early days

"TRACE, I'll do a launch first so you have an idea how it's done," said Mark Shipman, standing with me on a small shoulder part way up Thimble Mountain, Wenatchee, summer of '87.
Mark had just stepped through his leg loops and secured the chest strap of his "harness," which was little more than a beefy version of a rock-climbing harness. He clipped in to his 16 square-meter Feral 7-cell sail, waited a few moments for an upslope zephyr, then executed the standard alpine launch. His glide ratio was at best 3:1, with a sink rate of at least 500 feet per minute. Mark landed 30 seconds later, daisy-chained the lines of the simple two-riser system, hiked up the hill quickly with his 8 pound wing, then laid it out for me.
After adjusting the harness and clipping in, another minute of instruction was offered. He emphasized pushing decisively on the front risers until airborne and remembering not to brake too soon on the landing approach to avoid the common neophyte error of stalling 10 feet off the deck. And so there I was, experiencing a few butterflies, unjustifiably I assumed, since Mark had demonstrated how simple it was by his own uneventful flight. With the next upslope rustle of grass, I launched the tiny wing with appropriate vigor, yelling "Fly or die!" but really meaning "Shit, WOW!"
The flight was every bit the rush I had expected, and this little sucker flew fast. As the ground rushed up, I disciplined myself: "Keep off the brakes till the last moment." Unfortunately, I hit the brakes just a few feet above the ground, thereby consigning my landing gear to effect almost all the deceleration. I carved two parallel ruts in the dirt before cartwheeling once or twice, I don't remember exactly. No sprains, nothing broken, I'd done it, YeeeHA! That wasn't to be the only time I'd end up wearing some dirt after blowing a take-off or landing. A month or two after my first flight, I blew a launch on the Leavenworth ski-jump hill after hitting a large bush just after take-off. The wing stalled, precipitating my doing a series of down slope rolls and cartwheels through brush and dirt. Witnesses deemed this a remarkable display; I promised myself I'd shun this absurd sport forever.