Day 2 Riding and Flying

 

 

We're in line at the airport and Jon put his hand... here.  I'm rolling on the floor as he then spends the next twenty minutes trying to extract this gum from the palm of his hand.  It was both very funny and extremely disturbing.  Hang with us - the day gets better for Jon.  Started great for me. :-)

 

 Third in line for Gocek.

 

Picked up the bikes from this great couple running their small startup bike tour business.  They were amazing - bought us a new cell phone to take with us in case of an emergency, and then spent an hour helping put together an itinerary.  We're here packing the bikes for the adventure.

First stop a couple of miles later.  The views are going to be incredible.

We'll spend the first night in Oludeniz.

Jon's up on a hill trying to get an action shot of me going by.  The best part of this was the old man fishing just out of view.  He found the entire thing quite entertaining with Jon scrambling up and down the rocks just for this.  Got lots of smiles and waves out of him.  Didn't speak a word of English.

Bikes attract people that love to talk.  This guy was a rider and we were comparing adventures.  He had us beat with a 15,000 km trip from South Africa to Egypt.

Our hotel in Oludeniz called Paradise Garden.  It was a private residence built on the hill with grape vines, bougainvillea, and tropical fruit trees everywhere. The pool is filled by a natural spring, and the views are unbelievable.  The room... meh.

We both found that we like Turkish Delight!  Have to bring some home for all the kids.

Beautiful views next to a super high mountain? Jump off the mountain to get a better view!  We decided to paraglide.  The scariest part was this van here with 18 people packed in.  On the way up the lottery to decide which pilot went with which passenger was not sufficient to distract us from the crazy, death defying climb through switchbacks to 6,500 ft. from sea level.  The drive took 45 minutes.  Wendy would not have been happy.  There was much discussion in the back of the bus that paragliding off the side of the mountain was much safer than a drive back down.  No exaggeration here at all.

Jon was able to get a bunch of shots of me taking off.  You walk or run at their command until the updraft takes you off the ground.  There was no initial fall so as scary as this sounds it just wasn't.  It was breathtaking though from above the clouds.  That's over a mile up and we're heading all the way down to sea level.

Jon's pilot setting up his parachute.  

Jon's takoff.  Nice piddies.

Awesome shot by Jon showing his parachute.  You couldn't hold the camera to your face so he randomly caught the shot from his lap.

That's me!  Jon's incredible.  Shot from 1,000 ft above.

I'm coming in for a landing.  My pilot asked if I wanted to spiral and I said yes.  The corkscrew down takes 10 minutes off your flight time of 35 minutes, but it was totally worth it.  Jon puked from above just watching me.

The money shots.  Really - cost us $50 each just to bring them home.  We have the videos too.  Big thumbs up for the day.