Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 1: January 2014 | Page 39

“Time to go paragliding! I run to the
store, buy some food, borrow a bottle of
oxygen and head up the hill.”
photos by

F

JO DY M ac Donald, G avin M c C lurg & M att beechinor

riends, family, sponsors, business associates,
and all of you folks on Facebook whom I am
“friends” with but have no idea who you are: I
have a problem. An addiction. It’s really, really
bad and it’s time to come clean. I can no longer pretend
my addiction is not completely in control of my life. I
can no longer hide behind the obvious facts. The high
is so powerful I can’t get enough. Ever. Never, ever,
EVER enough. Coming down gets harder and harder
to handle. I think it’s causing longterm physical and
emotional damage. So I keep going for the high. I can’t
think of anything else while I’m awake, and can’t dream
of anything else when I’m asleep. I’m in deep and I need
help.
My addiction could possibly kill me. My addiction
causes problems with work and problems with my wife. I
tell her she’s still the most important thing in my life, but
we both know I’m lying. Yes, it’s that bad.
My addiction is paragliding. In particular, crosscountry paragliding, but I throw in a quick fix from time to
time under a speed wing or an acro wing if things are really
desperate. Which happens frequently.
My wife led me down this one-way road to madness. In
2006, she put a paraglider in my hands and taught me how
to ground handle. Up until that time I’d led a perfectly
adrenaline-filled, but comparatively bland, life—alpine ski
racing in my youth, followed by rock climbing big walls,
kayaking class VI (i.e., “unrunnable”) first descents across
Central America, and helming sailing yachts on two successful circumnavigations engaged in kite-surfing expeditions.
In early 2012, I was able to terminate my job as Captain
and let my addiction take proper hold. A few weeks of

SIV and acro in Turkey to begin the season. Spring in the
European Alps. Buy an RV, call it “The Niviuk Mobile”
and park it for great lengths of time wherever the weather
promised potential. I’d done a bit of XC by then, enough
to know I had little chance to find a rehab center that
would do any good.
The kilometers and hours started adding up. I got on a
Niviuk Artik 3 and discovered XContests’ “Chocolate Bar,”
which clocks up a chocolate for every 100km flight. I studied track logs and weather like a professional poker player
studies an opponent’s face. Early in the season, 100 km
seemed like a big deal. By June, anything short of 100 km
was cause for long study of my track log, private pep talks
and comparisons to other pilots who are better. Trouble
was brewing.
I’d been at sea for 13 years. My girlfriend (still girlfriend at this point) and I are looking for a place to live.
I ask Nick Greece, one of the top-ranked pilots in the
US where the best place to fly long distance is in North
America. He tells me Owens Valley, California; Jackson
Hole, Wyoming (his hometown); and Sun Valley, Idaho.
Jody and I spend a single morning in Sun Valley just a few
weeks later and go no farther. From there, Matt Beechinor
breaks the US foot-launch record near the end of June with
a groundbreaking flight of 309 km (193 miles). The record
travels at Internet speed throughout the flying community
and people take notice. I, for one, am awed; I didn’t think
flights of this length were even possible in the mountains.
I sign up for my first competition in Chelan,
Washington, and get a taste for the vein-smacking high of
making goal on the first task, then the bitter frustration
of bombing out two days in a row. The addiction is in full
bloom now.

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

39