In our next story we go from terra firma to the sky as we meet an adventurous group who have realized their dreams of flying.
They may be older, but the thrill of hang gliding never is.
But it was a kid I dreamt of just flying with my arms, or that I would wake up and have wings and fly.
If you've ever dreamt of flying, like those Superman kind of dreams, it's exactly that.
You can have the most terrible week at work and whatever, and you come here, you step off the hill, it's all gone, it's done.
It really is a clearing of the mind after all the stuff he goes through during the week.
You fly with the birds, if you see a bird you go fly with them.
The smells of the ground come up as you can smell the barbecue, you can feel the warmth of the air,
you can feel the little tiny spiders, the teeny teeny ones, they get lifted up by the thermals,
and they're flying around in the air there, sometimes they get all over your hang glider.
It just feels like freedom.
All the early research on thrill seeking and sensation seeking was on personality traits.
I think it's less that to be honest with you, and I think it's more an ability to handle the fear
of certain elements of an extreme environment.
If you can't deal with that element of fear, it doesn't matter how good you are,
you're never going to stand at the cliff and push off of it.
I grew up always wanting to fly, and I jumped off the roof when I was four years old,
just stupid stuff like that, but that's what many of us have in common, we always dreamt of flying.
And in my dreams, of course, I would just fly.
When I was 18 years old, I saw somebody doing it on TV on some documentary.
It looked like the coolest thing in the world.
When we first started, it was very sex drugs and rock and roll.
We were all a lot younger, and it was very much an outlaw type crowd.
In those days, my vision was that we not have a fist fight in the landing area.
Then people started getting a little older.
They got wives, they got children, all of a sudden it's a real different crowd.
The hang gliders used to fall apart in the sky, and they would tell you,
don't fly any higher than you want to fall.
The hang gliders were made of bamboo and plastic duct tape and all.
In the old days, we'd kill 60, 70 people a year.
I paid a guy five bucks to throw me off the hill three times.
That's all it took, and nobody was going to tell you no.
Ask any hang glider pilot, and the story always starts out with,
where I was, I thought I was going to die, and then it goes from there.
The experience they gained over time with learning how to stay calm
in situations that most people would freak out in is pretty amazing to me.
I think it's a combination of having the right mentorship
with training to put yourself in situations that are going to freak you out.
You can panic and die, or you can stay calm and live.
I was flying a glider that I'd never flown before.
I misjudged the speed of my final.
I was approaching some power lines.
It would have been fine if I had just sped up,
but as I was getting closer to the power lines, I slowed down,
and I actually ended up stalling right into the power lines.
The nose of the glider hit the power lines,
and that pretty much cut off all power in that area of Lake Kelsenor,
slammed into a fence with my forehead, and I don't remember that part.
But when I was regaining consciousness,
there was a fire on either side of the glider,
and there were people running toward me.
Every time I fly, I judge myself really hard
and take it really seriously,
because I now understand the potential that messing up can have.
No one's ever going to tell you it's a safe sport,
but the gliders are much safer.
They tend not to tuck.
They tend not to go into dives.
I'm putting on the instrument that we fly with.
It's called a variometer,
and it tells you when you're in lift, when you're climbing,
when you're sinking, and your rate of climb.
And that's a tone that tells you when you're climbing
or when you're sinking.
I'm lucky because I get to do what I enjoy to do all the time.
My objective is not necessarily to bring people into sport,
I'm just to give them a chance to check off their bucket list,
and if it works out for them to want to get into the sport,
so be it.
I get to live vicariously through them my first flight.
Every time it's a new experience.
It gives them the chance to work with each other.
I enjoy the people around,
and on the way down you get to answer a lot of their questions.
You get to know them,
and it's neat to know different types of people.
The first time she flew with me,
she was really not knowing what she was getting into.
I didn't know what a hand glider was,
and I thought we can't take off because he hasn't put the motor on yet.
So when we launched and there was no motor on it,
I'm panicking because he forgot the motor.
Since that time she's flown with me 162 times,
I guess she's okay with it.
We have a gentleman just retired.
He was the first person to fly off this mountain.
He retired from hand gliding about a month and a half ago,
84 years old.
I've been flying so long,
I remember when sex was safe and hand gliding was dangerous.
We have a 5S club,
the Silmar Scenile Senior Soaring Society.
Everybody has to be over 65 years old to join.
We have about eight members,
and we're dropping like flies.
It's a pretty tight community.
There's some life risk involved here,
and when you've got a bunch of friends that do this a lot,
and there is some kind of risk,
somehow that sort of brings you closer.
He threw in the back of the truck, you snake!
We have doctors, lawyers, and we have the other range of people.
You couldn't find a more diverse bunch of people,
so it's nice to be with them.
I'm here almost every day, whether I fly or not.
I don't know what I'd do if we lost this place.
If I get to spend time here,
I'm just an easier person to get along with when I go home.
There he is.
People will say, why do you guys fly?
And consistently, it's not because there's any thrill-seeking
or anything like that.
I mean, there is for some.
I think they're in and out pretty fast,
or you'll notice those people,
and you kind of tend to stay away from them if they are,
because we're not out here to try to hurt ourselves.
Not everybody does this. Not everybody can do it.
Everybody can try.
