Wow, this place is pretty quiet!

I like that, not a lot of chatter.

There is a project that I have in mind, I've always wanted to do. It is a story book, a collection from the hang gliding community (paragliding too) from Arizona.

The Arizona Soaring Association put out a book some time ago, "Collected Classics of Soaring" and it's a wonderful book about the pilots of sailplane here. I think the time is write for this sort of book to be made here, about paragliding and hang gliding.

I enjoy writing, I'm an old pilot here.

I would like to write a story about my life flying in Arizona.

Are there any objections to doing this right here?

I will detail the book project in another thread.

Hi, Adam

Welcome to the club, and to the message board. It's always good to meet new pilots, and to renew old acquaintences.

SAHGA is in kind of a quite period right now. A lot of the long-time HG and PG pilots have either left the sport entirely or only fly on rare occasion. There are newer pilots coming up, but they don't seem to have much to say on the board, at least not yet.

In any event, your flying stories idea sounds great. If it works out we could create a separate section for pilot biographies, auto-biographies and stories, similar to the one on the AHGA board.

Again, welcome aboard. I hope we'll meet soon on the hill.

John Lowery
Tucson

Sounds like me!

I quit, return to the sport, quit, return...

I have some stories, old and new about old and new pilots.

In my case, I'm not looking do anything other than lay down some stories and include a lot of pilots and my interaction with them. I have some amazing stories about flying Miller, really neat stuff.

...and besides, I'm thinking, even if it's crickets around here, I'll at least had fun remembering and planning new adventures.

Thanks John, if we haven't meet, I'm looking forward to meeting you.

I'll wait a while before I get started writing my story. You are good at what you do, I trust your judgement.

All the best.

Hi Adam,

We've met years ago and flow together. If you're looking for a group of regular pg pilots, well, they're not easy to find in Tucson. There are a handful of pilots, but most fly irregularly. For a city of a million people with 350 days of sun a year, surrounded by mountains, with a club that secures a half dozen sites, we've got a really bleak flying community.

If it weren't for Eric, there would pretty much be no HG in Tucson.

there are probably 10 PG pilots in Tucson, but most fly irregularly.

but- keep posting. I'm out of town for another 2 months, but will return.

Adam, I'm one of the aforementioned irregulars. As a green P2 with lots of rust on my skills, months containing 'r' in their names look good to me as well.

I live on the northwest side of Tucson and have recently joined AHGA and look forward to flying South Mountain and Mingus when the conditions and my skills permit. Perhaps I can impose on you for some guidance when the time is right.

Please send me a PM or pull my contact data from the club roster, so we can stay in touch.

--JRW

Hey thanks for the replys.

South Mountain up here alone has it's own flying community. I'm here for other reasons, the Tucson club is one of the oldest in the USA and I'm very proud of that fact.

As stated, summer is just too hot for me. I'm getting older and it's hard to hike when it's oven hot. I'm also self taught in paragliding so I take a conservative approach.

Months with "R" in them are best for me.

I like flying at home and I like making a little adventure on the road.

Tucson is a good day trip.



...and I'm broke. I still have a variometer and my national dues to save for. With three kids, mortgage, everyone needs something, including me and I'm almost home with all my gear, I'm stoked.


I like John's idea about a pilot profile or forum for that. He can move this thread there when ever he wants. I've seen John in action over the years, he does a great job, I respect that.


Soon, one night when I can't sleep, I'll dedicate time in getting my story started. I am a life long hang and paraglider pilot here in Arizona. I'm also an accomplished skateboarder, surfer of ocean wave and snow.

If you don't like it, don't read it.

If you like it, have fun, it's a gift.


When I have more information about making our collected stories of hang and paragliding here in Arizona into a book, I'll detail that thread. I'm going to query a guy who did something similar for skateboarding and I also have the ASA book too.

It should be a pretty cool project and I plan on getting the old guys as well as the new guys involved.

Thank you for the welcome and hope to see you this fall...

Welcome Adam,
Are you the same guy that the ahga banned from there message board?
It was fun to read your discussions with Dustin on responsibilities and such.
Then you started trying to impress the gullible young pilots with your stories,
Not so fun.
Good luck with a new audience.

Thanks for the welcome.

I've always had meaningful conversations with Dustin, he is a extremely talented pilot, the 4 hour flight we shared together was a good way to spend a little time together. I have nothing but respect for his piloting efforts.

Randy, I've been banned not once but twice from the AHGA web site.

I'm the same person here that I am there.

My little 2 year old, Noah still wants a bottle pretty regularly in the middle of the night, "Maaamma" he cries, he is so cute. My wife and I take turns, tonight is my turn and sometimes it's tough to get back to sleep so it looks like tonight is the night.

I truly don't know why "the cat is out of the bag" or why I got banned in the first place, or even the second place at that. It's probably because I wrote something that didn't match someone's agenda. But that really is inconsequential at this point as I have no agenda myself, then or now. I simply won't let anyone define me, I am capable of doing that on my own.

As I grow older, I understand that there are many people in hang gliding that are frustrated. They have nothing better to do than to go divergent on someone else. As a favorite book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull details it much the same, I by no means think I am a seagull, it's just that as a pilot, there are so many parallels...

I'll finish this with this thought, I am a mediocre pilot at best. I don't think I am better than anyone else. Although my story may come across as "all about me" quite the contrary, it is nothing more than my reflection of how amazed I am to have been able to fly with so many cool people. My story is also about other pilots, I simply happen to be the one writing about my own flights and how they intersected with others.

------------------------------

My name is Adam Trahan and I am 48 years old. I have three boys, Noah 2, Elijah 12 and Jacob is 16. My wife, Melissa completes our family and they are the most important thing in the world to me. I work in a local cardiology practice as a technician assisting in the the care of the heart. Heart surgery has been the basis of my career for over twenty years. I like to think that my life is typical, and it is on one level, and on another, my closets carry far to many boards, wings, foils and fly rods. The memories in the closets of my mind also carry way too many thoughts of waves, it's overwhelming at times but when life gets a bit hectic, I'll grab a board or a wing and take flight and it all seems right.

I was born in Phoenix, 1961 to a young woman in her early twenties. My Mother divorced when I was just a few months old, my father, a B tour golfer not ready to settle down, he wanted to take us on tour with him. My Mom said, "No" she wanted a normal life so he left her and I have not heard much more about him through out my life than what you read here. In the 60's, it was difficult for a single mother to make ends meet and my mother decided it was best that I live with her parents. I think it was a good decision. I grew up in a modest home on 27th Avenue and Osborn, a quaint little neighborhood that I am proud to remember. My summers were spent in the Pinal Mountains South of Globe in a cabin that my Grandparents had near the top of Signal Peak. I remember looking out from a boulder perch, over the vast expanse of the forest into the high chaparral, watching the swallows flit about, wondering what it would be like to fly...

We had a pool in the backyard, my GranDad being very practical, he half-buried a above ground Doughboy Pool and built a patio around it, he lovingly called it the "Monkey Bath" and early on it served as the ocean in my back yard.


GranDad and me

My Mother was in and out of my life as a young boy, my Grandparents taking on the duties and it worked out fine. As a young woman, I remember her taking me on trips to California to the beach where I saw surfing for the first time. In Arizona, as a young boy, it was tough to be a surfer. Those guys were so cool, they rode the waves with style, man I wanted to be like them so bad. My mom gave me her skateboard when I was five and I remember the earliest memories of her were skateboarding out front on the sidewalk in her capri pants, Keds and a sleeveless t-shirt, arms outstreached riding the wave on the sidewalk.

I loved that skateboard, it allowed me to dream about riding the waves and also to be like my mom. I remember riding it for hours on end just dreaming of riding waves...


My first bike

Like most kids, I had a bike. Like most kids, I liked to ride my bike to explore new places. My skateboard would not navigate the asphalt very well, the hard wheels (clay) would stop in an instant on any little protruberance or tiny rock. Many times I would just ride with my skateboard held onto the handle bars or, I would forget my skateboard completely and explore the big dirt field next to our neighborhood. I used my bike as transportation yet it stood for much more, it stood for freedom.

My bicycle gave me range.

Early on, my GranDad taught me to save money for a goal. At our cabin in the Pinal's, there were other's cabin owners that rode motorcycles. My GranDad wanted nothing more than to share his time with me so when I asked him if we could have a motorcycle, he told me "yes" and he taught me how to save for one. We got a big mason jar and taped a picture of a motorcycle on it. On the lid, we roughed out a slot to stick the money into and we found a place in his shop to keep the jar. I remember so many trips to that bench to put my change into the jar...

We ended up buying a small "mini bike" and another one for my GranDad to ride too. We explored the fire roads in the mountains, riding around, looking but we always ended up at the top, sitting on those boulders, looking out at the vast expanse of the Arizona horizon and beyond.

My Great Grandfather died in the early 70's. He owned a liquer store in Tennessee and had bought a farm with the proceeds. He named the farm, "Sunnybrook" after the name of the whiskey that sold so well. My GranDad inherited the farm from him and he packed up and moved back to the farm to retire. I was about ten years old and had been going back to Tennessee in the summers to be with my extended family and just to be a boy.

My GranDad taught me how to fish with a bamboo pole in the farm ponds in Tennessee. Fishing was THE adventure on the farm and I had a routine of getting up very early in the morning, packing myself a little snack and heading off to the various farm ponds in the area.


My uncles and me

Fishing also afforded me freedom. In the long summer day spent alone on the farm, I would have to entertain myself. There was no electronic games such as X-box or Nintendo Game Boy, it was just me, the hills and fishing. Each year that I would go back to Tennessee, I took with me the memories of things I would see at home on my adventures. Our farm house was on the top of a hill overlooking the farmland. The hilltop was always windy and like the top of the mountain where our cabin was in Arizona, the view was inspiring, just sitting there, looking out over the view, wondering what it was like to fly.



I started making little model hang gliders out of plastic straws for spars, a bread bag for a sale and a paperclip for a control bar and kingpost. To make it even more real, I would use a little cardboard man cut out of a manilla file folder and tape it on the control bar. I remember plenty of times, sending that hang glider out on a flight. I made them all the time, so many times that right before my Grandmother died, she gave me one of the little paper men that I made. She had stuck it in a drawer and saved it for all of those years. She pulled it out and gave it to me, "Adam, do you remember this?"

Old people do not get old by being foolish...

Back in Arizona, living with my Mother now, things began to change for me. She bought a home near where Metrocenter is now, in sight of Shaw Butte. The range on my bicycle became farther. My skateboarding was improving now that the urethane wheel was invented and my fishing suffered. The cabin in the Pinals was sold. Life really changed for me. My mother struggled to raise me and she did the best that she could do. Yamaha came out with a "moto-bike" and she bought me one. That bike was so cool. It had shocks and I could jump that thing a country mile. I was already racing bicycle motocross and riding my bike in the empty swimming pools of the area. Sometimes I brought my skateboard along and it was really neat to ride it on the sides of the pool.

I got better and better at jumping and riding in pools and I started to look farther out for better jumps and different pools. My exploring took me to an area at the base of Shaw Butte where there was an empty pool and a dirt field that had jumps that I could fly off of on my BMX. I had seen hang gliding on television at at Torrey Pines but this was from a distance. Now I could actually watch the guys fly and land.

[to be continued]

I'm having fun with writing the story. It's enjoyable and I could care less how long and boring it is. It is my story like many of you who have a story of learning to fly and flying. I have some memories I want to get down and this will serve as a reminder.

note to self: Greg Phillips, Dave Smith and the hang gliding houses of Phoenix, US Hang Gliders on 19th Avenue and Lucky Campbell, Gary Waugh, Mark Clarkson and the first XC's from Shaw Butte, Jeff Reynolds and his Father, Don Laww and Don Jones, Hang Gliding, Whole Air and the Rigid Wing Reader (Chuck Rhodes), early South Mountain, the Crators and my first lesson, Ole and John Kemmeries and John's hang gliding film and please include a image of John hanging from the control bar upside down in his Comet at Shaw Butte, the parties in the LZ, driving for all the Buttites, skateboarding CAP, surfing Big Surf, pioneering snowsurfing, Joseph C. Lincoln and working for him, Don's death at SM, North Shore, Kailua, Makapuu, surfing the N-Shore, learning to thermal at Shaw Butte, R/C gliding, building tow rigs, early paragliding and learning to tow them, flatland thermals, my own XC's, first permit for official club flying at the Aubrey Cliffs with Chuck Rhodes help, XC contests, aero tow with Brad Lindsey, UL at Kemmeries, gliders, deaths in the club, 10,000' aero-tow, quitting and returning to flight, kite surfing and foils, flying with Dustin, SM is the new Shaw Butte, paragliding carries hang gliding and current interests.

I got a call from OLE the other day. I had sold him my Fusion that I was hoping to use as my toppless. He had been flying it and had a bad launch somewhere high and totalled the glider. Gees, I know how that feels but it was good to hear from him again and I'm glad he is OK. Ole likes to write about hang gliding and I admire his style. He has an impressive list of people who he has taught to UL and he is one of the people I want for sure to write for the hang gliding history in Arizona, the book.

I'll use this post as an image vault for the story.