The Flying of Dreams
by Richard Polito. Marin Independent Journal, Dec. 20th 1999

TAKING OFF: Bodhi Kroll lifts off Mount Tam with IJ reporter Rick Polito as a passenger on his hang glider.

My knuckles were never white. They might have been a bit pale - my mouth went dry - but the butterflies in my stomach never got off the ground.

I was the one who got to fly.

It was hang gliding, no experience necessary, all courtesy of Bodhi Kroll, the exuberant glider pilot behind the San Francisco Hang Gliding center.

Kroll flew, I was mere ballast, beaming, laughing, exhilarated ballast.

It started with a phone call. Kroll's company is one of a very few with official permission to take no-experience passengers on tandem hang glider flights. Kroll's got the paperwork and the OK from the California state parks, the Marin County Board of Supervisors and the Federal Aviation Administration. His is the only outfit in Northern California offering these flights.

He called me. He wanted me to jump off the top of Mount Tam, take a few unsure steps down a rocky hillside, and go airborne with 2,000 feet between me and Stinson Beach.

"You don't have to know anything," Kroll told me.

The more I thought about it, the more that sounded like an advantage.

Hang gliding is not without risk. Kroll told me he'd never been hurt, but before I flew I had to sign four pages worth of waivers and releases.

I've white water-kayaked upside down through Class IV rapids. I've bungee-jumped outlaw style off a 192 foot bridge, and I commute by bike through San Francisco traffic every day.

Still, hang gliding has that "extreme sports" sheen. As the days between phone call and launch lessened, my nerves stirred a bit.

It didn't help that his name was Bodhi. The name conjured up images of a multi-scarred, multipierced surfer ne'er-do-well hyped on Mountain Dew and living on the edge.

But then the day arrived and I met the real Bodhi, a 33-year-old almost paunchy entrepreneur who's been flying as long as he's been driving. No visible scars, no tattoos, no Mohawk. If he was sporting a "No Fear" logo, it was hidden under a comfortably loose sweatshirt.

Kroll had flown 900 tandem flights, "probably 600 of them here," he said, his arm sweeping across a meadowed slope just off Ridgecrest Boulevard along the spine of Mount Tamalpais.

That made me feel a bit better. The Red Tail Ale beer logo emblazoned across the wing of Kroll's glider was less reassuring.

I have some paperwork for you," Kroll said as he unfolded the glider.

We talked through a few points. Did I have a basic understanding of how gliders work? Had I ever heard about the "emergency parachute"? Did I know that I'd have no control whatsoever from the moment my feet left the ground?

There was no box to check for "I guess so." I circled "yes," scrawled my initials in 15 separate spots and signed my name at least three times.

Buckled into my harness, we were ready to go. Kroll started by practicing the launch run. We ran together, side-by-side, my arm over his shoulder, 20 or so paces. That sprint, and an admonition to touch nothing while we were in flight, was the extent of the training.

With the glider assembled, a process more akin to setting up a tent than constructing an aircraft, Kroll snapped my harness to the frame , and we moved to the edge of the slope.

It was very, very, steep. I would have been nervous running down it without 215 square feet of nylon strapped to my back. We stood. Kroll watched the pair of ribbons positioned to tell wind direction on the hillside. His wife, Hayley Marsden-Kroll, sat down the slope and helped Kroll scout the "fluffs."

We stood a good five minutes with the glider on our backs. There was little wind, but Kroll didn't want any of it headed in the "down" direction.

"We can deal with anything but down," he told me, kicking the dirt at our feet to see how the dust scattered. He explained that he'd never really been frightened in the air. "If I'm scared I just don't go," he said. "There are too many good days out here to mess around with the bad ones."

We watched the wind.

"It'll come up in a minute," he said.

We waited some more.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yes," I gulped, my mouth suddenly dry.

We started running, step for step, bounding down the slope. Twenty steps and our feet were churning air.

We were flying.

This is not the flying of airplanes and peering through tiny scratched windows from the economy cabin. This was the flying I remembered from dreams, the smooth arc of movement through air, the clarity of the landscape rolling and unfolding beneath me.

I laughed. I smiled. The obligatory "Wow," passed my lips.

A flock of small birds chased streams of air through a ravine 200 feet below. I could see the grass moving on the hillsides. I could look down through the trees, trace the trails winding along the slopes.

I understood Mount Tamalpais in a whole new way.

"We'll go into a dive and try a turn," Kroll told me. We could hear each other clearly. The wind noise was present but not overwhelming. He moved his weight - I touched nothing, balance neutral - and the glider leaned forward, the air speed increased, and the mountainside came up to greet us.

Kroll moved again and we swept up in a gentle banking turn.

We were getting closer to the beach. The sun gleamed off the water scattering shadows on the sand. I knew the flight would end soon. I looked everywhere, embracing the details, living a moment fully realized.

Kroll told me we'd be landing on our feet. "Just bend your knees," he said.

We spiraled twice over the beach, came in at a shallow angle, and pulled up in a mini-stall at the last moment, to settle with a light bounce on the sand.

I was smiling.

"Well?" Kroll asked. "How was that?"

I smiled some more.

I'd come to the edge of the mountain expecting thrills and adrenaline and found instead a poetry of experience.

My knuckles never went white.

And the world was never so real.