Posts Tagged ‘hang glider’

Glide path

May 5, 2021

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.”

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Posted in Albuquerque, Hiking, Trails | 13 Comments »

Above it all

October 15, 2020

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.

 

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Posted in Air travel, Albuquerque, Photography | 5 Comments »

Glide path

June 28, 2020

“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.”

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Posted in Albuquerque, Cheap gags, In the neighborhood, Things that suck | 16 Comments »

No groundhogs here

February 2, 2019

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.

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Posted in Bike stuff, Radio Free Dogpatch | 7 Comments »

Sailing over the Sandias

October 3, 2018

It was a warmish, slightly humid day, which must be fine for flying.

I was running through here earlier in the day and never thought to look up. Mostly I look down, for tarantulas, buzzworms and drunken Republicans.

This afternoon I cranked up the Vespa for a short runaround, just to keep the battery topped off, and as I putt-putted toward the Menaul trailhead I noticed orange windsocks fluttering in the parking lot.

Looking up, I saw a hang glider cutting didoes over the foothills, so I pulled over and snapped a couple pix with the old Canon S110.

Looks like fun, doesn’t it? But so does riding a cyclocross bike on Sandia singletrack, until you have that unexpected get-off.

There are lots of pointy bits down here on Planet Albuquerque, and as luck would have it I found one while running through this very area this morning.

A terrorist shrub stabbed me in the left shoulder blade with a broken limb as I lumbered through a rocky patch on Trail 365, my gaze focused on the water-scoured trail, which is studded with toe-grabbers, ankle-twisters and face-planters.

Maybe I would have been safer aloft. We’ll never know. I don’t even get big air on the bike.

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Posted in Air travel, Albuquerque, Running | 17 Comments »

Route 66

February 9, 2018

Up in the air, Junior Birdman.

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.

You are cleared for landing on runway … well, actually, it’s a trail, but go ahead, put ‘er down.

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.

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Posted in Air travel, Albuquerque, sunshine | 8 Comments »