Tag: hang glider

Flights of fancy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
A glider pilot prepares for touchdown near the Menaul trailhead.

I was running trail yesterday, pulling a leisurely U near the Menaul trailhead before heading home, when a shadow fell across my path.

“Holy hell,” I thought. “A buzzard? I’m not dead yet. …”

Then I looked up and saw the glider, tacking this way and that above the spiky foothills, before finally dropping in for a gentle landing.

Good argument for keeping your eyes and ears open, I thought as I snapped a few pix and then got back to my jogging. You never know what you’re going to see up there, or down here.

On Sunday I nearly stepped on my first snake of the new year as I legged it up a sandy arroyo not far from where the glider pilot touched down. He was a little fella and disappeared into the underbrush. The snake, not the glider pilot.

Some folks get their kicks from sticks, if you believe The New York Times. And in this instance I see no reason for doubt. The story wasn’t datelined April 1, and is just ridiculous enough to be true.

Glide path

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

The second of two birdmen sails in for a landing.

Some days it’s not about the bike.

No, that’s not me up there, banking in for a landing at the Menaul trailhead yesterday afternoon. You won’t see see me leaping off the Sandia Crest until the cops have cornered me up against the ragged edge and all is lost.

I was just out for a brief hike that turned into a longer one because it was a preposterously gorgeous day in the foothills. Also, I wanted to keep an eye on these glider pilots stooging around over the Sandias.

At least one of them was up there for a couple of hours, because that’s how long I was on the deck watching them. The other was packing up trailside as I headed home.

“Flying today?” I asked.

“Yep,” he replied.

“How long were you up?”

“Not as long as I wanted to be.”

Above it all

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Now that’s what I call getting some big air.
The view from the Candelaria Bench Trail is pretty spectacular. I can only imagine what it’s like a few hundred feet above it.

Herself and I were slouched on the back patio at El Rancho Pendejo, airing the cat, birdwatching, and enjoying our respective tasty beverages when I spotted a rara avis over the Sandias.

We haven’t seen many aeronauts this year, not since The Bug® came to town. This one was definitely not making a maiden voyage — he or she stayed aloft for the better part of quite some time, cutting didos above the Candelaria Bench Trail.

Apologies for the poor image quality. I sold my Canon DSLR a while back and the point-and-shoot I grabbed just can’t bring ’em back alive from a distance.

 

Glide path

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

“On your left! On your LEFT! ON YOUR LEFT, GODDAMNIT! AIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!”
2018 file photo by Chuck Jagermeister

Turns out it was a glider pilot who augured in yesterday near the Menaul trailhead, a spiky area from which Herself and I have collected ouchy souvenirs of various ground-level mishaps.

“Get the tweezers, Bactine, and whiskey, hon’, we got a long day ahead of us.”

No groundhogs here

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

You’d think these dudes had engines, the way they stay aloft forever. But they’re just riding the thermals like big ol’ hawks.

Well, there was me. These daredevils may have been tooling around above the Sandias like Icarus and Daedalus, but yours truly kept his landing gear on the deck. I saw my shadow, too, and you know what that means. Bundle up.

But for today, temps hit the mid-50s, and basically anyone who wasn’t chained to a concrete bunk in the Graybar Hotel was out and about, doing something.

“I’m trying to get my bike legs on!” wailed one rider as I yielded a narrow section of trail.

“I feel your pain,” I replied. I’ve been running the trails, but riding the road; this was my first trail ride of 2019.

Ordinarily I shun the trails on sunny weekends, reasoning that I get to play pretty much whenever I please while the cube farmers have a limited window of opportunity. But it’s been a long week and I felt I needed a change of pace.

Speaking of which, there will be no Radio Free Dogpatch this week, for a number of perfectly defensible reasons. I had a notion, but it ran off with one of the voices in my head. I hope they didn’t get married. We don’t need any children from that quarter.