Joerg takes a ride

That some commute hes got to get to work!

Cheers

I've seen this bike riding video before... Pretty neat !

Is that really Joerg ? I thought his rea name was Joerg ?

boB

I doubt it, but I'm sure he rides just like that.

And a real bitch coming home.

Cheers

The rider is a mindless idiot...

who is having a lot of fun.

Some /calculated/ risks are worth taking.

Or perhaps you think this 14yo is mindless :)

I know one of the people you briefly glimpse in the video.

He won't think it's so fun when he's spending the rest of his life totally paralyzed in a wheel chair after hitting one of those trees. This story pla ys out time and again, the more they do it, the more overconfident they get and the more they push they envelope until they're fantasizing being in co ntrol, crash and burn.

Sure, if there's a material payoff. Otherwise they're just fools.

That's the /worst/ reason to do something risky.

Someone risking their life so someone else will pay for a little entertainment is revolting. Far too close to Roman gladiators etc.

Some people rock climb, or jump out of airplanes, or (like me) ski at irrational velocities. The opposite extreme is to never do anything risky.

Maybe that biker is so good that he's taking little risk.

Some, admittedly calculated, risk is good. That applies to electronic design too.

The risk there is small. Sailplanes can stall and crash with a good change of survival.

I'd like to try gliding some day; looks like fun. But I do hate being a beginner at anything, and the overhead of stuff like gliding and parachute jumping (which I've done) is too high. I can ski all day with just short breaks for food and alcohol.

Den onsdag den 12. oktober 2016 kl. 18.14.46 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

ly paralyzed in a wheel chair after hitting one of those trees. This story plays out time and again, the more they do it, the more overconfident they get and the more they push they envelope until they're fantasizing being in control, crash and burn.

A college of mine has been out of commission for a few weeks and is still on crutches after dislocating a hip and hurting his back in a mountain bike crash

The doctors are getting better at sorta fixing broken necks because they have plenty of mountain bikers to practice on

-Lasse

Just so. As a very experienced instructor put it, it has been a long time since someone found a /new/ way to die gliding; the corollary is that the risks are understood and risk avoidance is taught.

I've seen three prangs, all with zero or minimal pilot injury.

OTOH, a friend of mine died gliding, and I called out the blood bath to someone that I watched slide off a gentle ski piste into a tree. It turned out they were (past tense) an experienced local skier.

Being a beginner at anything is /fun/. It implies that there are new exciting experiences coming my way.

When I look at a child's enjoyment of, say, a leaf floating down a stream I feel sad that such simple things no longer enthrall me. I seek to recreate such simple pleasures by learning new things.

In that sense, I feel sad for you!

With a modicum of experience and a reasonable day, you can stay up as long as you want in a glider. The limit is usually your bladder. If you expect to stay up all day then you take the appropriate precautions (N.B. that doesn't involve dehydration, since that's a "old" way to kill yourself!)

You could probably stall a sailplane over a forest or a mountain range and likely survive.

People die skiing, usually hitting chairlift supports or trees, or having heart attacks at altitude. But the risk is roughly 1 PPM per day. Not much riskier than sitting on a couch watching TV.

But most of the instructors are macho and annoying. I was testing the impulse responses of a sailplane and the instructor kept telling me that I shouldn't fly that way. Once I figured it out, he said that I must have flown before, which I hadn't. I guess he hadn't studied much control theory.

Oh, don't. There's lots of wonderful stuff that still thrills me, and a zillion things to do. But some activities, like skydiving, just have too high an overhead rate, like a few minutes of free-fall in a full day of hassle and waiting.

I had an accident a couple years ago, a pretty serious head injury, and after that things weren't wonderful any more. I would look at spectactular views and cool circuits and beautiful women, and just not care. That was awful. Six months later, everything was OK.

I might try it. The Truckee airport is supposed to be good, lots of updrafts on the Sierra slopes.

I try to keep offroad rides under 25mph. MTB riding is a good quality test. When I built a prototype for a client in spring I strapped it to the luggage rack of my mountain bike and took it on a gnarly 33mi ride to have a brewski (ok, two brewskis) and a growler. A stainless crash-proof growler, of course. The prototype still worked when I got home so I knew it was good to ship. The growler opened with a major

These are the real hardcore guys:

ly paralyzed in a wheel chair after hitting one of those trees. This story plays out time and again, the more they do it, the more overconfident they get and the more they push they envelope until they're fantasizing being in control, crash and burn.

Okay, fine, let the idiots have their fun, just have them sign a waiver tha t no search and rescue will be forthcoming when they get in trouble, let na ture take its course.

Yes, but hypothermia and dehydration might kill you :)

(Stalling is unlikely to kill you, spinning is more probable. A spin start when one wing stalls :) )

Yup.

That would be offputting; fortunately I seem to have avoided them. There's quite probably a self-perpetuating club-specific ethos/atmosphere at work.

Instructing presents interesting tradeoffs. You have to allow Bloggs to do things you wouldn't do and to get themselves into trouble - but intervene before Bloggs gets you into trouble. That can make for some interesting approaches.

Watching instructors having their annual training can be very entertaining, and SOP is to have near-solo pilots demonstrate enter spins at 1000ft - and exiting them, and then getting safely back on the ground.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not an instructor.

I wasn't really :)

The secret to happiness is to find ways to be content with whatever you (still) have and can (still) do :)

I had half a dozen static line jumps. The sixth was the same as the second, and was as challenging as a slow video game. I never landed more than 20 yards from the bulls eye. In the long term it looked like the challenge would be to hold someone else's hand in the air, which was insufficient to keep me interested.

OTOH, with gliding you never know what will happen on your next flight: the sky might spit you out or suck you up like a homesick angel, or a buzzard might show you how to avoid landing out. Or you could gaze into a raptor's eyes while taking 30 seconds to fly past it. Or eyeball a sheep on a hillside as you whizz past.

Nasty.

My daughter had her spine reconstructed due to scoliosis (thank god for the NHS), and I was perfectly happy for her to learn to glide afterwards. And ski, for that matter. Much better than horse riding, for example :)

If you like it, great. If you don't like it then you know why it isn't for you and can move onto something else.

That's probably because you've never experienced long freefalls, spinning, tracking, doing body aerobatics, joing up with others or once in a while just popping the drogue chute 2-3 seconds after exiting at high altitude.

A few times I told the guys I wanted to jump last and open right away. "Why on earth would you want to do that?". They could not understand that there are people who thoroughly enjoy a 20+ minute sail under a parachute. You can even find some thermals that way. Cooling towers of power stations or in my case steel factories work great.

Once I pulled at around 16000ft. Not 100% legit because technically we were supposed to have oxygen up there. That was a fun ride. I landed way off the official map but it was worth every minute.