Early this morning, I had an appointment to learn how to hang glide at
Morningside Flight Park in Charlestown NH. It is at least 2 hours from where I live, so I had to get up really early to make it to the lesson on time. The scenery of the fall foliage along the way was awesome though.
I was really early, so the hillside where the lesson was to take place was still pretty void of gliders and people.
When the place finally opened up, I went inside the shop and waited for the lesson to start.
I had one other person learning to hang glide with me, and when he arrived, our instructor took us into the other room, where he taught us a little bit about the physics behind hang gliding, and the various components of a typical hang glider.
It was then time to take out our gliders and assemble them.
After unwrapping the cover encasing the glider,
the king post is first pushed up
before spreading open the wings on each side of the post and strapping the rigging wires to the top of the king post.
Taking out the battens which are of different sizes, one set being marked black and the other being white to signify which wing it is on,
the battens are then slit into slots on the wing
and strapped down to form its skeleton,
the longest one being the closest to the center, naturally.
The rigging wires are then secured to the keel.
With the gliders all set and ready to go, it is time to perform an inspection on the gliders to ensure there is no damage to it or potential for collapse during flight.
After ensuring that the probability of me dying during this experience was minimized, it was time to go get our helmets and harnesses.
Before putting the harness on, our instructor showed us what was the proper way to hold the glider on our shoulders,
and how to pick it up.
This I found pretty hard to do, especially getting the poles onto the right positions on my shoulders and balancing the glider properly.
Then came our first run flight on level ground, without being attached to the glider, where we start running with the glider to give it thrust with the glider being at ~12 degrees above the direction of the wind, keeping constant eye contact with our target destination, then we change our hold on the glider when we feel it start to fly, holding the bars close to our chest and continuing to run even though our feet might leave the ground, then finally push the bars away to slow down and land.
My first attempt went well enough, but I was so eager to go airborne that when I felt the glider lifting, I decided to lift my legs as well instead of continuing to run, so I got my jeans soiled instead.
After the first trial run, we put on the harnesses,
then strapped ourselves to the glider itself.
Besides repeating the first run, we also learnt how to change directions, by looking at our new destination and shifting our entire body in that direction.
After we were deemed to be successful, we moved slightly up the hill, and I managed to carry the glider all the way up.
From here on, it was practice run after practice run. On the last one, I managed to get at least 4 feet above the ground, so I guess that was pretty good for a first time. Apparently it takes tons of tries to finally go higher, when the instructors think that we are good and safe enough to progress to the next stage.
It was cool to see other hang gliders and paragliders in action today as well.
I definitely a long way to go to become this guy.
If you thought that was the end, you thought wrong. There always is the cleanup phase, which involves doing the reverse of assembling the glider.
After putting the gliders back in storage, it was time to call it a day. The day was still young for me though, so I decided to drive back to Massachusetts, stopping in the town of Northfield, MA for lunch at
Rooster's Bistro, a small town diner looking bar restaurant. Before that, I took a few pictures of interesting buildings around town.
 |
| Memorial, 69 Main Street |
 |
| St. Patrick's Church, 82 Main Street |
At the restaurant, I decided to get the Chicken Marsala after looking at the menu which did not have anything interesting on it.
The meal came with a caesar salad as well.
As expected, the meal was as uninspirational as the entire place. Absolutely terrible. At least it managed to fill me up.
From here, I headed into Warwick, where I decided to continue my exploration of the
Arthur Iversen Conservation Area, which I partly explored
a few weeks ago. This time, I decided to explore the eastern leg of the trails, the path I took being shown below in pink.
The view of Rum Brook was just ok when I came to the bridge crossing it, but otherwise there was nothing much to the area.
From here, I headed to my next hike, at
Mount Grace State Forest nearby. The rough path I took here to try to find the summit of Mount Grace and Little Mount Grace is shown below in pink.
After parking at Ohlson Field, which had a beautiful view of the mountain,
I decided to take the path to the summit, thinking the hike would be short, like it seemed from the map. Instead, it seemed to take forever. After reaching the fire road, it was still another half hour before I finally reached the summit, where there was a fire tower.
There was no fence around the fire tower, so I took the opportunity to climb it, and was rewarded with awesome views all around.
After climbing back down to solid ground, it was time to try to find Little Mount Grace, which I had had pretty good views too. I tried to look for the path leading to it, passing by it on the fire road because the sign said it was the Metacomet Monadnock Trail. Eventually, I decided that it could possibly be the way to go, and decided to take a chance. My efforts paid off, and I found the vista, though it was not as good as the actual mountain itself.
I made my way back to my car, walking along the road back to it, and by then it was way too dark to do any more sightseeing. I could not use my phone to find a restaurant to eat at, so I decided to drive home instead, stopping at the first restaurant I saw that wasn't pizza. Unfortunately, today was Columbus Day, so a lot of restaurants were not open, except for the Chinese ones. I ended going to
Tea Garden in the town of Athol, a small town Americanized Chinese restaurant which thankfully wasn't a takeout place. I decided to get t
he Crispy Walnut Shrimp and Chicken (Honey glazed walnut and creamy lemon sauce over jumbo shrimp and crispy chicken),
which actually wasn't too bad, although I got bored after eating it for a while.
With that, I called it a night, satisfied with my day of hang gliding and hiking.
