A Helmet-and Bravery-Needed to Soar
by Rebecca Patt - The Dispatch, July 19, 2000

By weekday, I am a mild-mannered, gravity-bound reporter, conquering the forces of evil from an unspacious cubicle. Who would guess that by weekend, I don large kite-like wings, kneepads, and a helmet as I soar free as a bird over the hills?

Last weekend, anyway. I had my first two hang gliding lessons. They told me that if I was committed enough and progressed through several lessons, I could become a pilot. Me? A pilot? Those three words together, though unbelievable at first, were a sweet-sounding revelation.

Learning to fly isn't easy. Fortunately, my charming instructor Bodhi Kroll, of the San Francisco Hang Gliding Center on Mt. Tamalpais, didn't just shove me off the side of a mountain. We started on flat ground at the bunny hill in Tres Pinos, where Bodhi taught me the fundamentals of launching. "Viking charge!" Bodhi coached as he watched my sluggish, awkward sprint through the cow pasture with the 60-pound glider strapped to my back. Then there was learning to steer. "Have you ever seen a hawk turn? All you have to do is adjust one feather." Bodhi twitched one finger to demonstrate the subtlety of it. Other times, running beside me, he would command, "Hump the wheel! Hump the wheel!" I guess you'd have to see the hang glider to understand that one.

Bodhi, by the way, runs the only tandem hang gliding center in Northern California, and is one of about 100 hang gliding instructors in the United States who are certified to take people on tandem flights. He told me about how he had set the world's record for taking the oldest person tandem hang gliding, an 83-year-old. He revealed that in his many years of leading approximately 1,000 tandem flights, he had had three passengers vomit in the air. I felt like I was about to vomit in the grass after all the sprinting. "You look shattered," Bodhi said and fortunately suggested we take a break. He assured me that once I started running downhill, leaning forward with the glider on my back, not even Carl Lewis could beat me, even though he warned it might go against all my instincts at first.

The slogan of Bodhi's business is "Come See Why Birds Sing." The first time Bodhi got me and my glider up on a slope and I found my feet leaving the ground, I let out a long, terrified shriek. "No screaming next time," Bodhi said firmly. I knew I would be more ready the next time and wouldn't scream. In fact, I felt thrilled and exhilarated and wanted to run off the hill over and over again. I forgot about everything else in the world. Bodhi kept reminding me to keep a light grip on the steering bars and to keep my eyes on the target, not down at my feet. Not bad advice for taking any sort of leap in life.

I hope I get to become a hang glider pilot one day, although I realize it is a significant investment. After you advance through the first few lessons, you have to buy your own equipment, not to mention the lessons which are a small fortune. A hang glider would likely cost more than my car. Then I'd have to buy a new car big enough to transport my glider. Maybe I could just sell my car and hang glide everywhere. Could I be so flighty? Now that I've gotten a taste of hang gliding - maybe.