--- id: reader_ask_20260802_140611_0bea10 title: 'Ask from Daniel Mobile: How about hang gliding?' category: Wisdom predicted_narrative_arc: Near-miss adventure followed by continued pursuit and eventual cessation sentiment: Reflective emotions: - fear - excitement - nostalgia keypoints: - Ordered Seagull high-aspect glider before accident - Mistook rotor for thermal and nearly crashed in Golden - Canceled order while paralyzed in Denver hospital - Completed sailplane training in Texas with family involvement - Flew in Texas, Nevada, and Arizona before stopping for financial reasons summary: The speaker recounts ordering a Seagull hang glider while living in Boulder and taking lessons in Golden, Colorado, only to cancel the order from a Denver hospital bed after a glacier fall left him paralyzed. During training he launched into what he thought was a thermal but was actually a rotor, getting violently lifted then driven toward the ground before recovering at the last moment. He later pursued sailplane flying in Texas and other states but eventually stopped due to cost. tags: - reader-ask - family - wisdom - hang-gliding - golden-colorado - sailplanes - texas-flying - rotor-encounter - near-miss - rotor-incident - glacier-fall - boulder-colorado - rotor-wind - near-crash sycophancy: 0 truth_score: 9 entropy: 4 sample: false consent: own_laptop agent: witness source_session: '' created: '2026-08-02T19:06:11Z' updated: '2026-08-03T04:46:18Z' vault_stage: 07_CODEX headwaters: READER prefix: READER enrich_status: answered_enriched enrich_blockers: [] enrich_method: llm pipeline_filename: READER_2026-08-02_daniel-mobile-how-about-hang-gliding.md source_kind: reader_ask proposed_topic: Wisdom lane: Wisdom reader_ask_id: 20260802_140611_0bea10 reader_id: 770c72c1eea64574 display_name: Daniel Mobile routing_source: carbon corpus_topic: Wisdom dual_write_from: witness dual_write_at: '2026-08-03T04:46:19Z' witness_codex_shelf: Wisdom --- # Question from Daniel Mobile How about hang gliding? ## Your answer Wow, a good question about Hang Gliding. that was in Golden Co when I lived in Boulder and before I had enough money or fright to take up proper sailplanes. I had. Ordered. A seagull. Uh, high aspect glider. Just before I fell off the glacier and when I was in the hospital in Denver, I had one of the nurses hold a phone and dial the number so I could cancel my order when I lay paralyzed in the hospital bed. Right I was. Flying. Uh, taking instructions in Golden and uh. On one morning I watched the thermal build all the way up the slope. The rustling of the. Uh, brush and flowers and, uh, grasses came all the way up. Where I was, and so I launched forward by running down toward it. And immediately got jerked violently upward. For about 100 and 5200 feet vertical and then violently shoved downward as I flew forward. Because it wasn't a thermal, it was a rotor. It was a huge. Spinning swirl of air. And so now I found myself not just stalled, but being pushed toward the ground just as fast as I went up. So the only thing I could do was to accelerate, and that was to aim the glider straight at the ground and hopefully gain some airspeed. And it was at the last moment, probably 50 feet above the ground, that I caught just enough air and was able to level out. Pretty violently scared everybody that was watching me that I almost crashed completely and they cancelled the rest of the lessons for the day and it was about a week or two later that I went up on the glacier and asked for guidance. I didn't take up glider flying or. Sailplanes until I was in. San Antonio, TX. With Angelina and I would start riding my bicycle out to Bernie, Texas and finishing my 100 hours of flight training. Uh, Carissa came out on one trip and went up, uh, on a uh. Tandem flight with the instructor and I watched her from the ground do a loop and do a high speed. Down the full length of the runway before landing. That was fun, but I have a bunch of good memories. I'll share in another, uh, audio about flying with, uh, Buzzards and. Learning to, to fly all around Texas. I actually even flew in Minden, NV and in couple places kind of near Lake Pleasant. There was a in Arizona, there was a glider port that I flew. So yeah, I I really love flying, but just couldn't afford to keep doing it.