By Mark Colbert, EAA 1033422
It was summer 2016 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at Fayerweather Island, on Long Island Sound.
The wind’s speed was right and the direction was shifting in our favor. We had our gliders laid out and ready to jump into the onshore breeze with whirling two-stroke engines on our backs. We all flew that day. We took breaks, had lunch and kept hydrated in the midday sun. I topped off my fuel and launched again, leaving others on the ground for a “long-laster” — a flight that you just can’t stop enjoying, and you fly until empty.
This actual day of flying was not that memorable, as we fly this site often throughout the warmer months in Connecticut. What I do remember is that I flew without the GoPro or cameras and just enjoyed the sport for what it is with no concerns for footage and imagery to share. It was a good day to brush up on low-level skills, like correcting for wind using weight shift and trimming my Paramania glider, and just enjoying the gift. One of those free powered paragliding days. That’s about all I can remember.
As usual, people gathered at the landing zone with questions about the wildness of it all. A visit from the park rangers on their ATVs is common, and they stopped for a chat and to check in on us. It was all just a day making typical PPG memories, with no photos to prove it ever happened.
Fast forward to April 14, 2018, after a long Saturday of property work and getting ready for another active spring. I was passing the evening on the iPad, gazing over Google Maps and exploring some potential flying areas for the coming warmer weather, when I decided to zoom in to look at our Fayerweather Island field.
What’s this, I thought. Are those our gliders laid out in the field ready for flight? Are those our vehicles in the parking lot? It was unbelievable! From the satellite image, you can tell everyone had prepped for flight as the crescent shapes of the gliders were all lined up on the ground, pointing toward the wind. I counted one, two, three, four, then stopped. There were five of us there, and I wasn’t seeing my black and orange GTR. Maybe I had packed up by then? No, I thought, because I was one of the last ones there. I didn’t think I had folded the glider. I zoomed in more and identified my vehicle, always parked parallel to the field and my roof rack clearly visible.
Wait, I thought. What are the chances that I could be in the air somewhere nearby? I could barely concentrate on sliding my shaking fingers on the iPad. I was gripping it so tightly that I shut the thing off by mistake. After turning it back on, I went back to Maps and zoom, zoom, zoomed some more, searching, scanning, and searching the area again.
Then bam! There it was — the unimaginable was sitting right there in front of me. My family was near me in the room, but no one could have known the butterflies in my stomach. Could a 47-year-old guy still get giddy, I asked myself. That broadcasting satellite, 22,000 miles up in the Clarke Orbit, caught my 250 pounds of person and gear in action, 800 feet above the rocky coast of the Connecticut shore. That is truly me in flight! I could see the “GTR” on the wing, and my low altitude is obvious from the midday shadow on the water. It’s incredible that something more than 116 million feet above sea level caught me in action at that one moment.
It was a regular point in time and average flying day with friends. A day we had no photos or video to prove we were there, is actually pressed into the history of Google Maps. No Photoshop, no editing, no fooling around. A very real, exacting, date stamp, found two years later, now burned into my memory, forever proving once again that even the mundane can be long lasting.
