click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
It is not everyday that I am treated to hang-gliders and birds flying off the steep slopes of my beloved Mount Tamalpais. Dramatic and exciting to see them take off and soar slowly, in a winding manner, down to the soft sands of Stinson Beach about 2200 feet below. They say it is safe. I don't know...
SPECIAL EDITION
SPECIAL EDITION
SPECIAL EDITION
SPECIAL EDITION
CLICK for Flight over Mt. Tamalpais and Stinson Beach.
DATELINE: Ridgecrest Boulevard, Mt. Tamalpais, October 11, 2012
THE FLASH STORY About 8 years ago I became enamored by the geeky nature of Flash coding. I made a series of Flash examples as I learned "Action-script", a coding language similar to Javascript, useful for controlling each frame of the movie.
For a spacey trip, check out my Flash sampler site I completed in 2004 at: http://www.photoarrow.com/flash/index.html
Flash has gotten a bum rap in recent years. And yes, there has been a lot of very tacky ads and other annoying Flash abominations cluttering web-pages. However, in the hands of a totally deranged and/or creative person, magic-like movement and effects can be manipulated to perform all sorts of tasks. Great fun and maybe even educational.
Not everybody allows Flash on their devices, and there is misinformation that Flash is going away. Not true--the only thing that will disappear eventually is the Flash Player, in favor of a "movie" tag in HTML5.
If you are beyond the fringe of sanity and/or into sound-effects like I am, check out my Flash keyboard site at: http://keyboardsoundeffects.blogspot.com
The following 3 images were first published on December 4, 2004
but I think this is such a curious story I thought it worth re-running.
This hang-glider launched in clear sky, but entered a thick fog layer. I see no way the two riders could have been able to see clearly enough to navigate a safe descent. It is still a mystery to me. Perhaps they had GPS. Brave flyers. As dangerous as it appeared to me I suppose they knew what they were doing.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
The ridge on Mt. Tamalpais is a popular place for hang-gliding -- it's about a 1500 foot drop down to a soft landing at Stinson Beach. The scenery couldn't be any more spectacular.
On Wednesday I was up on the ridge admiring the huge blanket of fog covering the Pacific when I noticed a hang-glider preparing to launch. If you look at the photo closely you can make out that there were two people riding piggy-back.
Now, I'm still scratching my head about this, but these adventurous souls flew straight into that thick bank of fog and I have absolutely no idea how they navigated through it. I doubt if they had radar on-board, and fiddling with a GPS unit on the way down sounds just a bit sketchy, so I hope they made it safely -- didn't see anything in newspaper headlines the following day so I guess they landed safely.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
This is the last I saw of them...
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
Beautiful, isn't it? Not much fun to drive through in a car, but these two fearless pilots seemed to show no sign of danger. It looked terribly risky.
CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.
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