I think this one is from a PWC competition.
This weekend I volunteered for the Paragliding World Cup in Chelan WA. It was insanely cool. I think for this post, I’ll just leave the talking to the pictures and videos mostly (I’m a little short on time but want to get this stuff out there). This first video is a short clip I took with my point and shoot Kodak. I took it in-between helping pilots set up their wings, and as you can tell, it was nuts. There were probably at least 4 pilots launching at any given time, and I was nearly kicked in the face by pilots flying over me a couple of times. There were OVER 100 PILOTS IN THE AIR!!!
There were so many big names there, it was crazy. There were people from major paragliding classic films, company owners (Gin himself was flying a new design), past champions, video crews….list goes on. I also can’t even begin to list how many countries were represented there as well…many of them couldn’t speak a bit of English.
I think one of the really cool things about this sport is that unlike some of those crowd pleasing ones like baseball, football etc…paragliders seem to be a small, very approachable group. I met a few of the people listed above, and they had no attitude, they were down to earth, and just…well…normal like you and I.
One fellow I met was the video man for PWC TV (video below). I wanted to show this first video because at the beginning, they show the school (Aerial Paragliding) that I am learning to paraglide from.
World Cup Chelan arrival & first flight from broers philippe on Vimeo.
This next video is shows the first part of the competition (the first video was just a practice day). My main claim to fame is that at 5.26min you can see my back watching to see if the dust devil is going to whip anyone up….happens all the time.
I think it’s entertaining that this guy thinks there are still “Indians” in the “wild west”…I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard this region referred to as the “wild west” before…..heh!
World cup Chelan task 1 part1 from broers philippe on Vimeo.
Well, as promised…I could go on for hours (still on a high from the awesome weekend) but I’m going to break away for now, and leave you with a picture gallery of some of the photos I (and my Dad) took of the competition.
Enjoy!
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