Notes from Abroad

Dear Diary,

Today I ran off the side of a mountain. The technical term is paragliding, but I think that term is far too tame. You’re basically running off the side of a mountain util the ground falls out from under you and the float your way over mountains and trees and the city of Interlaken held up by nothing more than a bunch of strings and a few yards of fabric.

I’m not much of a dare devil. I even gave up skateboarding after about 3 hours because I was scared of falling and breaking my arm or something, but for some reason when they showed a video of paragliding on the Bus as one of the many options for activities in Lauterbrunnen, paragliding piqued my interest and without really putting much thought into it I signed up and paid. The panic didn’t really set in until this morning.

I was nervous all morning. Not “oh my god I’m going to die” nervous, more like nervous about the unknown. Will I get sick? Will I flip out about about being so high? Will I be able to stick the landing or will I tumble and flip until I’m wrapped up in the parachute like a burrito? That sort of thing.

Like an idiot I booked my flight for 12:15PM, so I had the ENTIRE morning to just let my mind ponder the what ifs. I should have just gotten it over and done with at the 8:30AM flight, but I did NOT want to be up that early! I started reading The Last Lecture – a book that my neighbors at home gave me just before I left for the airport. I was hoping it would put me in the “you only live once” mindset that I knew I would need to actually go through with it. I also found myself thinking back to RYLA in 2004 and had various moments running through my head like the trust falls and the ropes course. It still sometimes surprises me when, even 5 years down the road, I find myself thinking back to RYLA and using it to help me make decisions or for motivation. Some things just stick with you.

I was picked up from the campsite with some other people I’ve become friends with who were going white water rafting for the day. I was the only one going paragliding. Yay?

For some reason or other the shuttle from the campsite was so much earlier than than the actual flight so I had a lot of time to kill in Interlaken. I walked up and down the main strip of shops for over an hour trying to distract myself by looking for post cards and a magnet for my Gram.

At around 1:45PM I went back to the meeting point where they had me put on a pair of hiking boots and ditched my backpack in a locker. They let me bring my point and shoot and we hopped in the van to go up the mountain.

We get to the top of the mountain and it’s just sort of a patch of grass where they laid out all of the parachutes (there were 5 of us jumping I think), gave us shell jackets to put on (thank god! it was cold up there!) and hooked us into our harnesses.

I was the third one to go off, which was good. The only thing was that a cross-wind hit just as we (we being me and Tom, the pilot I was attached to) started to run. It pushed us off to the side so we had to have two running starts instead of one and had to pull a quick turn to avoid the treetops, but after that we were good to go.

It. Was. Amazing. Not just the feeling of flying, but the view and the scenery and the fresh air. Absolutely spectacular. We circled around for a while over the forest and a small hillside town and then Tom said “ok let’s go back up” and he tugged on something and all of a sudden the trees became reallllllly tiny below us.

I was, of course, snapping away with my camera and trying to capture as much as possible. I even shot a few quick videos. We did some loops, some sharp turns, some general floating around and some dips VERY close to the trees. After a gut check (literally – Tom wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to get sick from the twists and turns. I was feeling fine.) we did some crazy drop where we were basically free-falling for a tiny bit, kind of like when an airplane drops down a bit and you’re lifted off of your seat. That was, by far, the scariest part. Well, that and when Tommy decided to do some “look no hands!” moves.

The flight was 20 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to find any place that’ll beat paragliding in the Alps. It was definitely one of, if not the coolest experiences of my life. I’m so glad I got up the guts to do it!

Tags: Adventures, Interlaken, Journal, Lauterbrunnen, Paragliding, Switzerland