Elephant Butts and Gator Bait

There's a group of paraglider pilots doing some over the water boat towing at Elephant Butte Lake near Truth or Consequences this weekend. I went down there on Friday to check it out. The set up for towing was ideal with a great launch and landing area not too far from the marina. They were consistently getting 3,000 foot or higher tows and then throwing down all sorts of tricks. Although this kind of flying is pretty common in the civilized world, this was a first time event for New Mexico. It was very cool to watch some of the newer pilots discovering the joys of flying ugly bags of mostly air.

I'm already starting to get stoked for the annual Florida trip, even though it's not till May. As I've already said to the point of being obnoxious, Florida rocks in the spring. This year I'm going to meet a group of flying buddies in Orlando for a long weekend of cross country attempts and general wafting around. The nice thing about Central Florida is that even if the paragliding sucks, there's lots of other ways to have fun. There's the hang glider flight parks: Wallaby Ranch and Quest Air, the Sky Venture vertical wind tunnel, and two or three of the best drop zones in the country. Of course, there's always the beach and if you get really desperate there's also the Mouse House and other theme parks right at hand.