flying through the alps!!!

paragliding in switzerland has to be among the very very best things i’ve ever done or will ever do in my life. i can’t express how much i loved this experience. it was such an incredible, magnificent HIGH.

saydi, shawni, kristi and i met up with the awesome guys from x-dream fly at a grocery store parking lot. they took us in a van up, up, up the side of a mountain.

the views of the vast scenery, those ubiquitous swiss cows and the darling flower-boxed houses were spectacular! and we all had butterflies in our bellies thinking about running off the side of a peak! eek!!

when we got to our launching place, the guys started quickly working to get the equipment set up. these four swiss men that flew with us were all so so great. we loved learning about their lives and we had so much fun with them! and they all helped us to feel really safe.

we got all suited up (shawni somehow scored with this full-on ski suit that her tandem flyer happened to have in his bag! and she had borrowed a furry hat from anita. looking good, shawn!). and then we took off one by one! the parachute is positioned perfectly, then jerked up into the air and then the flyers run as fast as they can off the side of the mountain! from the very second i launched up, i was so so so excited and completely loving every second! lots of exclamation points in this post!!!

 

we each had a gopro strapped to our heads. some day i might have to compile clips of the videos that were recording while we were flying, but for now i just pulled some screenshots, which are soooo sadly representative of the grandeur that we saw up in the air. but my video is pretty hysterical – basically the entire forty minutes of my paraglide i am either giggling, squealing or saying one of the following phrases: oh my gosh! / this is aaamazing! / holy cow! / this can’t be real! / i am loving this! / this is so so cool! / i can’t believe this!

yeah, i was pretty dang happy. paragliding really does feel like flying. it was windy and cold, yet so serene and smooth and honeyed. i was surprised that i wasn’t more scared and didn’t have a knot in my stomach. all i could feel was this gigantic love for the earth and for being alive. i was enraptured, completely blissed out.

it’s hard to tell in the photos (i know, so many selfies! but it was just tooooo good!) but we stunningly beautiful alps wrapped all three hundred and sixty degrees around us. we came over the ridge in the picture above (^^) and could see snowcapped peaks that went on forever. i really couldn’t believe it.

while i was up in the air with my flying partner mario (he asked me to call him super mario…i obviously obliged), i was so glad i got to share this experience with some of my sisters. i knew they were dying over its awesomeness as much as i was and i was so excited to freak out about it with them when we landed.

  
^^ super mario and i coming in for landing! ^^
 
after our flight, we got some hot coco at this outrageously charming alpine cafe right by our launching place. ^^

i am pretty much still (over a month later!) on a high from our experience paragliding through the alps. just thinking back on our flight makes we swell up with so much love for life on this amazing earth.