High expectations, what do you expect?

Yesterday, whilst Anita and I were preparing to put a tail mount on Heckle's newly hard penned deck feather, I stubbed my big toe. This wasn't any old run of the mill stubbing, this was full speed walking with flip flops into a concrete step. I'm sure the nail flipped all the back, I was doubled up in agony. I was carrying Heckle at the time, in fact she was being cast so I couldn't even do that thing where you hold your toe in the hope it alleviates some of the pain. I just had to suck it up, take it like a man, In fact I would have to say that this was the most pain I've felt in a long time, maybe even ever. Ok a touch of the man flu syndrome, but it REALLY hurt. The toenail is now blue and getting darker by the hour, I'd say it's a gonna for sure.

Today, whilst preparing all of our equipment for Heckle and Jeckle's inaugural Parahawking flights at Cabo de Santa Pola today; being really careful not to inflict any more damage to my poor big toe, I gently flicked off my flip flips, reached down to slip a pre-rolled sock onto my left foot, then put my back out. I don't know what I've done but it hurts to breath, not at the moment though as I'm all jacked up on Nurofen Plus. Anyway, I was about to fly Kathy Pollet on her first ever Parahawking flight and Jeckle's first Parahawking flight at our new base in Alicante, Spain. It wasn't looking good, I could barely walk, talk or breath, let alone fly a tandem. And whats more, the wind was on the light side. I had a feeling that this wasn't going to be a gentle float along the beautiful sun kissed cliffs with the turquoise Mediterranean shimmering in the background, this was going to be a workout, I was a broken man, this is just what I needed!

I set the bar pretty high when it comes to training and flying birds, I expect the best, all the time, anything short of that generally isn't quite good enough. This has come from having amazing Parahawking flights in Nepal for the last 10 years, where nowadays things seldom go wrong. I've now  had Heckel and Jeckle in re-training for just 2 weeks, with a few set backs due to the weather, it's not been a straight run. Today we flew with Jeckle, he was ready, but we just wasn't, we had a plan but it was difficult to execute due to the light winds. We still had a nice flight, nothing went wrong, in fact in retrospect he did pretty well, everything that was asked of him really. Jeckle came into the glove once during the flight then returned to Anita on the takeoff when he was called, In fact some might say a perfect training flight, new site, new wing, new people, new feathers, new everything, what did I expect? We didn't end up flying Heckle, the winds were dropping off so we'll try her tomorrow. I hope Kathy enjoyed the flight.

I'm praying my back feels better tomorrow and that I don't randomly walk into any other inanimate objects left foot forward. Why does that always happen? A series of mini stubs follows the big stub always on the same toe, like aftershocks reminding you of your clumsiness... and they hurt almost as much as the original stub.

Onwards an upwards, this is just the beginning!

Like father like son

Do most people have a preference on the sex when they decide to have kids, or is it a small minority? I'm not ashamed to admit that once Anita and I decided that we wanted to have a baby, if people asked me what I wanted, which naturally they did all the time, I said a girl. Now there's a simple reason for this, it's no secret that I tend to get on well with girls, always have done, don't know why. Don't get me wrong, I like guys, yeah yeah, easy, not like that. I've got some great guy friends but there's just something about girls which for me I find easier to get along with. The other main reason is I thought that perfection is a daughter who looks and takes after her mum, that's what I was hoping for anyway. Of all the possible scenarios, I think the least favourite would be a daughter who looks like her dad! You know what I'm saying, right?

We didn't want to know the sex prior to the birth, I think the older you get, the truly great surprises in life become fewer and far between. I have to confess that once Anita started to going into labour I had completely forgotten about my preferences, It's worth mentioning that Anita didn't have a preference at all, and not even the slightest feeling of what she was carrying for 9 months. Then suddenly everything pales into insignificance when you witness the birth of your baby, boy, girl, it didn't matter, he was ours. Yes it was a boy and from the moment I saw his little winkle, my very first thought, before I wailed "It's a little boy"! and cried like a baby, was, I'm so glad it's a boy. Weird eh! Fingers crossed we end up with a son who takes after his Mum and looks like his Dad ;)

"What's all this got to do with Parahawking?" I here you ask. Not a lot! Just that I went on a rather long bike ride this morning and this was my thought for the day. The picture of the turtles was taken in our local park near our apartment in Thailand whilst we waited for Talo to arrive, I've wanted to post it for a while, I imagined it to be a turtle and his son, maybe this was the sign, anyway this seemed like an appropriate time to post it.

It was bloody windy again today more windy than the past few days. I'm struggling to make any real progress with Heckle and Jeckle, so difficult when it's this windy. However I did reach a bit of a milestone today, I needed to get them off the creance (training line) as it was driving me mad, so I flew them free down by the beach. Up and until now, Heckle (female) has been doing better then Jeckle (Male). Today the little fella showed her what he's made of and cut through the wind like a knife, while she floated around like a butterfly. I like butterflies normally but today not so much.

Here's hoping for a calmer day tomorrow.

Rome wasn't built in a day

Ok, so what are the rules for blogging? Updating every day? Or just when something interesting happens? I'm still figuring it out, in the meantime the birds still need to be trained and there's other stuff that needs to be sorted out. No major milestones have been reached with Heckle and Jeckle as yet, they're both still overweight a bit and we've been hit by some very unseasonal weather here in Alicante making it a bit tricky to make any real progress. Plus both birds have new tail feathers coming in so I can't put transmitters on them just yet. I'm sure there are many people who'll say "you don't need to put transmitters on Harris Hawks" well sorry, but you should put transmitters on any bird that you fly free, no matter how good a falconer you are, period!

For now, we'll do as much as we can until the weather changes. Nick and I met the local falconers today, nice couple of guys, very helpful. It's always good to meet with the locals and find out what the legislation is, where the good vets are, food sources etc. They have the contracts at the nearby airports for bird clearances. Sitting on a cadge in the back of their van were a couple of tasty falcons, a dark tiercel Peregrine x  Gyr and a Scottish tiercel Peregrine, both hooded and immaculate. It was also nice to see a couple of well used dirty gloves and freshly killed dead Egret lying next to the bag, which made me miss my hunting days a little. I'm sure I can tag along with them one day.

We'll wait patiently for Heckle and Jeckle's tail feathers to be hard penned which should be no longer than a few days, only then will I put transmitters on them, then we can get them up with the gliders. Rome wasn't built in a day!

As much as I'm looking forward to getting in the air with Heckle and Jeckle, I'm missing our life in Nepal, our home, friends and family, and of course our birds. While I was watching the wind sock getting battered about out of our bedroom window today, I found this picture deep inside the confines of the interweb. It was from a photo shoot that our friend Julian Andrews did a couple of years ago, that's me flying Anita with Bob, one of our Egyptian Vultures. Julian was on a second tandem, he must of shot this from behind. I remember the day, it was overcast, there were no thermals so it was a 10 min top to bottom and our last chance to get some decent pictures and salvage something from Julian's visit which had been dogged by bad weather. There's also some interesting pictures from the Cannon camera I'm holding on a pole which have been published in several newspapers I believe. Sadly though I doubt the pictures tell the real story of the flight, the pole with the camera was quite heavy, I was telling Anita to keep calling Bob in whilst I fire off shots. Anita will probably say that I was being a little more demanding, fair enough, but in my defense I did have a fair bit going on and the clock was ticking. Needless to say it wasn't the most pleasurable flight we've had together. Julian being the pro that he is, obviously managed to pull this out of the bag. During his visit he also got some pretty incredible shots of Vultures at the vulture safe zone project in Chitwan, I hope that get published soon. I hope he doesn't mind me posting this on here, I'll ask him if I can put one or two of the vultures here too.

Here's a link to his website - www.julian-andrews.com

10% Sale on ALL Parahawking stuff

 

We sell a range of Parahawking t-shirts in Nepal, mainly for our passengers and visitors to Maya Devi, it's not a great money spinner but merely a nice way for our passengers to remember their experience with us and which also acts as a good way of marketing Parahawking. I'm continually getting asked whether it's possible to buy the Parahawking t-shirts outside of Nepal, this has promoted me to produce a range of Parahawking branded clothing and merchandise which is available online. I found a website called Zazzle.com, basically it allows you to produce one off designs which can be sold over the internet via a dedicated Parahawking online store, pretty neat! This is perfect for us as it means we don't have to produce large quantities of stuff then worry if the goods will ever arrive at it's destination once it goes through the Nepali postal service, which is not the most reliable.

So whilst we were waiting patiently in Bangkok for the arrival of Talo, I set about producing a range of designs using some of the great Parahawking imagery we've collected over the last few years. I think there's some nice stuff here, but the downside is that it's a little bit on the pricey side. It's not me I promise, it's the prices that Zazzle set for the convenience of producing one off products. Needless to say I haven't sold that many so I've decided to have a 10% SALE on all items in the hope that I can actually sell some things. I really can't reduce them any more, really trust me!

So please visit the store, buy something for yourself or a gift for a friend, otherwise the only other way you'll get a Parahawking t-shirt is if you come to Nepal or Spain, which ain't so bad. 

The sale ends on 31st May 2011.

Go to the shop, click here - The Parahawking Shop

A bit windy

I'm a fair weather person, in fact I like it on the warm side really, that's why we choose to live in Nepal and Spain and not England and Norway. If it's not going to be hot, I'd rather it be cold, raining, snowing, in fact anything but too windy. Wind is so unruly and unforgiving and there's nothing worse than trying to train birds in the wind. They never settle on the fist, always turn around to face into the wind, which is fine when you're walking into the wind but at some point you have to come back. Today was one of those days in Alicante, hence you see me sitting at my computer, with Heckle, hiding from the gusts.

All was not lost though, it did eventually calm down just enough to get a mini training session in. Luckily the house is situated on acres of land so I didn't have to battle the elements that far. Both birds performed well bringing us a day closer to flying with them, I can't wait.

I now haven't left the grounds of the house for 2 days, cabin fever is starting to set in. I think tomorrow we'll venture out and do some site seeing around Alicante town, if it's sunny we might even go to the beach, plus I still have a brand new tandem that I haven't flown yet, fingers crossed it's flyable!

Training day 1

After a few days settling in to their new environment, today was the first proper day of re-training for Heckle and Jeckle. They're both still carrying a little "holiday" weight but they did pretty well, both coming to the fist about 10 meters, tomorrow we'll double it. We were hoping to be up and running by the start of May but the late arrival of Talo meant that we're now running a little bit behind schedule. We can't blame the little fella, he was enjoying being in his mummy's tummy far too much, he eventually arrived 8 days late. We managed to make up some time over the last few weeks and with Heckle and Jeckle's speedy progress, we could have them flying with the gliders as early as next week. Fingers crossed Matt (our first booking on the 22nd)

It was another lovely day here in Alicante, I love our house so much I didn't want to leave it today. Ivan went flying, I declined, he soon returned after a spell of Para-waiting, it seems I made the right decision. There's always tomorrow.

Alicante - 2011

 

6 months ago, I was recommended by a friend to contact a certain person about setting up Parahawking in Alicante, Spain. I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. At the time, we were still in the middle of our season in Nepal which was going very well, but we need to plan for the summer, to give Parahawking in Spain a second chance. We had responsibilities to Heckle and Jeckle our two Harris Hawks we had trained the previous season in Berga. We were also expecting our first child in April, with nowhere to live and no base for Parahawking, it was looking like we'd bitten off more than we could chew.

It's now mid May, our Nepal season is 2 months behind us, Talo, our son was born on the 10th April 2011 and I'm sitting writing this blog from our beautiful Spanish house just outside Torrellano, a quaint Spanish village near Alicante. This is the base for Parahawking in Spain, not just this summer but hopefully many summers to come.

Today I went for a little flight, some coastal soaring along the Cobo de Santa Pola cliffs, a beautiful sea breeze wafted us along the ridge. We were joined by some local seagulls then by a couple of angry crows protecting their territory, soon we'll be sharing the sky with Heckle and Jeckle and our Parahawking passengers, hopefully putting smiles on their faces and maybe even making a few dreams come true.

For now, a few of our dreams have come true, we've got a beautiful little boy, we're in our perfect Spanish house with good friends plus I'm truly grateful that there are still people out there like Nick Pollet who runs Doyouwanna Paragliding services in Alicante. Thanks Nick for helping us get a head start here in Alicante. Here's to a great summer!