My wife Caroline and I started flying paragliders in 1994 when I booked a course that would take us all the way through to Club Pilot for a fixed price. My wife, a friend from my work an I all qualified after 2 weeks of training.
The first week of training took us to the first qualification, Student Pilot, and was the last week in May. This Week was punctuated by typical British weather and the instructor got a rough time from us because we thought we knew best and it wasn't that windy. He eventually let us out on the hill to do some very important ground handling exercises. It was here we learned that what we thought was a gentle breeze was actually blowing with the force of a hurricane as the 20 odd square metres of nylon captured the wind and dragged us all round the field. Only now do we realise that this 10mph wind is pretty calm once you have the knack of controlling the canopy.
One very memorable moment from the first day was when I lost my grip on my wife's harness, because I was the all important anchor man, and had to shout to my friend "catch my wife as she goes past you". He didn't and she bounced her way through the longish grass off towards the where the Sheep has seen it all before.
It was on this hill we had our first "flight". With the instructor holding firmly onto our harness we ran off down this gentle slope and lifted into the air about 3'. Well, I did anyway, my friend, on the command from the instructor, "let go of the risers", promptly retracted his undercarriage (legs to non flyers) and immediately proved Newton correct. The inevitable contact with the ground promptly removed all forward momentum from the budding pilot and the instructor, who was pushing him with all his might, ended up somersaulting over the top of the lump now firmly seated on the grass. When my wife's stomach, and mine, finally stopped aching from the laughing she had a go. It was a replay of the first incident. I don't know to this day why the words "let go of the risers" got interpreted as " you are now airborne and you can stop running and lift your legs up"
It all came together on the last day of our first week, 2 hours before our boat home. We missed it and only just got the last one. Those last 2 hours were brilliant. We were all free flying and I managed a flight of over 5 minutes, which I thought was record breaking, I even managed to land back on top. In one week I managed 24 flights and 32 minutes total airtime. These being accomplished in 4 actual flying days out of the 9 we allocated. The rest of the time we sat either in a pub whilst it rained or we sat in the hotel whilst it rained and watched videos of how easy this flying lark really is. That was until we saw the video of what happens when the canopy departs from normal flight and what you should do about it.
The boat trip home was a big high because we had completed the first hurdle. It was also a very big low because we had to go back to work for 5 weeks before returning for the Club Pilot tasks.