I Wanna Learn How To Fly!

THIS IS SOMETHING I'VE ALWAYS wanted to do. Apart from potholing and caving the reverse pole of my fascination with has long been an obsession with flying. By flying I mean "proper" flying ~ in the open air. Not hang-gliding, which is, of course, merely gliding, but powered flight in a glorified canoe hanging from a human kite with a giant fan behind. Yes! Microlight! I would seriously like to have a go at this.

Nearest I've ever been to true flight (and I don't count being in the confines of an aeroplane: I wanna feel the wind in my hair, man!) is parakiting. This I have done about five times. Two or three times running behind a jeep in a field (which was the best) and twice on a Scottish loch behind a speedboat. Most people who do this do it behind a boat. Running behind a landrover in a field of cut wheat is far rarer. I was only about nine. Just when you'd expect to get knocked off your feet and dragged at 30mph by the knees, suddenly the knees are trailing in the air and you're 20, 30, 50 feet or more up. I can't remember how high I actually went but it wouldn't have been over 100ft. Of course you stay well away from trees, but I think I'd have been able to look down on the canopy of an English oak... This is one of life's experiences I'm so glad to have had. I was only eight or nine when I first did it and wasn't scared a bit, just excited. I had to wear a crash helmet and do emergency drop-and-roll procedures among the haybails...

The latest I heard about exciting "true flight" was an English road team who are taking a vehicle by road, sea and AIR from England or Scotland, cross Channel to France, down Spain and across to Morocco and on to somewhere near Timbuktu. There in the Sahara, where nobody probably much cares about aerial regulations (or there aren't many/any) they get the true capabilities of their vehicle in action. Basically it's a dune-buggy type thing with a giant fan behind and a parascender's chute on string behind. So, providing they can get going properly without the chute dragging in the ground, theory is they take off and fly (for hundreds of miles, I believe the intention was...) They said they were looking forward to surprising African villages. Surprising!!?! You can say that again. Then again there's no limits to the antics of crazy Englishmen in the minds of most foreigners... What I'd be most cautious about would be landing. I mean: have they had much or any practice? They said restrictions were pretty great against operating said "car" in this country and you need a pilot's licence to do it. They made it sound like they were just going to get to the desert and take off...

... I hope they don't crash into a scorpion... (Hey it might stick them with its tail and puncture their tyres...)

What can compare to drugs? They miserably ask. Well I answer you: extreme sports most certainly can and it's my intention on my multimillion pound novels' royalties to launch myself high up in the air... I'll post photographs and youtubes once I'm up there!

Link: Wikipedia's article on microlight aviation ... (also known as ultralight in the United States and former British colonies)...

VIDEOS

1. This is exciting! (To me... !!) Yeah how, geektastic is this! MICROLIGHT FLIGHT...



2. This is from a brilliant documentary I found called MIRACLES IN BIRDS. Here's part 3 of documentary 2, to see the rest on my "random" blog, click here ...



3. IN THE NEWS: JADE'S WEDDING SMILES

Jade Goody, UK television's biggest reality star by far: made famous by Big Brother and OK Magazine, caused an international incident by going back in the "Celebrity Big Brother" house and doing "racism" on Indian actress Shilpa Shetty... went on Big Brother India only to get dramatically pulled out midway through thanks to unexpected medical test results returning a verdict of TERMINAL CERVICAL CANCER. This is really nasty. The girl whose popularity soared then plumetted is now riding, media profile wise at an all-time high with even the Prime Minister offering her best wishes earlier this week and the Justice Minister overriding her fiancee's post-jail curfew for 24 hours so they can spend their wedding night together click here to see those clips. A on tomorrow's "Wedding of the Year"... poor Jade, who doesn't expect to live out this year, reportedly sees tomorrow as her last chance to wed fiance Jack Tweedy. The £1 million +plus++ she's raising via magazine and TV deals will go in trust for her kids... How very sad this all is. I'm not a huge fan of Jade Goody but I'm gutted for her ...