!

Then we started waiting...and waiting...and waiting some more. I think Dad had been on the ground for at least a half an hour before we took off. Dido was calling Bernie on his cell phone, talking excitedly in German. The clouds were rolling by...

Dido and me before take-off.

Still waiting, while farmers gather hay... (Bernie took this photo while burning time). Mark said it was 30 or 40 minutes of waiting before they saw me break through the clouds! A very long time for this girl's nerves. I kept thinking of Audrey's bravery when she went skydiving, and how she landed safe and sound. That calmed me down enough to go through with the whole thing. A couple of paragliders took off while we were still waiting, waiting...

With only a few seconds warning, we take off, and plunge into a cloud!

We're not in the cloud for long, and bright blue skies await us as we break through.

Dido knew what he was doing. We waited so long to catch the perfect wind, and once we were in the air, we climbed and climbed. Talking with Mark and Dad later, I found out that I was the only one who got so high up in the air. The waiting was worth it! I could see the snow-capped peaks of the Alps and the blue lake waters of Interlaken. So Beautiful! At one point, a bird (the size of a seagull) flew just below us, I could almost have reached out and touched it.

And with the height we acheived, Dido took me on an air-borne roller coaster, doing dives, dips, and tricks galore! Wahoo! Fabulous!

Reluctantly landing...

And now it's time for my starring role:

I stand up, wobbly legged from the adrenaline, and scrape my chin off the ground.

It was an honor to share this with Mark. Skydiving was a big part of his life before he met me, and he has a huge adventure streak that has him itching to take certain calculated risks (like going river rafting and plunging into a class 4 rapid, but that's another story). After 7 years of marriage, I worked up the courage explore the sky with him, and now we can share the experience, on common ground. And I would have no qualms about going again, and again, and again...

Thanks for helping me do this, Mark! I loved it, and I love you.

Mom and Dad's Europe Extravaganza, Part 6...

Ok, I know I promised I would be posting every day, and I know some of you have been waiting a very long time for hang-gliding photos! I just got out of the mode, to the extent, in fact, that I forgot the camera on our trip to Paris last week. I didn't take a single photo... I am so behind with all I want to post, though, that there will be plenty to keep this blog occupied for awhile, Paris or no Paris.

And so, on with my parents' European Extravanza! After a failed hang-gliding appempt in the morning (air currents were unpredictable), we headed up the canyon from Interlaken to find some sleepy little Swiss villages high up in the Alps. We found the perfect place, and a whole lot more...

We visited Trummelbach Falls, a waterfall enclosed within a mountain, that drains glacial water from nearby Alpine peaks. The falls is divided into 10 chutes (smaller waterfalls that make up one big waterfall) as it makes its way down the mountain. We came during the spring runoff (where virtually every ledge in the Alps that was capable of having water run-off of it, indeed had water running for its life over the edge), and so Trummelbach was all the more spectacular. The water shot through the crevices of the mountain with deafening ferocity. When we came out of the caves, all of us were soaked to the hilt with ancient (and freezing!!) glacial water.

Mark set the record for absorbing the most water, as you can see by how close he is standing to this section of the falls.

A view from an opening in the caves near the waterfall.

So, one of the funnest things about the Alps is that many tiny villages and high peaks are all linked by gondola. So, we got on board, and let ourselves be hoisted up to Schilthorn peak. This was our view.

It's amazing to me that such a view could be had without major physical exertion (it took us three days of hiking to reach views like this in the Himalayas)! While I absolutely loved experiencing the peaks in this way, I vowed to myself that someday I'd be back to do it on my own two feet.

We were gazing at this spectacular view, when suddenly a tiny trickle of what we thought was water (another spring waterfall) turned into an avalanche! Incredible! We watched it for a few seconds before the sound reached us, and the sound kept booming for awhile after the snow-shower stopped.

And...quite amazingly, there's a restaurant at the top of Schilthorn, with surprisingly good and relatively inexpensive food! The restaurant revolves, and so, if you take your time eating, you get a 360 degree panorama with your lunch. Quite a bargain!

The drink menu...

And at last we made it to the sleepy little Alpine village we were looking for. We got off the gondola in Murren, and then hiked down to Gimmelwald, both tiny communities, with their primay access being the gondola. It was lightly raining when we arrived, which only added to the beauty.

Green hills with a spectacular snow-capped backdrop in every direction, the peaks hidden in the clouds. As we were walking down this road, a resident was practicing his swiss horn, so we listened as the tones echoed on the cliffs and as the wildflowers danced in the rain.

Waterfalls and wildflowers...