When it’s 66 degrees in February — 66! — you get the hell out of the house, chores be damned.
There was all manner of human-power transportation going on out there this afternoon. People cycling. People running. People walking. People walking dogs. Big people carrying little people.
And people flying. Not in airplanes, or like Superman, but still.
I noticed the hang gliders drifting around the Sandia foothills as I rolled away from El Rancho Pendejo, but soon got engrossed in my own little outing and forgot all about them until I was cresting a hill on the way home.
Zoom, there one was, right overhead, and if I’d had an actual camera with me instead of a phone, why, you’d be looking at a closeup of him right now.
Instead, you have to settle for this miserable phone shot of him preparing to land while his buddy continued to bank lazily overhead. I will never be smart.
But you knew that.
Mad Blog Media 
Cool! We have a cliff face up in Miller Canyon that the hang gliders and para gliders use to launch. If they can catch a thermal, they stay up for hours. Repeat after me, a phone is not a camera.
I’ve seen one glider up here pretty frequently, and I was wondering whether it might actually be an ultralight, since the pilot seemed to have no trouble maintaining altitude.
But the one I saw coming in for a landing was just a wing with a dude in a sack underneath. He landed that thing with less effort than I use to unclip from one pedal. Mad skillz, yo.
Looks like these folks launch off the Sandia Crest. Yow.
I think I saw Rancho Pendejo in this clip.
The dude I was watching flew with feet forward, which looks like it would be a lot easier on the lower back.
But hoo-lawd, that first step is a doozy, que no?
And I thought riding single track was being daring. Whew, that first step would give me the “fear.”
If you saw someone trying to fly without nylon wings, they may have come from the White House.
The best someones.
Hopefully a someone who would fly too close to the sun and melt his wings.