Fly Away Paragliding

10/07/2025

What am I up to now that I'm not running the school? Rollerblade Kayaking!

With the fall colors at max I headed into the mountains for another rollerblade shuttle boat trip. This time the Eagle River.

05/05/2025

OK, it's accident season and a few people have already punched their hospital stay tickets. I'm speaking causally but seriously, going to the hospital sucks.

Here's the three things that makes spring so problematic.
1. It's volatile time for weather. Rapid change and increasing energy makes it hard to predict the weather.
2. Everyone is rusty after the long off season.
3. All that time off makes for pilots who are anxious to fly. And over eager pilots make bad decisions that they wouldn't make if their flying tank was full.

The picture is yesterday at 11:30. I knew people were in the air. There are two things going on.
That's a lot of cloud development for that early in the day. Plus, the vertical development is showing rapid cloud growth. The simple rule is tall and skinny... not good.
When a thermal hits the drew point (Where the cloud forms) that sucks a ton of energy out of the system. The clouds should form slowly, piling up over time in a fat and lazy fashion.
If there is still enough energy left, after hitting the drew point, for the thermals to climb that high extending the clouds in the tall skinny manner... in a short period of time... that means there is a lot of energy left. Or, very simply, there is more energy than is prudent to fly in.

So, dial back in the spring. You're rusty. Bad decisions are easier to make when you really really really want to fly. Be around to the later season when things get better.

12/01/2024

What the hell!
To understand that AI is not artificial intelligence but… BS, or blender salad. All one needs to do is take a good look at an AI interpretation of something you are familiar with.

Take this riser set of a… well it’s hard to tell exactly what it is. Some mashed up blend of a paraglider and skydiving rig?

First problem. If your attachment points were behind your shoulder blades you would hang there like a kitten picked up by it’s mom. Who knows how you would get your feet under you to run out your landing. Which, mind you, could not come too soon for the level of comfort you have on that flights. However, you could have a very aggressive take off run.

Next problem, Man! Symmetry is great on things that fly. In particular mirrored symmetry. Whatever is on one side should also be on the other side too, but like reflected in a mirror.
However, here we have a mess of stuff. The likelihood of flying this thing straight is very questionable.

More problems, What the hell is serving as carabiners? A snap hooks? Or…? The right side seems to be a biner of some sort all the way up from the attachment point. It has weird bumps of lumpy who knows what on it. And why doesn’t the other side look the same. And that strap that spans from left to right… it’s there why?

The left riser looks kind of right, especially when compared with the right side, but some brakes or toggles would be nice for steering. The right riser looks to have gotten around all the bother of sewing up a set of lines by just sending up a blue piece of one inch webbing to secure the left side of the wing.That might not be fair. Perhaps they saved money making all the lines shorter on the left hand side and put in that chunk of webbing to make up for it and it’s just out frame.

If you’d like to fly this thing. Have at it. If not, next time you read, see or hear something AI generated that you are not as familiar with remember it’s the equivalent of what you see here.

Or, AI but Blender Salad or BS for short.

10/16/2024

A great example of how high pressure can dominate the weather. However, for all that high pressure suppresses weather within it's influence look around the edges to see the build up of energy there. My friends on the west coast should leave their paragliders in the bag. And people on the east coast should keep an eye out on what is developing there.

06/19/2024

Wave clouds. In this case very high ones. Always a sign of strong winds. Double check your weather forecast when you see these things.

04/09/2024

Just got a notice that this site is violating community standards. So in the spirit of not learning my lesson... let's post another NCAR surface map! Yup, look at the isobars on this baby!
Obviously that notice was a scam. If weather violates your standards you are in trouble. Living on a planet with an eco-system means weather will be unavoidable.
Then again... some people have a problem with the reality of weather and the physics that drives it. Oh well for them cause reality is not affected by opinion.

04/09/2024

just checking that my site...

03/06/2024

Think of the things you said, sitting on the side of a hill, waiting for the weather to change. That one day you’ll just fly out over the ocean never to be seen again. You are gone now. I don’t know how. But I’ll take you at your word. At least in how I remember you.

02/03/2024

So, the west coast is in for a big low coming ashore. Lots of isobars wrapped around that thing. Moving west there is a ridge of high pressure between the next low and the moisture from the last low.

02/02/2024

Look at all the isobars! If you are on the west coast this storm is pretty easy to figure; Two highs and a low are pushing everything on shore. If you are in the Rockies then you need to be aware of that big high in the mid-west that is impeding the flow of the storm eastward. For the storm to travel east that high needs to relax or get pushed out of the way. If that doesn't happen the storm might not move and will dump all its snow in the mountains. Which would be great cause the skiing is rather thin there. The kite boarders on the coast have a storm to play with, The skiers are waiting... and the mid-west should enjoy their sun.

01/29/2024

Well, If like me you are trying to ski in the Rockies, Here's the problem, HUGE high pressure centered in Wyoming, going across the middle of the country. Some of the high country is forecasting 40 degree temps...

12/25/2023

V***a, rain that evaporates before it hits the ground, backlit by the evenings sun. Remember, even though the rain never reaches the ground the air that falls with the rain does. That means there still is the threat of gust fronts. If you are in the air and see this and… it’s a long ways off or just started you may want to land. If you see a wall of dust traveling over the ground you could decide to let if pass and then land. Either way better to know the signs of overdevelopment and not be in the air when gust fronts might happen.