My dream has always been to fly. For me hang gliding has been the most pure expression of that dream -- the most pure expression of the art of flight.
I belong to a tribe of people who live the collective dreams of generations. The dream has persisted for centuries and millennia. The dream to fly is as old as humankind. The wing I fly has directly evolved its shape and form from the imagination and persistence of those who have dreamt before me. It shares the same aerodynamic DNA as the one that Francis Rogallo designed to recover the Gemini Space Capsule. The one that the Wright Brothers limped off of the windswept dunes of Kittyhawk. The one that Otto Lilienthal sprinted down the rolling hills of Rhinow region in the Northeast of Germany. The one etched into history from the imagination of the original renaissance man himself, Leonardo Da Vinci. That fact that I live in a time when I can casually rock up to a launch and fly off, repeatedly and safely, then fly for hours and hundreds of miles is not lost on me. I live the dream on the shoulders of those who came before me. Their spirit fuels my pursuit of the art of flight.
The art of flight, however, does not come without work. Two years ago I drove 36 hours and 2218 miles for 18 minutes of flying. It was worth every minute! Check it out.
You can also see this journey through 100 pics here:
