Paragliding and paramotoring are not sports. They are life. They defines what you are, how you think, how you choose your friends. When any passion so rules your life, it is natural that you not only think about it non-stop, but philosophise about it. And sooner or later start to recognise the stages of your addiction. There is the initial try-out stage: the thrill of your feet leaving the ground for the first time, holding your breath as earth gut-wrenchingly drops away from you. Then comes the realisation that you are hanging onto life only by the straps pressing into your thighs. But, as you suddenly experience this same mortality, so do you immediately become aware of life itself, the exhilaration of simply being alive, simply experiencing life to the full. THIS IS FLYING.
The Philosophy, so much more than just a sport...For the first few months, you live to relive that first moment, to see earth opening up underneath and delivering you to a new world of three dimensional freedom. Take-off is needed to quench this thirst. Then gradually, maybe sadly, you become used to the feeling of leaving earth on your own wings. Because you lift your eyes off your feet and for the first time, start noticing the new perspective on life beneath them.This is the fourth stage of flying, is probably the most intense, and mother of the 300 km plus distances flown by the current spate of distance mongers. Places flat and arid become paradise. Dust devils become low saves. Threatening clouds point the way to the next out-of-control lift. And suicidal winds now equal mind-blowing ground speeds, the ticket to your first 100, 200, 300 km flights, instant hero status or bitter disappointment. You learn to fly faster, more efficiently, utilising the best part of the day for thermal development, making lightening fast decisions to leave or stay with lift, not wasting time taking the thermal to the top, or suddenly flying conservatively, slowly, as you sense a new weather system settling in, slowing the flying down.You become super-tuned to the elements, able to instantly assess conditions for the day soon after leaving launch and climbing away in your first thermal. You can pin-point several possible trigger-points for lift ahead, adjust your thermaling pattern seconds after entering a new wind layer, mark inversion layer heights without looking at your altimeter, and seemingly instinctively do the right thing to fly longer, faster, higher and further.This to us is the ultimate stage of flying. Where the pilot stands aside, lets his ego pass through and goes on to fly for the pure sake of making it, getting there. Against all odds. Mostly in impossible light conditions, on the most unlikely days, sensing lift where it should not be, using the only thermal of the day, their intuition for flying so finely tuned from years of asking themselves the simple questions: How do I get from here to there in the distance, preferably without walking? And then applying all their senses to the successful completion of this task.The essential element of this stage is easy to recognise: it is the passion to stay airborne, not unlike the will to survive. There is, however, a final qualifier: if no-one saw you getting up and making it, if no-one realised the sheer impossibility of your flight, would you still feel the soul-satisfying pleasure of accomplishment when you land?
