Las Gonzalez approaches quickly under my feet. A small press of pastel single floors crowded around the bridge over the Rio Chama, I can just make out the blue Bodega at the corner where I would later spend afternoons with a 7-Up (say it “Siete-Arriba!) explaining to the curious in halting Spanish that Alaska isn’t really that cold. Coming in to focus are bright heaps of orange carrots and dark cabbage greens overflowing from farm delivery trucks in to main street. The vegetables are destined for MerCal, a chain of government-subsidized grocery outlets. (“It’s great!” a friend later explained. “Chavez pays for it all!”) I would learn soon enough that the praise was not incredulous.
Wind fills my ears. I’ve aimed myself for a large gravel pit at the edge of town criss-crossed with dead electrical wires, flying in figure-eight patterns to descend. As I’m about to land I notice a little boy sprint out from the bushes to where I am about to come down. Curious- but, time to focus. I only have one opportunity to land. Winds are strong, so I pump the brakes lightly to slow velocity and... flare hard three feet above the ground to collapse the wing- yes! Another safe flight complete. Touchdown.
And there he is. “Te Ayudo?” Can I help you? He’s about six years old, and speaking of touchdowns- his t-shirt says “Football Champ” in English and shows a picture of an American football. The cuteness factor is out of control. But I am ready for this, I was told this would happen by Ludvig, a fellow paraglider-traveler from Norway I met earlier. “Venezuela is different, man,” he said in English without a trace of accent. He had just spent several weeks there taking his introductory course there with a character named “El Maracucho, who I would meet later. “At the fly site at Las Gonzales when you land there’s all these kids that run up to you and ask if they can help fold your wing. There’s these big apartment complexes across the road that Chavez built for the survivors of some rural village that collapsed in a landslide. So, there’s these kids that run across the road over to the LZ when they see people landing. Some of them ask for money, but most of them do it because they want to learn to fly some day too. There’s kind of this whole generation of kids in government housing there that grow up with the idea that if they put in some years of helping people fold up their wings and carry gear, they’ll get to learn to fly one day.”
Paragliding is usually a prohibitively expensive sport, so it’s an incredible story that kids from less privileged families would learn to become pilots too. Last month at the Colombian National Cup I briefly met Joglin, a local pilot here who at age 19 won his division in an XC race and was a talented acrobatic pilot to boot. On top of that he seemed humble about all of it. He had started out just like this little boy.
I have six Bolivares in my pocket, I ask the little boy how much he charges. “Diez bolos!” Ten Bolivares! ($1.25) he says firmly. I ask him his name (Ronaldo), how many years of experience he has (six years, he says), and if he wants to fly someday too. He nods his head. After some haggling I talk him down to six bolos and he starts fast at work of the task of bunching up my glider. He works with the confidence of having watched the routine many times, and the hopeless haphazardness of a six year old. As we work together to fold up the wing he asks me if I know how to do a Helicopter (an advanced acro maneauver). I don’t, so he proceeds to explain to me a series of weight shifts and brake applications in Spanish too rapid for me understand. As he is incomprehensible, I have to believe he knows what he is talking about (the same phenomenon as with college professors).
Once everything is packed up I fish the money out of my pocket for Ronaldo and he scurries away with a “Gracias!” Coming in next in for landing are the several tandem pilots and their German tourist passengers that I came here with from Merida, a city about a half an hour away. The Gemans are as titillated as anyone I’ve ever met after their first flight. I help the other pilots with their equipment and we chat a bit.
“So you said you came here for an SIV course in Urribantes (another fly site nearby)?” one asks me. SIV is a French acronym for Simulation d’Incident en Vol, a course where one practices emergency paragliding maneuvers over a body of water and is a rite-of-passage for newish pilots like myself. “Who’s teaching that?” I give him the name El Maracucho and he throws up his hands in disgust. “That guy!” he says incredulously. “I really recommend you watch yourself around him. I have seen him recommend fairly advanced things to students that I wouldn’t be comfortable with, even over a lake. You do a full stall incorrectly and you’ll end up wrapped up inside your wing like an arepa [a sometimes taco-like local dish]. Look, I’ve taught SIV courses before too and I don’t know how much experience you have, but just don’t feel like you have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with.” Copy that, sir, I think to myself. What have I gotten myself in to, exactly? The question already in my mind had been: will I be comfortable performing maneuvers instructed in another language? Am I now being told that my contacts here are of a dubious nature?
We drive back to Las Gonzalez to store the tandem pilots flight equipment in a small room of the Bodega (something like a bare-bones convenience store/liquour store/bar) by the bridge. As the Germans muse over mid-flight souveneir photos on a computer screen, I hear my name called from across the street. “Psst! Baynameen!” Peering out the door of a flaking blue wall across the street is El Maracucho, who I recognize from several weeks back in Colombia when he and his young proteges had come to Bucaramanga for Colombian National Cup. One morning several days after the competition I walked out to an empty launch field and saw him sitting alone with the horizon, waiting to hear if the only road back to Venezuela had been cleared of landslides yet. We had chatted a bit about Venezuela. “I can’t believe how expensive things are here!” he decried. He held up a jug of water. “This water cost me about $4000 pesos ($2.00 U.S). In Venezuela, I can fill up my gas tank for that.” I’ve got to see this, I thought to myself. He told me about the SIV course in a few weeks- sign me up, I say. We exchanged information and parted ways, planning to meet up later. And here I am.
“How was the flight Baynameen?” he smiles at me. “I saw you came in a little low. That’s not good. Give yourself more elevation to do figure eights or you’ll land in the river.” A true teacher always has something to offer. “Sorry I couldn’t come over there across the street to say hello, those guys aren’t exactly my best friends, I don’t know if they told you anything. Anyways, so glad you made it here! We’ll clear off the bed for you and you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. We’ll be heading out to Urribantes on Friday.” He explains how to catch the bus back out here tomorrow. The pilots across the street make a time-to-leave motion, I say I’ll be back tomorrow with my things.
The next morning I treat myself to an eight dollar and 30 minute taxi ride from Merida rather than a two dollar and three hour bus trip. Lunch is ready when I arrive, arepa and rice with lentils. Inside a spiderweb of electrical wires is strung across the middle of the living room/bedroom piled high with dozens of threadbare harnesses and wings, several teenage boys (who all refer to Maracucho as Vieja, old lady) are sprawled across a mattress watching the Discovery channel in Spanish. Fernando, Chepi, Felix, etc. are all paraglider pilots mentored by Maracucho from young ages, all dark complexioned and teenagerly as teenagers anywhere. They also spent many an afternoon helping pilots fold their wings in their younger years. Maracucho’s house appears to be the happening bachelor pad in town where a constant ebb of people wander in and out to see what’s up. It will be my home for ten days here. “Que pasa chamos,” I offer. Fist bumps all around. I find my lunch and take a seat atop the mountain of gear in the corner and watch Semana de Tiburones with the guys. During commercial breaks I get an introduction to Venezuela shouted at me from various corners- health care is free, university is free, oil is cheap, food is cheap, everything else is expensive. Much has changed in the last ten years, they explain without details- Shark Week is back on.
Later that afternoon we walk down to the local fishing spot at the river, me with my lightweight collapsible backpacker rod and reel and they with bamboo poles. People stare at me and my ostentatious fishing technology on the way through town. (Didn’t catch anything.) In the evening, Maracucho explains the strange cross-street interaction from earlier that afternoon. “I used to work for those guys,” he explains while an eyepatched Bill O’Reilly-like character points at a world map on the TV outlining the route of Obama’s recent diplomacy trip around the Pacific crest. The purpose of these meetings is to solidify alliances in the face of the Chineese threat to U.S. supremacy, he asserts. “But they wanted me to work exclusively for them, they wanted me to not do any tandem flights not booked through them. Screw that, I said, so I walked. Next year when I’m back on my feet a little more I’m going to put an addition on top of this here house and use the downstairs as an office like they’ve got across the street.” The eyepatched TV pundit moves on to National news, explaining that a new law has been passed in response to a national milk shortage. Dairy producers went on strike several weeks ago to demand a better price, so legislation was passed allowing the State to assess and purchase their property in order to return it to productivity. “I don’t understand all of this, really,” says Maracucho. “I think the world would be so much simpler if everyone spent a lot more time smoking porro and making love...”
The next day, a half dozen or so visiting pilots show up from various locales. Plans change. Apparently some people in the SIV course have cancelled and it’s no longer economical to travel to Urribantes with the smaller group. We’ll do the course at a local, smaller lake nearby instead, as I understand it. (I understand about 50% of what’s going on during an average day. One-on-one conversation at a slow pace is easy for me, but catching the details of group conversation is still a distant goal. Progress in fluency is not linear.) A film crew from Caracas arrives, they’ll be collecting footage this weekend for an alternative-sports TV program, “El Estilo,”. They’re dreadlocked and excitable and of an incomprehensible accent. One of them, Marko, is excited to practice his English on me: “I so glad you here because you like a teacher for me! It’s like taboo speak English in Caracas man, it’s like you do it to be funny sometime and everyone give you the evil eye.” As we chat he is rolling the largest joint I could have ever imagined possible. “Venezuelan blunt,” he explains.
As night falls someone turns up the volume on the Rumba blaring from the Bodega next door. A dozen or so locals mill around it’s concrete steps and dance in the empty street. Strangers keep buying me beers until I finally refuse. I feel like I’ve found that thing that travelers search for- a genuine experience. Almost no one is trying to speak English to me, no one is trying to sell me bracelets or drugs. This night would be happening whether I was here or not. At some point I make my way back to the house and clear my bunk bed of paragliding gear and fall asleep with a humming TV by my pillow and Electronica coming through the wall. The next morning at 7:30 a.m. all of the two square meters of floor space is full of sleeping bodies and someone has strung a hammock across the kitchen. People are still dancing outside in the twilight. Ganja fumes waft through the house. After a breakfast of Envueltos (fried plantain in sweet dough) from down the street and several hours of impatient milling around, I and about a dozen people and all our gear cram in to an SUV headed towards the lake.
At the lake, more milling around. There is an interaction of some sort with the local search and rescue group and Maracucho, some waving of hands. We drink coffee sold from street carts in thimble sized plastic cups and people do their best to include me in conversation. At some signal that I miss we all pile back in to the SUV and return back to where we started this morning, at the base of the local fly site Tierra Negra. Half an hour of Jeep trails later we’re up top at launch, with winds too strong for my comfort level. “We’re going to practice some of the simpler maneuvers today,” explains Maracucho. “Asymmetric collapse, crescents, and B-Line stalls.” He describes which lines to pull in for each of the maneuvers. “They are all perfectly safe, nothing will happen.” At that, he launches in to the horizon with a tandem passenger. Joglin takes off as well and does a little hot-dogging for the film crew. Several thousand feet above ground over the canyon, everyone gasps as we see his wing suddenly crumple (as he performs a B-line stall) and drop out of the sky like an anvil. Three seconds of gut wrenching free fall later his wing re-inflates, and he rides up a band of ridge lift to return several minutes later for a top-landing and spectators applause. “Que deporte mas Extremo!” declares one little boy.
The wind howls, I decide not to fly. “My stomach says it’s not a good Idea, “ I explain. Several others agree and we ride back down to Las Gonzales. As we descend condensation forms on the windshield and soon the sky is wet. Flying is done for the day.
In the evening I am with Joglin at his family’s apartment looking at paragliding acro videos on YouTube. The Infinity, the MacTwist, the Misty Flip- they all look absolutely insane and the names remind me of boastful pubescent skateboarders. Joglin wants to go to Austria next year to some sort of acro pilot mecca where a tram up a mountain is located adjacent to a lake where one can practice maneuvers with a body of water below. I understand the appeal but I just can’t get in to the idea of it, I never will. I extend the invitation to Alaska and pull up some pictures of glaciers and wildlife and landscapes on the computer to give him an idea.
“So what did you know about Venezuela before you came here?” he asks at some point in the evening. “What did you think if this place? What do Americans think about Venezuela?” I tell him that I didn’t know much, I give him my seventh grade geography knowledge. Lots of jungles, lots of mountains. It’s where Simon Bolivar was born. And, well, you guys have a little bit of a crazy president. Haha.
Silence.
“Yo soy de Chavez,” he says firmly. And indeed, why not?
“Obviously he’s been a great president for this country,” I interject making a lame attempt to regain credibility. “But you gotta admit, the guy says some pretty strong stuff sometimes, no?” We laugh it off together, myself more so than him. I do my best to explain the idiom, “Put your foot in your mouth.” It’s a funny enough image to redeem my offense. Soon enough we’re back to YouTube videos of Synchro Spirals and the like.
The next day, more rain. The SIV course isn’t happening. I’m told that we’ll have more time to do the maneuvers of an SIV course over the next week I’m here, the only thing we won’t be able to do is practice using the emergency parachute. We’ll see, I say.
Las Gonzales keeps me for another full week. I make my way up launch either by an hour and a half hike or hitching a ride with the rare Jeep headed uphill to remote villages back in the mountains. I bite my tongue at seeing the guys use old equipment I wouldn’t trust my own life to, occasionally barefoot or helmetless. These are the young wing-folders who earned the privilege of flying, but at what risk? Is it worth it? It’s easy or me to ask when I can afford to buy modern equipment. With each flight I consider my life, if it’s worth it to suspend myself midair for a while. I shudder at the thought of the idea of flying ever seeming routine.
For my questions I have no answers. What I know is that with each flight I am grateful for the community I have found, for the freedom and focus I have found in the sport. I’ve not been disappointed in finding friends to show me around wherever I go. And some of them even have yet to turn ten years old.
Wind fills my ears. I’ve aimed myself for a large gravel pit at the edge of town criss-crossed with dead electrical wires, flying in figure-eight patterns to descend. As I’m about to land I notice a little boy sprint out from the bushes to where I am about to come down. Curious- but, time to focus. I only have one opportunity to land. Winds are strong, so I pump the brakes lightly to slow velocity and... flare hard three feet above the ground to collapse the wing- yes! Another safe flight complete. Touchdown.
And there he is. “Te Ayudo?” Can I help you? He’s about six years old, and speaking of touchdowns- his t-shirt says “Football Champ” in English and shows a picture of an American football. The cuteness factor is out of control. But I am ready for this, I was told this would happen by Ludvig, a fellow paraglider-traveler from Norway I met earlier. “Venezuela is different, man,” he said in English without a trace of accent. He had just spent several weeks there taking his introductory course there with a character named “El Maracucho, who I would meet later. “At the fly site at Las Gonzales when you land there’s all these kids that run up to you and ask if they can help fold your wing. There’s these big apartment complexes across the road that Chavez built for the survivors of some rural village that collapsed in a landslide. So, there’s these kids that run across the road over to the LZ when they see people landing. Some of them ask for money, but most of them do it because they want to learn to fly some day too. There’s kind of this whole generation of kids in government housing there that grow up with the idea that if they put in some years of helping people fold up their wings and carry gear, they’ll get to learn to fly one day.”
Paragliding is usually a prohibitively expensive sport, so it’s an incredible story that kids from less privileged families would learn to become pilots too. Last month at the Colombian National Cup I briefly met Joglin, a local pilot here who at age 19 won his division in an XC race and was a talented acrobatic pilot to boot. On top of that he seemed humble about all of it. He had started out just like this little boy.
I have six Bolivares in my pocket, I ask the little boy how much he charges. “Diez bolos!” Ten Bolivares! ($1.25) he says firmly. I ask him his name (Ronaldo), how many years of experience he has (six years, he says), and if he wants to fly someday too. He nods his head. After some haggling I talk him down to six bolos and he starts fast at work of the task of bunching up my glider. He works with the confidence of having watched the routine many times, and the hopeless haphazardness of a six year old. As we work together to fold up the wing he asks me if I know how to do a Helicopter (an advanced acro maneauver). I don’t, so he proceeds to explain to me a series of weight shifts and brake applications in Spanish too rapid for me understand. As he is incomprehensible, I have to believe he knows what he is talking about (the same phenomenon as with college professors).
Once everything is packed up I fish the money out of my pocket for Ronaldo and he scurries away with a “Gracias!” Coming in next in for landing are the several tandem pilots and their German tourist passengers that I came here with from Merida, a city about a half an hour away. The Gemans are as titillated as anyone I’ve ever met after their first flight. I help the other pilots with their equipment and we chat a bit.
“So you said you came here for an SIV course in Urribantes (another fly site nearby)?” one asks me. SIV is a French acronym for Simulation d’Incident en Vol, a course where one practices emergency paragliding maneuvers over a body of water and is a rite-of-passage for newish pilots like myself. “Who’s teaching that?” I give him the name El Maracucho and he throws up his hands in disgust. “That guy!” he says incredulously. “I really recommend you watch yourself around him. I have seen him recommend fairly advanced things to students that I wouldn’t be comfortable with, even over a lake. You do a full stall incorrectly and you’ll end up wrapped up inside your wing like an arepa [a sometimes taco-like local dish]. Look, I’ve taught SIV courses before too and I don’t know how much experience you have, but just don’t feel like you have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with.” Copy that, sir, I think to myself. What have I gotten myself in to, exactly? The question already in my mind had been: will I be comfortable performing maneuvers instructed in another language? Am I now being told that my contacts here are of a dubious nature?
We drive back to Las Gonzalez to store the tandem pilots flight equipment in a small room of the Bodega (something like a bare-bones convenience store/liquour store/bar) by the bridge. As the Germans muse over mid-flight souveneir photos on a computer screen, I hear my name called from across the street. “Psst! Baynameen!” Peering out the door of a flaking blue wall across the street is El Maracucho, who I recognize from several weeks back in Colombia when he and his young proteges had come to Bucaramanga for Colombian National Cup. One morning several days after the competition I walked out to an empty launch field and saw him sitting alone with the horizon, waiting to hear if the only road back to Venezuela had been cleared of landslides yet. We had chatted a bit about Venezuela. “I can’t believe how expensive things are here!” he decried. He held up a jug of water. “This water cost me about $4000 pesos ($2.00 U.S). In Venezuela, I can fill up my gas tank for that.” I’ve got to see this, I thought to myself. He told me about the SIV course in a few weeks- sign me up, I say. We exchanged information and parted ways, planning to meet up later. And here I am.
“How was the flight Baynameen?” he smiles at me. “I saw you came in a little low. That’s not good. Give yourself more elevation to do figure eights or you’ll land in the river.” A true teacher always has something to offer. “Sorry I couldn’t come over there across the street to say hello, those guys aren’t exactly my best friends, I don’t know if they told you anything. Anyways, so glad you made it here! We’ll clear off the bed for you and you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. We’ll be heading out to Urribantes on Friday.” He explains how to catch the bus back out here tomorrow. The pilots across the street make a time-to-leave motion, I say I’ll be back tomorrow with my things.
The next morning I treat myself to an eight dollar and 30 minute taxi ride from Merida rather than a two dollar and three hour bus trip. Lunch is ready when I arrive, arepa and rice with lentils. Inside a spiderweb of electrical wires is strung across the middle of the living room/bedroom piled high with dozens of threadbare harnesses and wings, several teenage boys (who all refer to Maracucho as Vieja, old lady) are sprawled across a mattress watching the Discovery channel in Spanish. Fernando, Chepi, Felix, etc. are all paraglider pilots mentored by Maracucho from young ages, all dark complexioned and teenagerly as teenagers anywhere. They also spent many an afternoon helping pilots fold their wings in their younger years. Maracucho’s house appears to be the happening bachelor pad in town where a constant ebb of people wander in and out to see what’s up. It will be my home for ten days here. “Que pasa chamos,” I offer. Fist bumps all around. I find my lunch and take a seat atop the mountain of gear in the corner and watch Semana de Tiburones with the guys. During commercial breaks I get an introduction to Venezuela shouted at me from various corners- health care is free, university is free, oil is cheap, food is cheap, everything else is expensive. Much has changed in the last ten years, they explain without details- Shark Week is back on.
Later that afternoon we walk down to the local fishing spot at the river, me with my lightweight collapsible backpacker rod and reel and they with bamboo poles. People stare at me and my ostentatious fishing technology on the way through town. (Didn’t catch anything.) In the evening, Maracucho explains the strange cross-street interaction from earlier that afternoon. “I used to work for those guys,” he explains while an eyepatched Bill O’Reilly-like character points at a world map on the TV outlining the route of Obama’s recent diplomacy trip around the Pacific crest. The purpose of these meetings is to solidify alliances in the face of the Chineese threat to U.S. supremacy, he asserts. “But they wanted me to work exclusively for them, they wanted me to not do any tandem flights not booked through them. Screw that, I said, so I walked. Next year when I’m back on my feet a little more I’m going to put an addition on top of this here house and use the downstairs as an office like they’ve got across the street.” The eyepatched TV pundit moves on to National news, explaining that a new law has been passed in response to a national milk shortage. Dairy producers went on strike several weeks ago to demand a better price, so legislation was passed allowing the State to assess and purchase their property in order to return it to productivity. “I don’t understand all of this, really,” says Maracucho. “I think the world would be so much simpler if everyone spent a lot more time smoking porro and making love...”
The next day, a half dozen or so visiting pilots show up from various locales. Plans change. Apparently some people in the SIV course have cancelled and it’s no longer economical to travel to Urribantes with the smaller group. We’ll do the course at a local, smaller lake nearby instead, as I understand it. (I understand about 50% of what’s going on during an average day. One-on-one conversation at a slow pace is easy for me, but catching the details of group conversation is still a distant goal. Progress in fluency is not linear.) A film crew from Caracas arrives, they’ll be collecting footage this weekend for an alternative-sports TV program, “El Estilo,”. They’re dreadlocked and excitable and of an incomprehensible accent. One of them, Marko, is excited to practice his English on me: “I so glad you here because you like a teacher for me! It’s like taboo speak English in Caracas man, it’s like you do it to be funny sometime and everyone give you the evil eye.” As we chat he is rolling the largest joint I could have ever imagined possible. “Venezuelan blunt,” he explains.
As night falls someone turns up the volume on the Rumba blaring from the Bodega next door. A dozen or so locals mill around it’s concrete steps and dance in the empty street. Strangers keep buying me beers until I finally refuse. I feel like I’ve found that thing that travelers search for- a genuine experience. Almost no one is trying to speak English to me, no one is trying to sell me bracelets or drugs. This night would be happening whether I was here or not. At some point I make my way back to the house and clear my bunk bed of paragliding gear and fall asleep with a humming TV by my pillow and Electronica coming through the wall. The next morning at 7:30 a.m. all of the two square meters of floor space is full of sleeping bodies and someone has strung a hammock across the kitchen. People are still dancing outside in the twilight. Ganja fumes waft through the house. After a breakfast of Envueltos (fried plantain in sweet dough) from down the street and several hours of impatient milling around, I and about a dozen people and all our gear cram in to an SUV headed towards the lake.
At the lake, more milling around. There is an interaction of some sort with the local search and rescue group and Maracucho, some waving of hands. We drink coffee sold from street carts in thimble sized plastic cups and people do their best to include me in conversation. At some signal that I miss we all pile back in to the SUV and return back to where we started this morning, at the base of the local fly site Tierra Negra. Half an hour of Jeep trails later we’re up top at launch, with winds too strong for my comfort level. “We’re going to practice some of the simpler maneuvers today,” explains Maracucho. “Asymmetric collapse, crescents, and B-Line stalls.” He describes which lines to pull in for each of the maneuvers. “They are all perfectly safe, nothing will happen.” At that, he launches in to the horizon with a tandem passenger. Joglin takes off as well and does a little hot-dogging for the film crew. Several thousand feet above ground over the canyon, everyone gasps as we see his wing suddenly crumple (as he performs a B-line stall) and drop out of the sky like an anvil. Three seconds of gut wrenching free fall later his wing re-inflates, and he rides up a band of ridge lift to return several minutes later for a top-landing and spectators applause. “Que deporte mas Extremo!” declares one little boy.
The wind howls, I decide not to fly. “My stomach says it’s not a good Idea, “ I explain. Several others agree and we ride back down to Las Gonzales. As we descend condensation forms on the windshield and soon the sky is wet. Flying is done for the day.
In the evening I am with Joglin at his family’s apartment looking at paragliding acro videos on YouTube. The Infinity, the MacTwist, the Misty Flip- they all look absolutely insane and the names remind me of boastful pubescent skateboarders. Joglin wants to go to Austria next year to some sort of acro pilot mecca where a tram up a mountain is located adjacent to a lake where one can practice maneuvers with a body of water below. I understand the appeal but I just can’t get in to the idea of it, I never will. I extend the invitation to Alaska and pull up some pictures of glaciers and wildlife and landscapes on the computer to give him an idea.
“So what did you know about Venezuela before you came here?” he asks at some point in the evening. “What did you think if this place? What do Americans think about Venezuela?” I tell him that I didn’t know much, I give him my seventh grade geography knowledge. Lots of jungles, lots of mountains. It’s where Simon Bolivar was born. And, well, you guys have a little bit of a crazy president. Haha.
Silence.
“Yo soy de Chavez,” he says firmly. And indeed, why not?
“Obviously he’s been a great president for this country,” I interject making a lame attempt to regain credibility. “But you gotta admit, the guy says some pretty strong stuff sometimes, no?” We laugh it off together, myself more so than him. I do my best to explain the idiom, “Put your foot in your mouth.” It’s a funny enough image to redeem my offense. Soon enough we’re back to YouTube videos of Synchro Spirals and the like.
The next day, more rain. The SIV course isn’t happening. I’m told that we’ll have more time to do the maneuvers of an SIV course over the next week I’m here, the only thing we won’t be able to do is practice using the emergency parachute. We’ll see, I say.
Las Gonzales keeps me for another full week. I make my way up launch either by an hour and a half hike or hitching a ride with the rare Jeep headed uphill to remote villages back in the mountains. I bite my tongue at seeing the guys use old equipment I wouldn’t trust my own life to, occasionally barefoot or helmetless. These are the young wing-folders who earned the privilege of flying, but at what risk? Is it worth it? It’s easy or me to ask when I can afford to buy modern equipment. With each flight I consider my life, if it’s worth it to suspend myself midair for a while. I shudder at the thought of the idea of flying ever seeming routine.
For my questions I have no answers. What I know is that with each flight I am grateful for the community I have found, for the freedom and focus I have found in the sport. I’ve not been disappointed in finding friends to show me around wherever I go. And some of them even have yet to turn ten years old.
3 comments:
This has inspired me to learn more about Venezuela. It seems like a fascinating country. Safe flying!
Thank you for taking the time to tell the story, Ben. It's refreshing to remember that there are worlds outside of the one that I am in, and that I can step into them at will. :)
thanks susannah, and Unknown! its always an inspairation to keep writing when i hear someone actually reads the stuff sometimes.
Post a Comment