First Time Hang Glider Hangs On For Dear Life

By Petr Navovy | Videos | November 27, 2018 |

By Petr Navovy | Videos | November 27, 2018 |

Yesterday, YouTube user Gursk3 posted a video of himself hang gliding for the first time. The video begins on a vision of paradise, swiftly turning into a roller coaster through what some people might describe as hell. At fist everything seems perfectly fine. Routine. Nestled among the bucolic, verdant hills of the Swiss Alps, Gursk3 and his hang gliding instructor stand strapped into their flying machine, staring across the expanse they are soon to be soaring over.

Strapped.

Or so they think.

Then the video pauses and zooms in on our protagonist’s back, and that terrifying annotation appears.

‘Uh…

Stop the hang glider! I wanna get off!’

But nope. Those are hindsight annotations. Nobody in that present moment, perched high above the Swiss valley and primed to fulfil humanity’s perennial grasping wish, has any idea that anything is wrong.

Until.

Well.

Yeah:

My three favourite things about this video:

1. How much it emphasises the importance of grip strength. Do your pull-ups, people! It could save your life!

2. Gursk3 called the video of him precariously dangling above a yawning maw of picturesque doom, ‘Swiss Mishap’.

3. ‘I will go hang gliding again as I did not enjoy my first flight.’

via GIPHY