October 26, 1999 — Sometimes dreams do come true. You just have to be patient.
As a little kid, I used to dream at night that I could fly. While my friends and family remained confined to the ground, I would float above them, around them.
I was free.
And when I woke up, I believed that it was true, that at any moment I would levitate out of my bed and glide right down to the breakfast table.
That never happened.
Now as an adult, I still have the dream, only that morning hope is gone. I grow more aware of gravity’s effects each day.
As my car approached the Lookout Mountain Flight Park, however, I looked to the sky and smiled. Dreams do come true.
There they were. Big, bright and beautiful, hang gliders hovered above like giant prehistoric birds. I smiled again. Dreams do come true.
Nestled in the northwest Georgia foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, about a half hour’s drive from Chattanooga, the Flight Park has been called “the Club Med of hang gliding schools.” There’s a clubhouse, a swimming pool and a beach volleyball court — but the main reason people visit is to fly.
And they come from all over the world, flying all day and staying in the Park’s bunkhouses, cabins and camp grounds at night. It is a true hang gliding community.
Beginners are welcome, actually encouraged, to visit. Getting people hooked on hang gliding is Lookout’s bread and butter. There are full-service training packages for the serious student or instructor-led tandem flights for the curious, like me.
My car approached the landing and launching area, a 46-acre plot at the base of Lookout Mountain, the long, tall ridge that creeps into southeastern Tennessee. Michael Labado, my instructor, was in the middle of a tandem launch with another student.
The aerotow plane began to move and Labado’s glider, attached to the plane by a long cord, rolled along behind it. Chasing after both of them was Labado’s dog Milly, who stopped and barked when the two crafts left the ground.
I watched Labado’s glider rise slowly, then release from the plane, then disappear from view.
I approached Wally Stahl, a middle-aged man from Detroit, who was sitting on a nearby bench. He had just been for his first ride in a glider.
“What is it like?” I asked.
Stahl paused and responded, “It happens more easily than you’d think it would. You just go up and you fly down.”
“But how does it feel?”
“To me it’s not a rush. It’s just another state of being.”
Another state of being. Intriguing. I would soon see for myself. Labado’s glider soared back into view.
I donned my harness and helmet, jacket and gloves, and played fetch with Milly until Labado was ready for me.
“All right Mr. Dan,” Labado said from under his glider. “Step into my office, young man.”
Labado, 41, of Chickamauga, has the easy-going smile of someone who spends his day flying like a bird, of someone who makes people’s dreams come true.
“I’ll probably have to get a real job one day,” Labado, whose wife recently gave birth to the couple’s first child, later said. “But I can’t bring myself to quit this job. I love it because that buzz everybody gets when we’re up there rubs off a little bit onto me.”
We hooked ourselves into the glider and Labado waved ahead to the pilot. “Let’s go to three grand,” Labado yelled forward. “All right. We’re outta here. Here we go.”
We left the ground in a hurry. Climbing. Rising. We gained altitude quickly. I looked down at my car. It became smaller and smaller, a little white dot, and I realized how insignificant things like cars are in the grand scheme of things.
We reached our desired altitude and Labado released the glider from the tow line.
We were free.
“It’s just me, you, God and gravity now, big guy,” Labado turned to me and said.
The feeling is hard to explain. There we were, 3,000 feet above the ground, the Earth below a patchwork of fields and forests. And yet we were carrying on a conversation like we were in Labado’s living room.
It was surreal, like looking down on a real-life map. Over there, that’s the Tennessee River. To our right, that’s Chattanooga. Directly below us, Lookout Mountain.
The only thing between us and the ground, thousands of feet below, was air. But I felt totally safe. I was relaxed. I was at peace.
“When people think of hang gliding, everybody thinks of gonzo daredevilism and imminent death and madness,” said Labado, who has been flying for 16 years and is closing in on his 6,000th flight. “But it’s closer to a religious experience.”
Labado said modern hang gliders are sturdier than Cessna aircrafts, that hang gliding is statistically safer than rock climbing and scuba diving, that all hang gliding accidents are the result of pilot error, not equipment.
“It’s as safe as you want to make it,” he said.
We were losing altitude, and Labado began our landing approach.
“Do you like roller coasters?” Labado asked with a smile. “OK, we’re going to have a little fun on the way in, because I know you’ll dig it.”
Labado stalled the glider. Then he made it dive. Stall, then dive. Again. Then we landed softly on the ground.
As I gathered up my belongings and headed toward my car, Labado yelled something to me.
“Drive carefully,” he said. “Remember, hang gliding is safe. Driving a car is dangerous as hell.”
I smiled and drove off, wondering what I was going to dream about that night. I no longer had to dream about flying.