That doesn’t give my any reassurance. My friends think I’ve lost my mind, and my sister begged me not to do it. At this point, I’m in the hands of Randy Long, owner of Arizona Powerchutes (www.arizonapowerchutes.com) who has a perfect record with over 2000 hours of flight time. He’s got to know up from down!
Even though the weather in Scottsdale will reach 72 degrees today, at six am, it’s somewhere in the 40’s and I’m freezing. Dressed in Randy’s extra black down jumpsuit, hood with a neck warmer, and fleece gloves, I should be toasty warm, but my blood feels like ice and my teeth are chattering. Any second we will be airborne. I ought to jump out right now, or it will be too late. Is it really adventure I seek, or do I have a death wish? And how long ago did I write my will?“We will ascend at 600 feet a minute,” says Randy through the headphones. Our seatbelts are connected in a one-man harness, so there’s no bailing now, not without dragging 200 pounds of Randy with me. “Ready?”
“Yup,” My voice is two octaves higher than usual.
“When we take off, depending on the wind, there’ll be a slight bump, so don’t worry. And then, we’ll be airborne.”
I turn and look at our umbilical cord, a forty-foot long parachute lying in the desert sand, 550-square feet of fabric. I have the strange sensation that we’ll be dangling like the tail of a kite.
When someone told me Powerchuting was flying in the sky, I remembered a recurring dream I used to have as a kid – I’d be riding my bicycle, and suddenly I’d be pedaling straight up in the air, flying over the rooftops. It was always thrilling. So I had to try it.
Now I’m not so sure. Randy guns the engine and our little contraption rolls down the patch of desert he’s chosen as our runway. I look back and see the parachute billow and arc above us. Suddenly we’re airborne. Just like that. I never felt a bump, and it must have taken all of 3 seconds, no more than the snap of a finger. Randy pulls on the throttle and the plane goes higher. The sun peeps over the mountains. We fly over a Saguaro tree. “Do you know your cactuses?” he asks.
“Not too many.” He points out Prickly Pear and Cholla, teddy bear and barrel cactus. He shows me creosote bushes and Palo Verde trees. We fly higher – not the 10,000 feet the Powerchute can fly, but 2,000 feet up, way above Camelback Mountain, a rock formation that looks like a camel. He points out the canal and Lake Pleasant. Pinnacle Peak, a hill I’ve climbed, looks no bigger than a pointy thimble. The Deer Valley Airport observation tower is no higher than a parking meter.
“Okay,” Randy says, “Your turn to fly. Push your foot down on this pedal, pull on the left cord and we’ll turn left.” We turn 360 degrees. “Good, now push the throttle all the way back.” As I do, the plane makes much less noise and I panic. We’re going to stall. We’re going to die. I take my hand off the throttle.
“Keep going, all the way back,” he says.
“Are you sure?” This is insane, but I do it anyway – he’s the pilot. We don’t stall. We’re idling and floating, almost like a hot air balloon.
“Okay turn right.”
I’m flying! I’m Superwoman in a black down jumpsuit instead of a cape, and I can make us go left, right, up, and down. This is what the Wright brothers must have felt when they glided over Kitty Hawk. We speed along at 28 miles per hour.
Randy takes over the controls as we descend to right above a dry creek bed, like a mini-canyon and about as wide as a two-lane road. Oh my God! We’re in the wash! Now I feel like Luke Skywalker, except instead of fighting the Galactic Empire, we’re searching for wildlife. “Look! Coyote!” Ahead of us, the beige-colored animal races through the bushes. We see a cow whose calf is scared out of her wits and doesn’t know how to escape us, a huge noisy bird of prey. The poor calf runs around in circles. “There used to be a javalina family in a cave up ahead,” Randy says. “I haven’t seen them recently – I think I scared them away.” We fly alongside the cave and I peer in – no Javalinas.
A jackrabbit races across the sand beneath us. We ascend high again and in the distance, I can see two hot air balloons being inflated, then rising up into the sky. We’re really high up now, and first a small plane flies beneath us, then a helicopter. We’re headed back towards Randy’s van and trailer. And just like that –no longer than a finger snap – again without so much as a jerk or a bump, we’re back on the ground. Randy hands me a “First Flight Certificate” and a Pilot’s Log Book page on which he has recorded one half-hour of flight time and one landing.
“All you need is eleven and a half more hours and you’ll be a certified sport pilot,” he says.
Me? A pilot in only 11.5 more hours? Now that’s a scary thought – even though I’m still high on the adventure. I know my ride was a snap because if Randy’s expertise. Still, it’s tempting, except for explaining to my friends and sister how going up in the air in a go-cart attached to a parachute is the most fun thing they’ll ever do, even though I really don’t know how to explain the experience. It’s a cross between being shot out of a cannon and riding on a magic carpet – or maybe it is just like my dream –riding a bicycle in the sky -- but this is much better because you don’t have to peddle.
No comments:
Post a Comment