Sky Hook

Blind eye observation is a matter of perspective.  That became ever so clear when we took a short trip to Mexico; a land filled with sea and sky.

The wife saw my para-sailing adventure from below where I saw it from above.  This is a relatively new sport where they strap you into a modified parachute and hook you behind a speed boat with a long rope.  Why did it feel like the unstoppable force connected to the unmovable object?  The goal is to let the boat pull you off the beach and into the air before it drags you into the ocean.  They give you 15 or 20 feet to make this happen.  Usually that's enough when there's a head wind.  This day there wasn't much wind at all.  The fellow who strapped me into the life vest and harness seemed to have some reservations.  He looked at my height and weight, put a finger up to the calm breeze, tapped me in the mid section and simply shrugged.  Fortunately he shrugged in Spanish so I didn't know what he meant.

They signaled for the take off.  The boat roared out to sea gobbling up all the slack rope on the beach.  Then I took two or three strides forward and sat down on the harness straps.  There must have been enough wind and air speed to fill the para-sail because I was able to look down on the place where the sand met the surf rather than up.  If there wasn't enough wind, I was prepared to make some more by hollering.

The rest of the experience could have been perfect.  In fact the flight itself was.  It's always exhilarating to sail through the air held up by a support you cannot see and propelled by a force you cannot control.  I get the same feeling every month when we pay the bills.  

When we turned to come back into shore I realized how much I wanted to stay in the air.  Seems they had cinched the straps so tightly across my legs that all the feeling was going out of them.  I wasn't sure they would hold me up again.

By now we were making the final approach back toward the beach.  They had told me to watch for the red flag below.  When they held it up I was to pull on the cord over my right shoulder to guide my flight out over the land once again.  When they lowered the flag, I was to release the cord while the boat slowed down to lower me back to the ground.  What I failed to tell them was that I am partially color blind and don't see reds all that well.  While I was approaching the shore everyone seemed to be lowering and raising red flags.  Maybe the leg straps were blurring my vision.

When I finally spotted the flag bearer and started pulling on the strap nothing happened.  When they say pull, they really mean tug, yank, strain or jerk. That one narrow strap was holding up my entire body and firmly fixed in place. And it wasn't about to be moved by one little hand.  So I used two or more.  Now the flag bearer was getting equally energetic.  If I didn't pull longer and harder, I might come down in the water.  They sure didn't want that.  Something very unfortunate might happen.  When I was finally far enough over the beach, the boat stopped.  The flagman lowered his flag.  I dropped the overhead cord and slid down into the arms of four anxious Mexicans.  Everything was secure.  The gringo was standing in ankle deep water and their precious cargo, the para-sail was high and dry on the beach.  I could dry off in a matter of minutes.  But their precious para-sail would take hours to dry before they could make money with it again.  Once it was out of the way of the next incoming wave, everyone was happy again.

That same day we bought my son a small toy fashioned after the para-sail.  It has a hollow little man that flies along with it.  Now I feel a real kinship with that figure.  Maybe we're both empty headed.

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