Searching Out Awesome Thrills

"I looked down once and I thought to myself, 'This is it, I'm going to fall to my death. I'm a goner."
"I just locked on and held on as hard as I could. I didn't have much grip left in me at all. My hand was opening, I was slipping."
"Gail [his wife] and her pilot took off first…. looked cool as hell. Then my pilot and I lined up for takeoff. We waited a bit for the updraft to pick up and then we ran till we left the side of the 4000 ft mountain edge. I was expecting to level out above the pilot as we went, but quickly discovered that my harness was not attached to the hang glider or anything else…"
"While the pilot made a critical error in our pre-flight set-up by not attaching me to the glider, he did all he could to get me down to the ground as quickly as possible while grabbing onto my harness and flying with one hand."
"My body weight shifted straight down and I found myself hanging on for my life. I remember looking down and thinking, this is it. I was losing grip with my right hand that was holding onto a strap on the pilot’s right shoulder. He was trying to make a beeline to the landing field as he knew what the situation could bring."
"As we were going down for a hot landing I was slowly losing my grip with my right hand as I was swinging in the wind with the glider. The pilot grabbed my hand, but like in the movies it was a slow motion slipping of the grip until my right hand slipped off and I grabbed another strap on his left side for a bit but this slipped off also."
"I ended up holding on the bar with the left hand and the lower part of his leg with the right when we were nearing the ground."  
Chris Gursky, American tourist in Switzerland

Chris Gursky and his wife, Gail, were on vacation in Switzerland when they decided to try hang gliding for the first time.

Working as an auto-parts store manager and photographer might not be the most fascinating job in the world, so it's possible that Chris Gursky of North Port, Florida was ready for some drama and life-changing excitement. He might not have imagined just how life-threatening that drama might turn out to be, but then who among us does when we set out to do something out of the ordinary to break up the tedium in life's routines?

This would be Mr. Gursky and his wife Gail's first such adventure; hang-gliding, but it seems they needed no convincing that this first-time exposure to the thrills of the recreational 'sport' would add something to their lives. In fact, it came close to subtracting something vital to both their lives. He might have ended up very dead, and she a widow. Not the kind of thought that appeals to most people looking to be entertained.

No one, least of all, Mr. Gursky, and perhaps the pilot who somehow overlooked the most vital safety assurance incumbent upon an instructor-pilot having someone else's life in his hands, might foresee. But accidents happen and one man's forgetfulness can translate as another man's ill fortune. In this instance, however, it was not to be and Mr. Gursky had the good fortune to come away from his rather unorthodox experience in hang-gliding relatively unscathed.

No serious physical injuries incurred, though it's remotely possible he will have nightmares for a while. Remotely in the sense that because he had been unable to experience the thrill of a safe hang-gliding exploit, he is still determined to do so and plans in the future to give it another try. This time, however -- if there is another 'this time' -- he will know enough to ensure that he is securely strapped on to the device even if the professional momentarily and almost-catastrophically forgets.

The episode took two minutes total, start to finish. It started badly and ended extremely well. Both Mr. Gursky and the pilot shaken needless to say, but both survived what appeared at first to be the epitaph of one man in failure to launch and the haunted conscience and loss of professional gravitas of the other. Generously, Mr. Gursky praises the pilot as a "good guy" who "did all he could and more" ... aside from neglecting to secure him as per standard avoidance of death technique.

Still from video   Global News

They took off from a 4,000-foot mountain ledge (be still, my heart) when the realization hit that there was nothing securing him to the glider, the harness he was fitted with was nicely in place but unattached. Mr. Gursky found himself dangling to the left of the pilot, clinging to the bar of the glider and alternately to the pilot, not too enthused about meeting the ground prematurely with nothing to cushion the impact.

He did deliberately loose his grip on the pilot/glider at just the right time, ejecting while moving at 70 km/h, seconds before the glider landed in a field of grass. A broken wrist and a torn biceps tendon was what the effort cost him. On the other hand, the video documenting the entire episode has found a celebrated home on YouTube with over a million gawping views by Tuesday following the Monday event.

And Mr. Gursky is now a celebrity of sorts. To whom congratulations for his survival of an untoward incident is due.

Still from video   Global News