Paragliding

We have two people in our house who are currently members of the US Hang Gliding Association: John and Audrey. They signed up for a one month membership as part of their parasailing that they did on Maui. This is sailing done by running off a hill, not being pulled by a boat. While we were waiting for their turn to get hauled up the side of Haleakala for takeoff, Audrey took a rare picture of me, the first one I've posted on the blog, I believe.

Those are James' feet sprouting out my neck. We both passed on the paragliding experience. Audrey was underweight (wish I had that problem!) and we had to provide ballast for her to sit on in her harness. Fortunately we had a case of Dr Pepper and bags for snorkel gear in the car. She sailed down sitting on 20 lbs of soda cans. This is her:

I wish I would have brought my crocheting or my embroidery with me while they were doing this (I did have a book,) but I wasn't thinking of it when we got up at 3:30 that morning to see the sunrise over the Haleakala Crater. Mark Twain apparently said the sunrise over Haleakala was one of the greatest spectacles of his life. It was nice, but I realized that Mark Twain was around before airplanes, because it looks a lot like a sunrise from an airplane:

If you are ever on Maui, and want to do the sunrise over Haleakala, I recommend getting there before 5:00, which is what we were told. There are many companies that sell bike rides down the volcano after sunrise, and the parking places are quite full by 5:00. We ended up at the third parking lot from the summit because of this. After sunrise we headed part-way down the mountain to Kula, where the parasailing organization offers flights. Audey is very enthusiastic about the whole paragliding thing, and I caught John looking for paragliding rigs on eBay. Sigh.