Breaking Records

Breaking Records
It is a tribute to the human spirit that there are always people prepared to push an activity to its absolute limit. Think again about the great voyages undertaken by people in rowing boats in the past and their analogy, the accomplishments of some paraglider pilots far more recently. Consider for a moment what these achievements mean, given that a paraglider weighs about as much in relation to its pilot as a bird's feathers weigh in relation to it. The record for the maximum height gain currently stands at 4470m (14665 feet). Incredible! That someone can step off a hill or be towed up to a height of a few hundred metres in tropical heat, under a few kilograms of string and plastic and then ascend safely to altitudes where the temperature is below freezing and the pilot requires oxygen. What too of the distance record? A paraglider has been flown 336 km. (209 miles). Amazing! That someone can fly over 300 km on a pocket aeroplane with no power source of its own. What an incredible feat of skill, daring and endurance. Why wasn't this reported on the front page of every newspaper in the world? Why is it that some clot who has never had a lesson in his life and who kills himself trying to fly a high-performance paraglider is considered more newsworthy than these legends in our own time? Where are our priorities? Are we in danger of losing the appropriate sense of wonder about what we are doing? Is this a sign of the times, when we take health and comfort for granted and almost anyone can own a computer with more processing power than those which went to the moon on Apollo 11? Would an increased sense of reverence towards what we are actually doing when we fly a paraglider decrease the accident rate?