Look Ma I'm Flying - Sky Venture, NH - July 21, 2008

CRASH TEST MARY AND FRIEND

FLYING KAT AS 'WENDY ' ********************FLYING SOPHIE ********************DAKTARI AS 'ROCKY'

The e-mail from my friend Greg is intriguing:
“Fly without wings – no experience necessary. Meet at my house at 6:30. If we get 12 people it’s only 35 bucks each.”
“Count me in,” I type back.
“Good! – That makes five. Get more volunteers.” Greg responds.

‘Fly without wings.’ Mmmm. I’m thinking maybe balloons or blimps. I click on the link in Greg’s email. Sky Venture, New Hampshire – no balloons, blimps or dirigibles -just straightforward extreme physics. Unlike butterflies, people aren’t actually designed to fly. But given arms, legs, torsos and a 160 MPH vertical wind it can be done. Aha! This is great – it’s ‘second to the right and straight on till morning’. Neverland, here I come!

Who else would be crazy enough to take up the challenge of wingless flight? Certainly not my wife who prefers to keep both feet firmly planted on terra firma. Hmmm.

My young friend Kat is always up for an adventure.
“Hey, Kat. Wanna fly like Peter Pan?” Kat’s definitely in.

After work, I swing by Newburyport to pick up Kat on the way to Greg’s mansion on the banks of the Merrimack River. We’re joined by Kathleen, Stephanie and her 13 year old son Christopher. The six of us pile into Kathleen’s Acura. It’s a tight squeeze but just 40 minutes later we decant ourselves out of the vehicle and into Sky Venture. We’re met at HQ by our instructor Matt and his fashionably outfitted crash-test dummy, Mary.

The last class of junior birdmen is just finishing their second flight in the Sky Venture and we scramble upstairs to watch. Matt explains, “There are four fans in the ceiling of this vertical wind tunnel that generate winds up to 200 miles an hour going straight up.” We gaze into a Plexiglas octagonal space about 12 feet in diameter where perfectly average people are body surfing with their instructor in a man-made Class 5 hurricane! Kowabunga, dude –surf’s definitely UP!

Adrenaline floods our nervous systems as Matt gives out the flight suits. First, we have to remove anything that can fly off our bodies and ding the Sky Venture or its occupants. We put our rings, bracelets, necklaces, wallets, keys and loose change in the lockers. Then we don helmets, goggles, ripstop nylon flightsuits, and special tie-on sneakers. (Velcro doesn’t stick very well in a hurricane.) Now we all look like crash-test dummies.

Matt takes us to ‘ground school’ where we learn to arch our backs, lift our chins, extend our legs and flex our knees in the classic sky diver position. We also learn how to maneuver – up, down, forward and back. Did you know that Superman flies faster when his legs are out straight? If his knees were bent, he would fly in reverse!

The moment of truth approaches. We stuff wads of foam into our ear canals. (Hurricanes make a lot of noise – even the controlled ones.) We line up on benches in a circle around the outside of Sky Venture, putting 13 year old Christopher in first position next to the entry. He arches his back, crosses his arms, clicks both heels together and falls through the open doorway into the chamber. Matt guides Chris to the center, adjusts his position and Voila! He’s flying – suspended by the winds in the middle of the maelstrom. At the end of one minute Matt gently shoves Christopher to the exit door where he grabs the sides and jumps through for a landing.

Kat’s turn comes. She’s a natural, as she flies through the air with the greatest of ease. Very gracefully – definitely more of a Wendy than a Peter Pan.

I’m next. I fall through the doors, the wind takes me and I’m airborne. How cool is that?!
What’s it like? Indescribable – but here’s my best shot:

I remember when I was 12 years old or so, and my grandfather Bowles would drive Uncle Richard and me into Fort Morgan, Colorado on Saturday afternoons to take Mom shopping in town. Rick and I would be in the back seat and the windows of the big ol’ Buick Century would be wide open, inviting us to stick our arms out. While the Buick sped along at 50 or even 60 MPH trailing an enormous plume of prairie dust, I would put my hand out the open window, curving and straightening my cupped fingers. My arm glided and pirouetted -- rising and falling like a leaf in the stream of moving air. Now, just imagine your whole body feeling exactly like that floaty arm out the window of a speeding car. That’s the feeling of Sky Venture!
Matt, like all of the Sky Venture instructors, is an accomplished sky-diver and assures us that we are experiencing exactly what a diver feels after she reaches terminal velocity and before her chute opens. We do miss the beautiful view, of course, but on the plus side we don’t lose our lunches as the fall out of the airplane sends the pits of our stomachs freefalling from zero to 160 in only a few seconds.

After another one minute flight we go downstairs to view and purchase $15 photos of our experience. I’m kinda hoping I look like an aging, slightly debonair Peter Pan but, alas, it is not to be. The green flight suit definitely works but the goggles don’t go with the Pan image. Plus the wide grin on my face allows the wind to puff out my cheeks with air.
‘Look up in the air. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – It’s ROCKY THE FLYING SQUIRREL!’

A.K.A,
Daktari

Butterflies are Free - All Others Pay $9.50

Kat's Butterfly Tattoo
MADAM BUTTERFLY- RENA


NOT IN KANSAS ANY LONGER!


BUTTERFLY RESTING

MY FAVORITE!

My massage therapist, Kat, tipped me off to “The Butterfly Place” in Westford, Massachusetts.

I was lamenting the lack of butterflies in my garden this year.
“You won’t see them when it’s cloudy,” says Kat. “They only fly around in bright sunshine.”
“How do you know about butterflies?” I ask.
“I have one tattooed on my shoulder,” replies Kat.
(Sure enough she does. But that as they say is another story.)

That’s a good enough recommendation for me. Taking Kat at her word, I also take a quick snap of her tattoo for blog purposes. Then, I bicycle back to my house, fire up the family Suzuki, load Rena in the front and a couple of beach chairs in the way-back and we’re off – heading West to Westford.

“Nice day,” I exclaim. “Good butterfly weather.”
My wife, who is used to strange utterances about weather conditions as well as spur-of-the-moment travel adventures, doesn’t even ask where we’re going. We plug in Marvin, our GPS. Marvin is a bit temperamental and often refuses to talk if he’s not in the mood. But today is such a bright, sunny wonder of a day that even Marvin cooperates by giving directions. It’s a good thing, because ‘The Butterfly Place’ is not easy to find.

“Here we are,” I exclaim as we pull up to an un-prepossessing suburban ranch house with what looks like a largish detached sunroom on the side. I stop at the stick-your-head-in-the-hole plywood outside the entrance. ”Guess what – it’s a butterfly farm!”
“So the sign says,” agrees Rena, as she sticks her head in the hole and I take a quick blog snap.

We enter and Rena checks out the butterfly gift shop while I buy two adult tickets for $9.50 each. I’m tempted to ask for senior tickets but the old battle-axe behind the counter looks like she could be wise to that canard. I can just see me down at the local constabulary:
“What was his offense officer?” asks the magistrate.
“Impersonating a senior citizen,” replies Officer Krupke. “This cheapskate wanted to ding ‘The Butterfly Place’ $5 off the regular admission by using a fake senior ID.”
“How do you plead, Mr. Cheapskate?”
“Guilty as hell,” I reply.
I pay the $19 and we head for the entrance to the sunroom.

To enter you have to pass through a ‘butterfly trap’. Basically it’s a dark hall with tight doors at both ends to prevent the little guys from escaping – like an airlock into inner space. Emerging from the dark, you reach the inner sanctum. Suddenly it’s a Technicolor world – just like Dorothy after her house fell on the wicked witch. Sunshine and butterflies. Fountains and flowers. Several sculptures and a bench or two. There are feeding stations where butterflies eat mashed bananas and other delicacies.
At first we are like kids in a candy store, fluttering from place to place and exclaiming “Look at that one!” and “Ohmigod look over here”.

Then Butterfly Bob, the sunroom’s naturalist, explains that butterflies spend 90% of their time sitting still and only 10% of their time flitting about. I try sitting still on the bench. Sure enough as my breathing slows and my gaze sharpens, I see nine times as many butterflies in the bushes, up the trees and on the ground. How cool is that? Gradually, I relax into a butterfly trance beside the stream of consciousness. Butter-fly questions flutter-by:

“Don’t we all spend too much time flitting about and not enough time resting?”
“Are all butterflies born free and if so are they born again?”
“If a caterpillar can become a butterfly, then isn’t anything possible?”
“If a caterpillar can become a butterfly, can a doctor become a trapeze artist?”
“What the heck is a moth, anyway?”

Rena breaks into my reverie, “Come on. Time to go. We’re done.”
I rouse myself enough to hear Butterfly Bob explain that a moth has feathery antennae and a butterfly has straight ones. Also butterflies transform via chrysalis while moths prefer cocoons.

“Ready, willing and able,” I exclaim.
“Roger, over and out we go,” asserts my spouse.

We brush off any butterfly hitchhikers and push through the airlock. Surely we can’t be back in Kansas already! It’s a tough transition. I shake my head to clear the lepidoptera from my pre-frontal cortex. I’ve still got butterflies on the brain!

I ask the gift-shop clerk where I might find a beach. We follow her directions but no beach is in sight. Marvin isn’t much help. He seems dazed by the butterfly experience. We stop at a donut shop for more directions. Eventually we stumble on a small deserted strand of sand behind the water treatment plant in Westford. We haul out the beach chairs but only stay for a short time. It seems that swimming in the water supply is frowned upon by town ordinance. Or so a large, red sign says. Officer Krupke might well throw the book at me, if the same wannabee senior scofflaw attracts his attention for the second time in one day! We load our beach chairs back in the car and head for home.

As we tool down the highway, I still have my butterfly buzz.
“Maybe I have been a caterpillar too long. Maybe I should seek personal transformation. Me and all the other baby boom caterpillars.” I feel like Winnie-the-Pooh daydreaming about honey.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman in a white Toyota making a rude gesture.
My head swivels and I realize that she is not flipping me the bird – which is something your average Boston driver is wont to do more frequently then your average Kansas driver. Instead she is pointing and gesticulating toward the rear of my car.
“Your trunk is open!” she yells.

“Holy Hatchback,” she’s right!

“Ohmigod,” yells Rena. “My purse is in the back.”

I pull off the highway at the next exit. Sure enough, on closer inspection the hatch is wide open and the beach chairs are dangling precariously in the breeze. But the pocketbook is heavy enough that it's still inside and the contents are intact. Nothing seems to be missing.

“Now why in the heck ….”, Rena starts to admonish. There’s a slight menacing tone in her voice and I suspect that the blame will fall on me if I don’t think of something quickly.

“The butterflies made me do it!” I spontaneously blurt out.

Now, that’s a conversation stopper. Rena raises one eyebrow quizzically and gives me the stink eye. I quickly batten all hatches and clear for take-off.

“Butterflies made me do it.”
What kind of a psychotic lame excuse is that? Pretty soon I won’t need a fake senior ID. They’ll know I’m old enough for reduced admission by just checking out the way I drive and the weird excuses coming out of my mouth. As the Dunlops direct me into my driveway, the car radio is playing Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy after all Those Years.’
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46bkXgxb66E on YouTube)

"I'm ready, I guess," I muse to myself. "Just send for the men in white coats. Only be sure they’re the traditional ones carrying the big butterfly nets on long poles.”


Daktari

Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (December 15, 1928 – February 19, 2000)

Kunst Haus, Vienna

Hundertwasser Haus -low income housing

Trash to Electric Power Incinerator

Vienna Trash Incinerator - other side!

Autobahn Rest Stop by Hundertwasser

Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. What a moniker!

Herr Hundertwasser is to staid Viennese architecture what Attila the Hun was to the hot springs at Budapest. He really shook up the old neighborhood bigtime! His beautiful, quirky buildings dot the bland Viennese urban landscape like exotic gems. A trash-burning power plant looks like a Russian fairy village. An art museum (the Kunst Haus) looks like Legoland on drugs. My favorite is the Hundertwasser Haus, a block of low income housing flats with no square angles and no two apartments alike. Nine hundred tons of dirt and 250 trees and vines are an integral part of the latter’s design.

Seeing these buildings brings up a very reasonable question, "Why should ordinary architecture be so extraordinarily boring." Also: "Why should't form be fun as well as functional?" Hundertwasser's work reminds me of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, but without the heavy religious symbolism. I'll take a fanciful Austrian autobahn reststop over an inspired Spanish cathedral any day. Pass the hot espresso and hold the holy water, Danke schoen.

Rena and I quaff our hot espresso in the courtyard of the Kunst Haus (art museum) and marvel at Hundertwasser’s undulating floors, riotous plantlife, and tiled walls. After the Kunst Haus we walk across the Danube canal and into the Prater - Vienna’s Coney Island. We take the famous Prater Wheel - a Ferris wheel from the 1890’s. The sun's going down over Vienna and the view is Wunderbar. The day ends in a perfect golden glow and we still have the night ahead of us! Time to 'wein und schwein' before we 'rise and shine'.

We finally meet our sponsor at the International Conference of Nutrition: Ms. Alice Wimpfheimer (and her roommate Erly from Campinas, Brazil). They are waiting at the Austrian Conference Center where Bernie has spent the day attending nutricious lectures and presentations. Alice is 77 years old with the energy of a 17 year old. She probably weighs 77 pounds soaking wet! This little dynamo lives on Central Park West but remains Swiss to the core.

After greetings and exclamations, we board a bus to Grinzing for a traditional Austrian pork fest - or as they call it, a Heurigen night. There is pork cutlet, pork roast, pork sausage and, to avoid any clogs in the plumbing, fresh sauerkraut. Being as how we're Jewish by religion and vegetarian by inclination, Rena and I eat very little. But the Apfelstrudel for dessert is great! We drink Austrian red and white wine and sing some Trinkenlieder which I remember from my childhood on the Alsatian border. Alice is impressed!

About 10:30 Rena and I start to fade and decide to take public transport back to the hotel instead of waiting for the tour bus. I ask a local Burger “Wo ist die Grindzinger Statione?”. And I understand enough of the reply to arrive at the busstop just as the trolley car doors open. In 20 minutes we are out of the dorf and back at the K+K for a night of rest. All except Bernie who awakens at 4 AM to worry about the poster. Tomorrow is POSTER DAY.

Daktari