The Risk

By Camille

It was 2 years ago when I was in Aucun, in France.  I was on vacation with my family to experience paragliding. It was my second day, the one where I was going to make the big jump for the first time. After 20 minutes of driving and 30 minutes of walking under the burning sun, we finally reached the top of the mountain. As soon as I arrived, I prepared all of my equipment for the flight. A couple of minutes later, I was ready. I was extremely excited about the idea of flying by myself. My dad and my brother had already jumped before me and now it was my turn to jump. I gained momentum and ran without stopping until I could inflate my sail. My sail was inflated and I could go farther in order to jump into the void. The sensation of the wind was incredible but quite chilly.

At that moment I realized that the radio that was supposed to help guide me during my flight didn’t work. I nearly began to panic, but I forced myself to keep calm and tried to remind myself of the theory lessons we had had the day before. It was my first flight and it was quite scary to do it completely by myself. I followed the way that the last day’s schematic showed us. Everything went well and I was able to land safely at the designated location.

However, even though I was really relieved and proud that I had done it by myself, just before I was to put a foot on the ground, I realized that I was a little bit too fast. Consequence, I touched the ground with my back and slid along the landing strip. Immediately, my brother went quickly to see me and asked me, “Are you ok? What happened to your radio?” At that moment, I didn’t know. If I was overwhelmed by the painful feeling of my last slip or by the crazy situation that I was during my flight but I started to laugh! Maybe I am crazy, but after this, I decided not to stop paragliding because if I could do it once, I could do it again.



     My second flight.



My paragliding team with me (in purple), my dad (in blue) and my brother (in superman).