Para-gliding off of a Dormant Volcano

Always a weekend somewhere here in France. This weekend we went to another big house with another bunch of friends and spent the weekend hiking and of course...para-gliding, because isn't that what everyone does on the weekend?

I hesitated to agree to this weird para gliding stuff. I was pretty scared, because you know, I'm always scared. I refused to research anything about para-gliding, because there are accidents in any sport and I had no desire to scare myself any more than I already was...I saved that fun activity for afterwards.

This is me and the guy who took me up. Here I am pretending not to be scared. Oh crap, no turning back. He is explaining how to take-off right here and in my nervousness I am half-listening, always a good tactic.
Here he is yelling at me - no no no. Because I didn't listen. Notice I am leaning back and he is leaning forward. I am royally screwing up the take-off.
Phew. All is well, we made it. We flew for 20 minutes. It was really calm and slow, although it was always a little disconcerting to be hanging in a harness from a bunch of strings attached to a parachute thing. I also made a big mess of the landing. Everyone warned me that the landing was going to seem like you needed to run...but that really it's just a nice gentle walk when you get down. I thought I was going to nail it. As we descended I thought how clever I was and how great my landing would be. We approached and he yelled directions in my ear that I didn't understand. The ground approached fast and still I resisted the urge to run. And then we crashed and I realized that my slow walk was not enough and that actually I should have run a bit! hahaha. Oh well, it was fun anyway.