HANG GLIDING EUPHORIA

(Dedicated to my teacher Ray Basson whose passion for the English language and the great outdoors were an inspiration to our young minds)

The year was 1972 and a young man from Johannesburg ventured to Cape Town to start his career as an English teacher at one of the prestigious schools in the Southern Suburbs. 

The city at the tip of the continent had always held charm and fascination for him. The carefree attitude of Capetonians as well as the quality of life the city offered someone who had grown up in the frenetic pace of Johannesburg (even in those days) was an attractive prospect for him. A young fellow starting out after twelve years at school and four or five more at Wits University, where he had been a prodigious student and had distinguished himself as an articulate man with a promising future as a teacher and academic, was where he chose to seek employment. The University of Cape Town on the slopes above Woolsack Drive offered the opportunity to indulge his quest for further study, whilst earning a living inspiring young minds at a school that was rated highly in the fields that he felt able to make a significant contribution. The boys’ school where he landed his first post not only catered to the academic needs of its young men, but provided ample opportunities to indulge in an array of sporting and cultural activities.

The young man, Eric, took up his teaching post with much enthusiasm and welcomed the opportunity to be accommodated in the hostel at the school, where he could play his part as a border master to further provide a balanced education to the young chaps. In addition to his role as an inspiring educator along the lines of the character that Robin Williams would later portray in the enchanting film “Dead Poets’ Society,” he used the ample opportunities Cape Town presented for one seeking personal enrichment and solace from the tedium of the rat race that had consumed him in the hurly burly of fast paced city life in Johannesburg.

He wasted no time in gathering around him students who eagerly participated in the adventures he sought out for his own growth, also the wellbeing of the boys. Soon hikes up Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Signal Hill were on the cards. Trips in the school bus to beaches such as Llandudno, Clifton, Muizenberg and further afield offered fresh, healthy air to enjoy. Hiking trails there were aplenty. Surfing was a new experience for him, and the waves around the False Bay coast were a source of much pleasure for him and his students, many of whom were outstanding surfing enthusiasts who taught him to ride the waves with grace and skill. Fellow educators imbued with a similar passion for the rich outdoors welcomed Eric’s enthusiasm for experiencing all Cape Town had to offer.

In the early ‘70s a fairly new activity was gaining popularity, namely hang gliding. Hang gliders had been pioneered by Otto Lilienthal as far back as 1891 in the quest for a practical and reliable means of flight. Sadly he had met with a fatal accident five years later, despite having undertaking thousands of flights beneath his self-made wings. The setback only delayed the advancement in kite design and by the end of the 1960s an Australian, John Dickenson had perfected a new concept to control the risky flight dynamic of hang gliders. Swing seats enabled the nifty shift of body weight to effect pitch and roll and the parallel bar offered effective steering. By the 1970s, just when Eric’s interest in hang  gliding piqued, Rogallo wings were designed and manufacturing materials began to achieve aircraft quality. Glide ratios of three foot forward to one foot down were common. Gravity being the source of propulsion was balanced by the upward drift of air produced by the thermals that could be harnessed to remain aloft. Speeds of up to 60 miles per hour (100km/h) could be attained with the new designs.

Eric and his teaching buddies made it their mission to acquire a hang glider so that they could experience the freedom of gliding above the magnificent city with its unique vistas of ocean, beaches, yachts and human habitation far below. Cape Town’s beloved Table Mountain range offered an ideal launch pad to undertake such flight. They pooled their meagre savings from their modest teachers’ salaries to acquire a hang glider. It could be easily stored at the school and the contraption was made to fit onto the roof rack of Eric’s old, rusty and very noisy Volkswagen Beetle. They would chug along the winding Signal Hill Road to a point close to the noon day gun. There they identified a spot from which they could launch their craft. Taking turns, they would undertake their flight which they planned would last about an hour each above the fair city and would land on Green Point Common where the colleague would be waiting with the Beetle for the return trip up Signal Hill.

In 1972 there were no formal restrictions yet regarding hang gliding safety in South Africa. There were also no formally constructed launching pads or landing strips. The pilots had to “wing it” as it were. There was as yet no obsession with safety gear, so these flights were undertaken without helmets, goggles, or any formal training. “Health and Safety” in the current era would have pups were they to police the reckless abandon with which Eric and his mates launched themselves from the upper slopes of Signal Hill, attired in tee shirts, jeans and sneakers and their total disregard for their own safety. That was part of the thrill of these outings!

Eric describes his first flight, daringly solo, as one of the most exhilaratingly euphoric of his life. This euphoria, he believes, made him a better person and a better teacher and mentor to young men whom he taught. Unless one has experienced the freedom provided by abandoning terra firma and casting one’s life into the tenuous embrace of air, thermals and downdraughts, he insists it is unconvincing to launch young men into the ephemeral and transitory shifting pitch and roll of life itself. There is something both enriching and intoxicating about abandoning one’s reliance on certainty, the parameters of rules and axioms, to surrender one’s entire being to forces beyond our absolute control. Life favours the brave!

That moment when his feet finally swopped the ground beneath him to be buoyed by the invisible element of air, was supremely exhilarating. On his own, recognising the presence of thermals and riding them with the abandon of one surrendering his own control to unseen forces, he could experience peace and tranquillity. The trepidation of handing power to unseen forces at play around him, was tempered by the powerful perception of being part of something in this universe larger and greater than oneself. A glimpse of the scraggy shoreline along the Atlantic Seaboard, the view of the Twelve Apostles propping up Table Mountain, the Harbour far below, were a stark reminder of his own remote and tiny place in the greater scheme of things. Indeed, the ant-like human forms scurrying around the streets of Cape Town far below, the minute yachts bobbing on the vast body of water beneath them, provided a perspective unequalled by any he had hitherto experienced. 

For roughly an hour Eric could experience euphoria such as no chemical could induce. He could not compare the excitement as he steered, swooped and drifted towards the earth below. The grass on Greenpoint Common could be pinpointed and targeted as gravity and the upward thrust of warm air was skilfully manipulated to undertake a gracious and elegant landing. The last few yards his feet and legs transferred his entire being back to the sure embrace of the earth beneath him. Man and hang glider intact, Eric gushed about this most euphoric of human experiences – one he would long remember as his first of its kind – and one he’d repeat countless times and teach others to undertake.

©Paul M Haupt