I arrived back in Victoria on Monday afternoon after an awesome time in Rio de Janeiro. The three days we (all the Canadians, with the exception of the judge) spent there were very different than the days in Sao Paulo and Foz do Iguacu. There were no schedules or timings or tasks; just sitting on the beach and admiring the scenery. Rio was very different from Sao Paulo. It was cleaner, warmer and prettier.
Our hotel was right on Copacabana beach. We also went to Ipanema and Le Blon. The highlight of the trip was hang-gliding and para-gliding. We did that the second day there. Since I’m totally afraid of heights, I was really nervous about going. I had signed up for hang-gliding originally. To launch the glider, you have to run off a ramp on a perfectly good mountain to get enough speed to go. I saw a few people do it and I don’t know if I could muster the nerve to do that. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about it. Because I’m such a big mofo, the hang-gliding flight path would have been a diagonal line from the mountain to the beach. Para-gliding was better for my size Iwas told, so I did that. I had the owner of the company jump with me. (All of the us went tandem, with an expert.) He did a very good job of relaxing me, without me even knowing it. Para-gliding takeoff entails running down the mountain for a while, a much easier proposition. Ruy, my tandem jumper (pronounced Hooie), told me that the takeoff was the most important thing. I nodded.
When we were finally lined up to take off, he told me to start walking. Walk faster. Walk Jason. Then we were in the air. He said we had a really good takeoff, so I got a special bonus 360 turn right after we took off. The descent was really slow, slower than I was expecting. The view was amazing. But the landing? Not so much. I completely bailed on the landing and got my front covered in mud. I still have orange mud on my sneakers from the trip. It was still really cool, though.
The rest of the tour sucked because it was raining the whole time. We didn’t get to see Christ the Redeemer because of the weather, so that was disappointing. But the whole trip was super sweet. I consider myself very luck to have had the opportunity. I have one more post on Imagine Cup: my final thoughts, and ways to improve it for next year; and then I’m going to close the topic.