[Rick Masters]

Paragliding

By my incomplete count, the one thousand, seven hundred and thirteenth
paragliding fatality since 1986 occurred on Friday the Thirteenth of July, 2018.

It is not known if the deceased individual was superstitious.

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding        July 15, 2018

I've heard you can land a paraglider anywhere.
But why would you?        


Paraglider lands in Danish slurry pit
A glide over Funen came to a messy end for a paraglider in Denmark on Sunday.
The man landed in a slurry pit near the town of Middelfart after an unfortunate ending to his flight, Funen Police confirmed.
He is not reported to have sustained any injuries but had to be helped out of the tank.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20180716/paraglider-lands-in-danish-slurry-tank



Looks like this guy nearly made the list...

A slurry pit, also known as a farm slurry pit, slurry tank, slurry lagoon or slurry store, is a hole, dam, or circular concrete structure where farmers gather all their animal waste together with other unusable organic matter, such as hay and water run off from washing down dairies, stables, and barns, in order to convert it, over a lengthy period of time, into fertilizer that can eventually be reused on their lands to fertilize crops. The decomposition of this waste material produces deadly gases, making slurry pits potentially lethal without precautions such as the use of a breathing apparatus with air supply.

Slurry pits present risks of drowning, as well as of suffocation. Decomposition generates gases such as ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulphide. The latter two are heavier than air and will not disperse quickly from low places. Carbon dioxide is odorless; and hydrogen sulfide quickly becomes undetectable by odor by destroying victims' sense of smell. If inhaled, they can cause rapid unconsciousness by poisoning or displacement of oxygen leading to hypoxia. Death may follow then from poisoning or hypoxia directly, or by drowning caused by unconsciousness. The health and safety executive of Northern Ireland specifies activity in a slurry pit as specialist work, requiring the worker to have a separate air supply and a harness lifeline managed by two additional people outside the tank. -- Wikipedia

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding + Hang Gliding


Can't we all just get along?
No.
Hang gliding sites for hang gliding!

That incident could not have been intentional. It should have been an injury accident.
If the tandem hang glider had launched, it could have been a double or triple fatality accident.
It just goes to show how little control paragliders have, and how stupidly some soaring parachutists fly.
Maybe that will wake up some of these USHPA hang glider pilots who think HG and PG should be regarded as one sport and share launches.
They keep telling me how compatible the sports are.
I disagree.
There's a reason so many people are getting killed but some people can't seem to figure it out.
It is so frustrating...
Our lives matter!

Here are a few hang glider pilots killed by paragliders.

Jorge Barrera
Guido Bernart
Helen Davis
Francis Forsyth-Yorke
Valery Korotkov
Pierre Gonthier
Martin Remers
Gordon Jack Boyce
Peter Strobel
Carlo Zanchettin
Giuseppe Colaiezzi

Who's next?

[Frank Colver]

A TANK FULL OF CRAP NEAR THE TOWN OF MIDDLEFART? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

FC

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding
                                

                                                                    

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding

Life after speedflying.

Quadriplegic paraglider traveling across the country has trailer stolen: “This was my home”
https://fox13now.com/2018/07/19/quadriplegic-paraglider-traveling-across-the-country-has-trailer-stolen-this-was-my-home/

[magentabluesky]

Meet Joe Stone

On August 13, 2010, Joe Stone nearly died after crashing into a mountain at almost 50 MPH near Missoula, MT, while speed flying, a form paragliding. The accident left him with a permanent spinal cord injury at the C7 level, rendering him an incomplete quadriplegic, meaning he is paralyzed from the chest down and has impairment in both his hands.

Link to Story

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding

If you see this cool little trailer, call the cops! It belongs to Joe.

[wingspan33]

I don't know the context of the above graphic, but if Joe Stone was in Taughannock Falls State Park that's only about 50 miles from my home. Would I care to go see him? Not really.

Doing something as dangerous as speed gliding puts him into the category of "WTF were you thinking?"

The short video clip did seem to show that he hasn't been looking to get back into speed gliding or paragliding, (if he could) so maybe he learned something. I have to give him some respect for how much he's pushed himself related to his post accident physical state. His situation is quite familiar since my own father had an accident that made him a quadriplegic. But my father's accident didn't involve his participation in an extreme thrill/death sport.

Edit: A little Google image search has shown that Joe Stone HAS returned to hanging under a collapsible canopy. I guess he just wants to finish the job he started.

[Rick Masters]

I guess he just wants to finish the job he started.

It does make one wonder...



...if there's anything else worthwhile to do in this world besides dangerous sports.

This kinda reminds me of the free-love and drug craze of the late 1960s.
People were turning on for the first time.
All the new starry-eyed, previously straight acylotes wanted everyone else to try the new drugs they were trying.
It was a sharing thing.
Marijuana. Hash. Uppers. Downers. Mescaline. LSD. Cocaine. Opium. Meth. Heroin.
Nothing was bad. Everything was groovy. Even mainlining was cool.
A lot of sacrificial lambs got slaughtered as people learned all over again that some really obvious bad things actually are worse than other things.

So I wonder from time to time if the guys tossing the quadraplegic off the edge aren't a little starry-eyed themselves.
I mean, at some point, the odds are that it's just not going to end well.
But I suppose if everybody's happy, it's okay.