Monday's Paragliding Adventure

---We were told that our time to paraglide was 10:00am on Monday morning. So we were on the top of the mountain at 8:00am. We knew it would be a mad house, filled with people who would be begging for a last minute ride, and we wanted to make sure we got ours. Around 8:45am people in charge started slowly showing up ontop of the mountain and everyone began hawking them for when they would be flying. We were polite, gave the people some time to sit down, and then reminded them that we should be flying first this morning, as we had already bought our tickets. "Ok, sit down." And then I watched as someone got dressed in the paragliding gear, and flew off the mountain. Oh helll no. Liz went up again and reminded them, listen, but really, we're going next. "Ok, sit down." I did a little snooping around and found the girl that we had bought our tickets from on Friday. I went and made some small chit chat with her, and she asked how my paragliding had gone this morning. I put on the saddest puppy dog face I could and said, "We still haven't flown. We're just sitting patiently waiting, hoping that they'll put us up sometime soon." Luckily I am cute as hell, and she brought me over to the woman in charge and said, this girl bought her ticket on FRIDAY, so she should be flying next. Put her on the list as next. Friday?!!! They all asked. Yup. Friday, I told them. I was told to go find a pilot and start getting dressed. WAHOOOOO!!!!!
---My pilot's name was Nick, and as he helped me put my harness on he asked where I was from. The good Ol US of A. Yeah Where? In the hot state of New York. Where? On the shitty bubble of Long Island. Oh really? He said, what side? North Shore I said. Oh, I live in Glen Cove he tells me. And my mom works at the high school at Port Washington. Can you believe it?!! My pilot for paragliding in Ghana, Africa was a man from my town, who's mom works with my mom at Schreiber. Small enough world for you?! It was wild.
---After our small freak out about living in the same town, he gave me a very short debriefing on how to paraglide. And then it was time.
Nick was strapped to my back and the parashoot lay on out on the ground behind us. He said, ready, set RUN! And I had to run as fast as I could, down a mountain, off a cliff. The parashoot lifted off the ground behind us and flew us shooting into the air right as my feet had no where else to run to. I sat in the harness, looking out over the land I had just spent the weekend running all over having adventures on. It was stunning. The view was something I hope I never forget--seeing the tiny towns below me, and behind me was this magnificent mountain, a vertical rain-forest leading up to the clouds. Nick is a professional paraglider, he takes pictures of his adventures and publishes them in magazines for his cash flow, so almost all his time is spent paragliding. So he knew a few tricks... He asked me if I liked heights, Well yeah I replied, I am kinda flying in the sky now so I hope so. So he took us super high, making everything look even tinier. He asked me if I liked roller coasters, to which I replied Hell Yes. So he took me on one. He told me to lean to the right and he pulled hard on the right wing of the parashoot, sending us in a straight down in a spinning shoot. If you can imagine: the shoot spinning perpendicular (instead of usually parallel) to the ground, with the two of us in the harness spinning around the shoot as it headed straight down. It was awesome!!!! We played around a little more in the sky and he told me how we would land. It was easy as pie, as I just stretched out my legs and ran as hard as I could again till the parashoot was laying out behind us again.
---It was extreme. It was gorgeous. Amazing, adrenaline rushing, fun, the best, all positive adjectives injected here. It also showed me I can do whatever I want in my life. Nick spent his first year after college in Wall Street. After that year he said no way, quit, and moved to the West. He fell in love with a girl who's parents owned a paragliding school so he said why not, I'll learn how to paraglide. And that's his career now. Flying to different countries and getting paid to paraglide, the one thing he loves most in life. As he unhooked me from the harness he told me, "It just goes to show, you don't have to follow the norm. You can make it doing whatever the f you want."