Paragliding video

The summer school finished last Friday, and I travelled to Verbier where Paul is staying. I had booked a one-day introduction course to paragliding for Saturday. I was a bit scared about doing this, but it was lots of fun! We spent most of the day at "ground school" - learning to set up the glider and the harness, and how to take off (without actually taking off). In the afternoon I first did a short tandem flight - really great! And then it was time for my first solo flight... I was a bit nervous and I thought I'd be terrified through the whole flight but actually I didn't get scared at all and was able to relax and enjoy the flight. It's a great feeling to be flying on your own! It wasn't very difficult as you are almost "remote controlled" - you have a radio and they tell you exactly what to do. The landing went fine, though I did fall over face forward - but the landing field has very tall grass and it made the landing very soft. Paul was able to take a great video of my flight, and because he had a radio on him as well, you can hear everything they were telling me...

The flight was only about 5 minutes, but it was fantastic and I am now very keen to take a course myself!! I didn't expect I would enjoy it this much, I am usually quite a chicken and scared of everything... ;)

Paul is doing the last few flights he needs for his license at the moment, when he comes back we will leave for Vevey (near Montreux, at the lake of Geneva) until Wednesday. Paul has a lot of photos and videos of his 2 weeks of paragliding, so more soon!

Kung-fu Paragliding

Today is day 9 of the 14 day course and so far I've done 11 solo flights, some of them lasting more than 20 minutes. I can now launch the paraglider fairly reliably and land using a left hand approach. Sometimes I need a bit of instruction over the radio to ensure the final approach is at the right speed and height, but each one is better than the last. Before landing a paraglider it's advisable to stand up in the harness and get ready to run, but initially I had a tendency to start kicking my legs considerably before landing, especially if the ground seemed to be approaching too quickly. People seemed to find this pretty hilarious, but fortunately I managed to stop doing it before anybody got a video.

Today, others stole the landing lime light though. One person landed on a parasol that the rest of us were sitting under moments before, and another landed so short that our instructor had to jump on his motorbike and speed down the valley to get a new vantage point to guide him in from! Most of us land in the field most of the time though!

From now on I will be learning to gain height by using thermals and to soar using winds blowing over ridges. These techniques need more specific weather conditions than simply gliding down from a mountain top, and I've had to sit out quite a few flights because the thermals or wind have been too strong for a novice pilot. It's a little frustrating, but hopefully I'll be going up rather than down for the first time quite soon.

Above are some pictures of a typical flight; The first shows people setting up their gliders on the mountain top ready for launching; The second and third pictures are taken from the launch site and show people who have been in the air for only a few seconds; and the last two pictures show the landing field. I haven't taken any aerial photos so far as I've had to concentrate on maneuvering too much, but I'm getting more confident so I might take my camera up at the end of the course.

Hiking in Les Houches

The summer school is pretty intensive, but if you take a lunch bag instead of sitting down for lunch, there is enough time for a nice hike. These two photos are taken on one of those hikes:

On Saturday we had the afternoon off, and I took the cable car up with a few people. It was a beautiful day, and flowers everywhere, very pretty!

Me with Anastasia and Claire, and one of the views along the way...

In the photo on the left we are standing in front of the Mont Blanc!

While on that hike, Paul called me to say he was coming to Les Houches! It's less than 1.5 hours to drive from Verbier (where he's taking his paragliding course) to Les Houches, and we both had the day off on Sunday so this worked our very nicely. I waited for him at the bottom of the cable car, and we went to Chamonix for dinner. A very touristy place, but pretty too! And it was the 21st of June, which is Fête de la Musique in France - so there were people playing music everywhere and we enjoyed strolling through the streets and listening to the different groups.

On Sunday (today) we took the cable car again, and from there we walked to the next cable car. It was mostly downhill and not a very difficult walk, but it was very warm so we took it easy and spent lots of time taking photos. The amount of flowers up there is just amazing, see here...

These photos are taken in front of the glacier coming down from the Mont Blanc, great views!

This is one of the stops of the Mont Blanc railway, a small train that goes up to 2300 m. We later climbed a bit higher, and on the right you can see the spectacular view of the valley towards Chamonix.

And here's a photo of Paul and the crazy car he took... He was going to rent a car but the rental company was closed and then one of the instructors offered him his car for the weekend... a very fun car in this weather!

Paul left for Verbier again in the afternoon, and we start lectures and tutorials again tomorrow. There's 5 more days left in the summer school, we finish on Friday after lunch. I'll hope to have time for a few more hikes though :)

The Views

The first picture below shows the main building of the summer school (Ecole de Physique). This is where we have all the lectures and tutorials, and generally hang out. Besides this building, there is a restaurant and several chalets where we sleep. The other photos show the view from in front of the main building at different times during the day... very stunning!

Les Houches

While Paul is (wishing he was) paragliding in Verbier, I am about 50 km away at a summer school on atmospheric boundary layers. Les Houches is right underneath the Mont Blanc and the summer school (at 1000m) has stunning views over the valley and the mountains. As in Verbier, the first 2 days here were rainy. And not just a little bit, more like a continuous downpour!

This morning we woke up to almost clear skies and amazing views. The restaurant has places outside too, so we can have our meals in the sun with a view - not bad! It's been a bit of a soap opera though, with one cook going home ill, and his replacement starting drinking heavily yesterday and continued until after breakfast today. He kept crawling around and falling over and finally had to be taken to hospital at lunch time. The lunch was very chaotic and we all had to help out with serving. Of course this cook has now been fired, and the previously ill cook has returned. The food tonight was really good, so we're all hoping that he will stay!

We had an hour free after lunch so we went for a very nice walk. I had to pay for it with getting sunburnt, but it was worth it. These photos are taken very close to the summer school:

The summer school is very interesting even though the subject is quite difficult. There are lots of Dutch people here so my Dutch can hopefully return to how it used to be. Ok, that's all for now, I'll try to post more photos soon. I just heard that Paul has had his first solo flight today, so hopefully he'll post another blog soon too!

Paragliding

On Monday I began a 14-day paragliding course in Verbier (Switzerland) run by Verbier Summits (www.verbier-summits.com). The course is a combined elementary pilot \ club pilot course and provides the minimum amount of training needed to fly unsupervised. During the first two days of the course I have learned only to take the paraglider out of its bag and attach the harness because the weather has been too bad to do anything else. I am hoping that conditions will improve soon so that I can get through the required syllabus in the available time. While waiting for the weather to improve have been for some short walks in the mountains behind Verbier. I don't go far because I need to be back in town quickly if conditions improve, but here are a couple of pictures showing Verbier and the weather I took this afternoon.

Beautiful Stockholm

I'm in Stockholm for a conference (on boundary layers & turbulence) this week. It's been a very busy week - the disadvantage of going to such a specialized conference is that I can't really skip any sessions so I am usually around from 9:00 to 18:00 every day. I gave a talk yesterday, it went fine and it was a relief to have that done!

So there hasn't been much time for sightseeing, and even most of the evenings were busy with receptions and conference dinners (at stunning locations!). Luckily the evenings are long - no midnight sun here, but it doesn't get dark until midnight or so. Stockholm is an incredibly beautiful city! I'd love to spend more time here... The city is built on lots of islands, so there is a lot of water and ships everywhere, I love that. Here are some photos to give you an impression... they don't really do the city justice though, as I have only been able to snap quick pictures while walking around town with a group of people.

Today is the last day of the conference, and it ends at about 15:00. So there finally is some time to see a bit more! I'm going to visit the Vasa Museum to see the ship that "sunk and then came up again" as my supervisor keeps calling it. Then I have to leave VERY early tomorrow (4 in the morning...) to fly to Geneva (through London). I'll meet Paul there for the weekend, before he heads off to his paragliding course and I will go to a summer school in the French Alps. Busy busy... but enjoying myself!

Back in Tromsø

Sorry for the long silence on this blog! Last Sunday, the KV Svalbard arrived back in Tromsø and Paul's cruise is over now. I was supposed to fly here tonight, but I changed my ticket and arrived on Saturday instead. Paul knew nothing about this and it was fun to surprise him early Sunday morning - still asleep in his cabin, hehe.

They had an "open ship" on Sunday, for anyone interested in the ship or the science. The scientists presented what they had done on the cruise. Here's Paul explaining how the Arctic Ocean works...

I was around for most of the day and later when I went home, I saw the ship going under the bridge on its way to the dock where they were going to unload the ship.

Tromsø has changed a lot since we were last here! Hardly any snow left except high on the mountains, trees are turning green and there are lots of flowers around. The weather has been sunny and warm as well, very nice! This was yesterday in the city centre...

I'm only here until Sunday morning, when I start my crazy tour of Europe - first a conference in Sweden, then 2 weeks of summer school in the French Alps and then a few days of holiday in Switzerland!! It will be very busy and lots of traveling, but I'm looking forward to it. Especially to being back in Switzerland (my favourite country!) - it's been way too long since I was last there!

The midnight sun has arrived here so the days are very long. If the weather stays this nice, we'll sure go for a couple of trips - as soon as the car is fixed! It's been standing still for too long and the battery is completely flat. I'm going to buy a charger today so that should fix the problem. Hopefully more photos soon!