Journal

Last weekend I went for a crash (haha!) course in paragliding in Wasserkuppe, Germany. I left at saturday, 6 in the morning, from Amsterdam, drove for almost six hours together with three colleagues and checked into our hotel. The village turned out to be nothing more than an airstrip, two hotels, a flight-school and a few touristy shops, and the quality of the hotels was…lacking. I was staying in a room with two other colleagues, and while the room’s size was a lot better than any of the other rooms in the “hotel” the quality of the furniture was poor. But whatever, right? I was there to do some paragliding so as soon as we were all installed, had some lunch, we walked over to the flight-school to get some basic instructions. Guess what? The mountain-people of Germany speak maybe three words of English if they tried, and they never try, so even the young, hot-shot instructor couldn’t be arsed to elaborate some things in English when our collective knowledge of the German language fell short. We quickly decided to just “wing it” (haha!) and see how far we’d get.

We soon realised, as we were accompanied by about 20 other paragliders, that our private lessons weren’t going to be so private, but again, our indomitable spirits wouldn’t allow us to be down about it. So, within two hours of arriving, we all got a chance to glide down a gentle hill, practice taking off and landing. We were informed that it would be beneficial if we had good shoes that protected our ankles, because landings, when done wrong, could be rough. Of course, I just had some sneakers on me, and while I could’ve done with some extra shoes by the end of the weekend (more on that in a bit), my ankles held up pretty good and I had no trouble there. Sadly, my colleague Remco wasn’t so lucky and he sprained his ankle pretty badly on his first flight of the second day.

So, the first day I learned how to take off, land, pick my parachute back together and walk back up the hill. Every flight from that low, sloping hill took about a minute, tops, and during that time I was only busy checking to see if I was doing things right, so I couldn’t really enjoy it. So after that minute, you grab everything together, and walk back for about ten to fifteen minutes. Then you take a few minutes to catch your breath, you lay out your parachute and start untangling the wires. That takes another fifteen minutes. Then you await your turn to go, which is another fifteen minutes, so all in all, you get 1 minute of flight for about 59 minutes of preparation.

We were all paired up, but seeing as how I was in a higher weight-class than any of the others, and thus got a bigger chute, I was by myself. That’s good in one way, not so good in others. Good; you don’t have to take turns flying. Not so good; you have nobody to help you unfuck the parachute and get ready.

By the end of the evening, when the sun started to set and the thermals of the hill and valley started to change, I had done about four flights, and I was pretty tired of walking up the hill. We packed things up and walked back to the flight-school. After some confusion regarding the starting time the following day (7 o’clock), we left for our hotel to change and shower. Before we got to our hotel, the flight instructor invited us to dinner at a youth hostel, in another village, with the entire group. That sounded peachy keen to me, but somehow the others decided we’d go to another village where there was a kartofelsalat festival. I don’t know what was wrong with them, but reluctantly I agreed to go with them.

When we got to the next village, it turned out to be completely dead. They had a few “restaurants,” and a stage on which, during the day, they had live music, but was empty except for some kids climbing on it. We found a restaurant and had some dinner. We all ordered our drinks, and that must’ve been the most exciting order the woman had ever had, because it consisted of more than just beer or wine. I asked for a tequila tonic, and when she came back with the drinks she informed me that they didn’t have tonic, because “well, we’re not a bar, we’re a restaurant.” I suppressed the urge to explain to the woman that this was barely a diner, let alone a restaurant. I ordered a Jack and coke instead.

The dinner was pretty terrible, but we had fun making fun of the place, and all encompassing misery turned out to be a source of great entertainment. We headed back to our hotel as soon as possible to drink ourselves into a stupor in the bar there. Sadly, the hotel had closed because it was past 10 o’clock. What the fuck!? We went to the other hotel, which was also closed, but with a little bit of convincing, we were able to buy some things. Anton had brought all kinds of things on the trip because he doesn’t understand the concept of traveling light, but it turned out to be a good idea. He had chips and snacks and even a bottle of Bacardi with him, which we drank – together with the few things we managed to buy at the other hotel, like red bull, coke, a bottle of Australian Cabernet – at my hotel room, which was the biggest.

At 2:30 it was time for me to go to sleep, because I had to get up at 6. This was one bottle of rum and two bottles of wine later, and we were just down to three people, while one had put earplugs in and was snoring away in the room. I knew the following day was going to be painful…

…but it wasn’t. I got up rather easily, showered and got dressed. I went exploring in the hotel while I waited for the others got ready, and found the hotel be even more sad and depressing than I had initially thought. When we came downstairs there was a pre-made “breakfast” waiting for us. It was terrible. We went to the flight-school where we grabbed our stuff together and were driven to another (steeper) hill on the same valley that we flew in the previous day, and while the sun was coming up in the east we did our first few flights. And what a flight it was for me.

So, the valley we flew in was mostly grass, some trees and bushes, and here and there some patches of swamp. Now, when you’re not so great at spotting these wet-spots, and when you do you find that your control over the chute isn’t so great yet, you might find it hard to avoid these swampy areas. My first flight ended with my soaking my shoes and trousers with muddy water. There were some splashes on my shirt as well as my jacket, but most of it were my shoes and trousers. Then the trek back up the hill started. I have to admit I cursed a bit before starting that trek in wet clothing. Luckily it was going to be very warm that day, so I thought I’d just let it dry.

When I got back up the hill I was the laughing stock of all my colleagues for a few minutes, before I went to prepare my parachute again for another flight. I wasn’t going to let so swampy water and soaked shoes ruin my enjoyment, though I did have to sit down and let my trousers dry a bit to prevent chafing.

The hill was a lot steeper, and being there that early in the morning, while the air was warming up, it gave us a really good look at the way thermals help the flight. The flights took longer, went further, and higher and were generally scarier and far more enjoyable. We got some company from some delta-wing fliers and generated quite a bit of onlookers because we were along a popular hiking trail.

By lunchtime our session was over, we gathered up all our things and left for the flight-school. Once we got all the equipment back in its proper place I went to change and put on some dry clothing (which made a world of difference) but was still stuck with my damp shoes. We had some lunch at our hotel, checked out and drove back home.

All in all it was a great weekend, very exhausting, and besides some bruises on my arms and ego, I didn’t get hurt. There are tons of pictures, which I’ll put up soon. :)

Finally, a silver lining; apparently whatever it is that they found in my mother’s liver isn’t cancer. I am not sure what it is yet, but regardless, they’re talking about operating on her lung and removing the tumor from there.

A little backstory; my mother was diagnosed with lung-cancer. At the time of the diagnosis, it had already spread to her brain. Normally, under those circumstances, they don’t operate, but seeing as how my mother would die without treatment, they removed the tumor from her head. That operation was such a success that they decided to start chemotherapy on the tumor in her lung and decide after the first couple of session whether or not to operate. In doing so, they already kind of broke their own rule of not operating when the cancer is spreading, but they were willing to do so anyway. Then, when my mother was examined after the first period of chemo, they noticed that the tumor in her lung had gotten smaller, but they also noticed that there were spots on her liver, and they once again refused to operate on the one in her lung, since it was already spreading. My mother went to get a second opinion in a different (and better) hospital, and they decided that it was very strange that the cancer had spread while in chemo, and while the main tumor had gotten smaller. So they decided to do a liver-puncture and figure out what those spots were. The results were just in, and it’s not cancer, and the operation to remove the tumor from her lung is once again on the agenda.

1. 1x BioShock.
2. 2x 1024 DDR2 RAM
3. 1x 600W power supply
4. 1x GeForce 8800 Ultra 768Mb RAM
5. 1x 320Gb harddisk
6. 1x 320Gb harddisk (external)

The man’s a maniac. :)

I’ve been very stressed out, lately. On all fronts things haven’t been going too smoothly, and while I’ve always been good at separating worlds and not letting stress in one area of my life spill over into another area of my life, I’m afraid I’ve reached a limit to the amount of stress I can comfortably handle. It’s interesting to see what happens to you when under pressure from all sides, the way you change your behaviour and the way you think, how you treat people but mostly how you treat yourself. I’ve always had a relatively healthy dose of self-loathing, which wasn’t really dependent on what other people thought of me. It was always there, and it kept me honest, and it kept me striving. Of late, mostly due to losing some measure of self-control due to stress, my self-loathing has been getting a little stronger, which wreaks havoc to my determination and discipline. Thoughts of radical changes come and go, but an inescapable fact is that the circumstances will, at least for the first time after a radical change, require more of my attention, and thus increase my stress instead of diminish it.

And then I get word from Veed that he’s going to send me a rather cool, belated birthday present, and it makes me realise how lucky I can be, and then I ask myself the question that I keep asking myself in order to put things in perspective; Are you a child-soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Have you had to hack your parents, brothers and sisters apart with a machette in order to prove your worth to the rebels? Are they forcing you to sniff cocaine laced with gunpowder on a daily basis in order to insure your servitude and give you a feeling of invincibility so you can go out and commit heinous crimes against your fellow men? No…then shut up and count your lucky stars.

One of my colleagues and I were invited to an AT5 (local television station) client and suppliers party yesterday. Party isn’t the right word, but what we ended up doing was lots of fun. We went on a large boat, and cruised around the canals and up and down the Amstel river, we ate, we drank, we talked, but mostly, we had a Bob Ross painting course. Now, for those of you who don’t know who Bob Ross is; leave now, and don’t come back until you do. For those who do; we all got the Bob Ross certified paints (titanium white, Van Dyke brown, etc.) and a bunch of Bob Ross certified brushes and spatchulas (two-inch brush, one-inch brush, fan-brush, etc.) and we were instructed on how to make a nice, scenic, Bob Ross-esque painting. And there were prizes to be had for the top three paintings. Guess who won the first prize? Exactly. Me.

At night we had a Jenever tasting at Hooghoudt on the Reguliersgracht, and had dinner there, too. Had a fascinating conversation with the director of programming of AT5, and the chief editor for the NOS 8 o’clock news about the changing way in which news is reported and how much violence is shown on the news.

I had a really great evening. Oh, my prize? I won a full Bob Ross kit, with an easel, brushes, paints, 3-hour instructional DVD, books, examples, etc. I have no idea what I’m going to do with that. :)