Last weekend I attended a paraglider fly-in near Bend, Oregon. This is an annual event that used to be called, the Desert Air Fly-in but it’s not a desert, any more 
I’ve spent the summer seeking proficiency with my paraglider and have made a lot of progress. This end-of-summer event really capped it for me because all of the launches were in fairly strong wind and I aced them all. All but one flight was very long, too, and involved using ridge lift and thermals. There was so much of that near sunset on the second day that it took me an hour to get down to the ground, using extraordinary measures (speedbar and partial wing deflation) but the biggest thrill was flying with 40 or 50 other pilots, like a flock of vultures. By the second day I was able to get up high with the most experienced pilots.
I’ve found that paraglider pilots get along harmoniously, as a rule. I’ve never seen that with other pilot groups and I’m not sure what it means. One of the experienced pilots suggested to me that it’s because this is an ‘apex’ experience–quite exhilarating in a non-frantic way. This is an aspect I hadn’t considered because I was focused more on the risk factor, which might induce comeraderie similar to soldiers who had done battle together. Maybe I just need to get out of the warrior mode more often 
but, for me, disabling and destroying the Old [Corporate/Occult] Parasite is still just good, clean fun.
The reason I brought it up is that my little airplane cloudbuster, which is attached to the rack on top of my car and points backward, apparently generated an all-night, gentle rainstorm which was not in the forecast. There was a rain front farther north so conditions for rain were present. We were obviously in the center of the storm because when I got out of my tent cot in the middle of the night I could see clear sky and stars all around the horizon. The city of Bend, 20 miles away, was under the northern part of the storm and I was told that there was lightning over the city, then. This gave me the impression that nobody in Bend has an orgonite cloudbuster. If you know whether this is true, please email me at [email protected] . The area felt really good so I assume someone had busted the death towers, at least.
In February, 2013 I had that little CB in the ‘California Sahara’ for a paramotor fly-in (Andy of ctbusters.com filmed me there: ) and it started to clear all the smog away in about an hour after I arrived. Residual smog was cleared in stages by pointing it and leaving it in place. A regular-size CB probably would have cleared it all up quite quickly. It’s hard to find smoggy areas in North America, any more
This is the only sport that I really love, aside from sailing, which I don’t do much of, any more, and it’s one I can probably do ‘for the duration.’ I flew with a woman in her mid-70s last weekend and when I was in Utah in June I flew with a paraplegic. All he needed to get airborne was for someone to push his specialized chair upwind/downhill while he skillfully manipulated the wing overhead. I want to get a lot better at this so that when Carol and I move to Languedoc, God willing, in a couple of years I’ll be able to fly with those incredible French pilots. This is making me a better pilot in general, which pays off when I’m out in the wilderness in my powered aircraft, taking a risk to reverse the deserts or to disable remote nasty targets. Such intimate interactions with the atmosphere are spiritually rewarding, too.
Carol and Coach Dooney are traveling to Chicago to take care of some family business and they asked me to express-mail 8 earthpipes to them for an interesting and notable underground target that they’re going to nail on the way home. Stay tuned because I think the Coach will be writing a report after that.
