Today Google suggested my Weblog in response to someone's search: "Luning Torture". Those terms looked interesting to me. Luning is a small town in rather bleak central Nevada, and to be unexpectedly idled there by a vehicle's mechanical breakdown might hyperbolically be called torture of a sort. So I Googled the terms as well, just to see what came up.
In response, Google found this really interesting account of a paragliding run from the Owens Valley all the way to the town of Luning - just an astonishing distance of 138 miles! That bumpy 7-hours-long ride would be torture of a sort, but what exquisite pain!:
Desperate and just kicking myself for getting low in what I'd started thinking of as the Bermuda Triangle, I circled in zero lift and used every Lookout Mountain light air trick I could think of, but slowly I sank farther below the peak and deeper into one of the canyons I'd sworn not to land in. The cloud street less than five miles to my west taunted me from 19,000 feet, while I dove and roller-coasted down into the canyon's still evening air. Not only did the cloud street torture me mentally, it was shading all but a few small patches of slope in my area. I alternately cursed myself for not only blowing a prime opportunity to break the US record, but now I was going to have to walk out of a rattlesnake infested hell canyon even if I could land safely in the monster boulders and thorny shrubbery. I couldn't imagine being here on a hang glider; landing and walking out was a barely survivable option on a paraglider. The north wind put all the sunny slopes in a mild lee, but I've flown lee a lot and knew it was my only chance to escape the Bermuda triangle.
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