The last few days have been really dark for the paragliding community. During the World Paragliding Championship, two (very experienced) pilots crashed and did not survive. On top of that, in the same weak, Xavier Murillo (one of the important people behind the organization of the paragliding world cups) was missing in Peru and after a search and rescue operation was found dead in the mountains at 4800m altitude.
Today, I heard about a fatal accident of a Belgian pilot that I knew personally. He is leaving a wife and two young children... Especially this last fact makes me very sad about the whole situation. Being a young father myself, I am more and more wondering whether I should continue with this 'sport' or not. No matter how safe we try to fly, no matter how good we are, no matter how careful we plan our take-off and landings, no matter how good we study the weather forecast, accidents do always happen.
On the one side, there is the joy of flying, the wonderful delight that we experience while thermaling, while being at cloud base, while making a transition. When I'm up there in a nice flight, I often think of my father who passed away more then 14 years ago. Somehow, I feel connected with him when I'm up there all alone. But when I'm grounded, reading about all these fatalities, i cannot get it out of my head that some day, i might be next. Is that really what I want? Do I really want to leave Tine and Jenne alone on this planet. No I don't!
But I also want to live! And paragliding is part of that! People who do not fly, probably cannot understand why it is so hard to quit our sport, even if we hear about fatal accidents, even if we know there is a risk. It is a strange battle inside, and I guess the adventurer in us wins...
Paragliding is not something that I do for the adrenaline rush. My personal motivation is twofold: first of all, i feel connected with my father when flying. Secondly, having experienced his battle against cancer from very close at the age of 18, i now know that I should squeeze as much out of life as I can. Paragliding is part of that. I hope Tine and Jenne can understand... and I hope they can forgive me if I make a mistake here...
Friday, July 15, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Belgian championships half marathon 2011
So... today was all about running a half marathon. Tine, Jenne, me and our Croozer Kid for 2 decided to take our bikes on the train and head for Diksmuide where the championship took place. For Jenne, it was his first train-trip. Although from the following picture one would think that he felt quite uncomfortable, he actually did enjoy the train very much!
Tine was the photographer of the day and cruised around with the Croozer to shoot some pictures somewhere half-race. Jenne controlled the whole thing and gave instructions to his mom and other marathon-marshals:
As for the race... i finally figured out one should train for half or full marathons! Having not trained too much the last weeks/months, I've put my goal at 1:30:00... which later turned out to be quite wishful thinking... The start was OK, as the following pictures proves:
Quite fast I was 250m ahead of my Garmin Virtual partner (which was setup to run 14 km/h). Somehow, the first kilometers I had the feeling that I was going to be able to keep up this tempo... but wait... this is a half-marathon, isn't it? And one should not underestimate half marathons!!! All went fine up until 10km... from then on my 250m started to shrink... after 14kms I was zero meters in front of my Virtual Partner and from then on, things went bad... very bad... See my Garmin tracklog for the proof! This picture was taken somewhere between 14km and 15km, a very miserable moment:
I got behind my Virtual Partner very quickly. I ran my first wishful thinking kilometer in 3m51s, and my worst kilometer in 6m59s... notice the difference of 3m08s! Before the race, i had in mind to run the whole thing... I was definitely going to run the whole 21km! But hey... this is a half-marathon, isn't it? And one should not underestimate half marathons!!! Somewhere around 17km, i was half-dead... and my body told me that I had to walk otherwise I would probably crash... so I walked... shame on me!
I finally finished the race in 1:38:34 (time from my Garmin), which is a modest 13 km/h. I think I now know that training is the key to succes... luckily, it was fun after all and Jenne was so proud of his father's gold medal!
I finally finished the race in 1:38:34 (time from my Garmin), which is a modest 13 km/h. I think I now know that training is the key to succes... luckily, it was fun after all and Jenne was so proud of his father's gold medal!
Friday, July 8, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Smooth, smoother... smoothest!
After a visit from Mr. Gardener, the conclusion was clear: we had to level our garden even more! So that was what we did today. I hope Mr. Gardener will be happy with the new result:
Note that we didn't have a spirit level. The only tools we used were:
- a spade and a shovel
- a garden and leaf rake
- a rope and some wooden sticks
Friday, July 1, 2011
Open Source alternatives for Adobe Dreamweaver
Quite recently, Tine got interested in digital photography and now she is looking for a way to put her nice pictures online in a nice personal website. The question remains: what software-tool should she use to make this website? From what I asked her, I have the impression that she will only need a static website with some photo gallery, so I'm looking for good Open Source alternatives to Adobe Dreamweaver. I'll try to summarize my findings in this blog post.
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