Paragliding in Hualien!

Sooo, 2 weekends ago we went paragliding! Actually, 3 weekends ago we attempted to go paragliding but got rained out. Another FET Adora was planning on visiting us so we asked her if that was something she'd be interested in and scheduled a retry. We ended up having 3 more FET's from Taipei come along for the excitement! We drove about an hour south of Hualien City into the East Rift Valley, met up with our coach at his house, and then rode in their 20 yr old van up a frighteningly steep mountain road. The drive up was enough to already get my "nervous bladder" going. When you finally get to the top, it's this incredible view to take in... until you realize that you're about to jump/run off of it!

We decided while Jacque tried to sneak off to take care of the nervous bladder problem that we would volunteer her to go first. So here's the process of the coach getting the parachute ready, getting fastened in, and then 1, 2, 3, RUN!

I decided to go third, wanted to get it over with before my fear built up too much. He kept asking me if I was ready, and I kept saying no, haha. Finally I had to say, "I'm never going to be ready just start the count down!"

Of course once we got off the ground it was great. Incredible view, incredible experience.

As we were nearing the ground, the coach was trying to tell me something about "wind" and some Chinese. I was like, "uh huh, ya it's great!" Then he pointed to the landing spot over to our left and tried to tell me something else... "ooh, yes, I see Jacque and Monica down there"

(notice how far we are from that grassing clearing in the middle of the trees?)
THEN, he point to the field on our right and repeated "no wind" That's when it finally clicked. We did have enough wind to get to the landing spot and he was landing us in a field. I looked on in horror as we rapidly approached a cement road, a rock wall, etc wondering if he was going to be able to land us someplace safe. Well, he did...a rice field. (visual of a rice field included below....it's pure mud) You're supposed to keep running on the touchdown so that you don't fall over but as soon as my feet hit the field I just fell face first with the coach on top of me. As you can see, I was drenched in mud from the knees down with lots of other fun splatters here and there....but hey, I didn't get hurt, and that's really something for me =)

It was great time with a great group of people and we were even treated to lunch at the Coach's house after =) If you're in Taiwan and interested in doing some scenic paragliding you should definitely contact this guy oh his yahoo blog or on facebook