Para Gliding...not for the faint of wallet

Wow, what a weekend!

Saturday morning I met my adopted Korean family to go climb a mountain. In my small brain, I thought this meant climb a little hill with a nice little hiking path. Oh no. We're talking a rocky mountain-size mountain here. 1000 meters. It about near killed me. The first half was all rocks, all incline. Not gravel rocks either, but these big boulders you had to climb up and over. The last half, thankfully, was comprised of a paved fire road, but by that point I was so tired from the rocks I felt little relief from the pavement. At the top we saw some guys para gliding. It looked super fun, so I asked one of the Korean people I was with if she could ask how much it cost. Before I know it, the guy is waving me over and we made plans to meet Sunday morning to go out with the rest of the Ulsan Para Gliding Club.

Sunday morning I got up and met Mr. Lee, the head instructor of the club. He was friendly and smoked about two cigarettes a minute. We went to his house to meet the other members of the club, a Greek guy (yay English speaker!) and another Korean guy. This is where the good times stopped. All three of them smoking in his van, no ventilation to speak of, me choking to death.

The first mountain we went to was deemed a no-go due to the lack of wind. the second mountain we went to was too windy for most of the guys, although the instructor took me up for a tandem flight.

Para gliding is cool, but way too expensive for me. Lessons cost about 500 bucks, which isn't too bad because you basically get lessons forever from Mr. Lee, who is a really great teacher. The expense comes in with the rest of the equipment you have to buy. The canopy and harness alone costs $5,000, and the rest of the random stuff you have to buy like a helmet and windsuit brings the total up to around six large. Not for me. Still, para gliding is something I've always wanted to try, and now I can say I did it, and in Korea no less. I took some pictures of Saturday, but unfortunately I didn't bring my camera on Sunday, so no record of my first flight exists.