Stormcrow
I'm starting to worry that I've turned in to some terrible harbinger of doom.
First example: paragliding accident. I was on holiday in the Alps last month (mountains! I do like mountains) and there was a paragliding landing spot about 200 m from my apartment. It was amazing to watch the paragliders - they just run down the mountain until the ground falls away faster than the parachute lets them fall and then they're off. The quick route down took about 20 minutes, spiralling down and round, but some of them glided across the valley to the other peaks and picked up thermals and updrafts and stayed up for hours and hours. I considered doing it myself at some length. Long-time readers know I'm a huge fan of powered flight. And I did very nearly go skydiving when a student. (I had a crush on a skydiver, and so turned up at the crack of dawn at the bus stop on several wet Saturday mornings only to find that it was cancelled, but before we had a clear day they got involved with someone else and it would've been awkward.) But this seemed just a little bit too risky, especially these days when even a sprained ankle takes a long time to heal up. I looked up the stats and didn't like what I saw. So I decided that no, I wouldn't do it. Next day, I'd been watching them drift down and then saw a medical helicopter come up the valley, land in the paraglider landing area, then take off again shortly afterwards and head back down the valley. Someone had had an accident sufficiently serious to warrant helicopter evacuation, not just an ambulance. I took this as evidence that I'd underestimated the riskiness of the activity, but others I've talked to have said "That would've been you!", which isn't how I see it but is arguably another way of articulating the same thought.
Second example: cable car nightmare. I was staying near Mont Blanc, in the next valley along from Chamonix. On my walks, I kept spotting Mont Blanc's white peak as I climbed, seeing it from different angles, different times of day, and in different weather - so much so I started to think of my experience as Thirty-Six Views of Mont Blanc. Anyway. I rode a lot of cable cars (and chairlifts, and a cogwheel railway, and a couple of funiculars!) and loved it. There is an amazing cable car that goes up from Chamonix to the Aiguille du Midi, a peak next to Mont Blanc, which is as high as you can easily go in the Alps without being a serious mountaineer. There's another cable car that goes up from Courmayeur on the Italian side to another neighbouring peak called Pointe Helbronner. And then there's a third cable car, the Vallée Blanche Cable Car, that links the two peaks, with a spectacular route across a glacier with an extraordinary view of Mont Blanc. I was pretty keen on going - it looked awesome - but the price was truly awesome, and I regretfully decided not to. Last week there was a terrible incident with 110 people trapped on it, many of them overnight. Helicopters came to help, and dropped rescuers and supplies down. Some people were able to escape by rappelling down ropes and climbing up the glacier to the cable car station, some were winched off by helicopter, and about half of them had to spend the night suspended above the void after the weather closed in and the helicopters couldn't fly, until the system was fixed in the morning.
Third example: Man assaulted and then hit by bus outside Camden Town Tube station. I went in to Camden Town Tube station last Thursday on my way home from a night out with friends and missed this incident by minutes, arriving just as multiple police vans and an ambulance closed in and incident tape went up. Pretty minor as disasters in London go (the chap is apparently going to be Ok) but closer than one might like.
Fourth example: TV show catastrophe. At the weekend I watched an entire episode of the Great British Bake Off for the first time. It's very nice - wonderful baking, a sprinkling of stupid-joke innuendo, the least competitive competition you could actually have, and everyone is lovely about it all. I quite liked it but decided I wouldn't make a habit of watching it. It is as BBC a production as one could imagine. So today's shocking news is that the show is leaving the BBC for Channel 4, Mel and Sue (the presenters) are going, and the fate of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (the judges) is unclear.
I'm not sure I should offer to meet up with any of my good friends in the near future until this trend has stopped. Except ... what if I decide not to meet up with someone and that's what causes a disaster to happen to them? Argh!
Edit: Just realised. It's Open House London this weekend, and I considered visiting 10 Downing Street, but it was only by lottery and that's closed already. So I'm not going. Let's see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/323831.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
First example: paragliding accident. I was on holiday in the Alps last month (mountains! I do like mountains) and there was a paragliding landing spot about 200 m from my apartment. It was amazing to watch the paragliders - they just run down the mountain until the ground falls away faster than the parachute lets them fall and then they're off. The quick route down took about 20 minutes, spiralling down and round, but some of them glided across the valley to the other peaks and picked up thermals and updrafts and stayed up for hours and hours. I considered doing it myself at some length. Long-time readers know I'm a huge fan of powered flight. And I did very nearly go skydiving when a student. (I had a crush on a skydiver, and so turned up at the crack of dawn at the bus stop on several wet Saturday mornings only to find that it was cancelled, but before we had a clear day they got involved with someone else and it would've been awkward.) But this seemed just a little bit too risky, especially these days when even a sprained ankle takes a long time to heal up. I looked up the stats and didn't like what I saw. So I decided that no, I wouldn't do it. Next day, I'd been watching them drift down and then saw a medical helicopter come up the valley, land in the paraglider landing area, then take off again shortly afterwards and head back down the valley. Someone had had an accident sufficiently serious to warrant helicopter evacuation, not just an ambulance. I took this as evidence that I'd underestimated the riskiness of the activity, but others I've talked to have said "That would've been you!", which isn't how I see it but is arguably another way of articulating the same thought.
Second example: cable car nightmare. I was staying near Mont Blanc, in the next valley along from Chamonix. On my walks, I kept spotting Mont Blanc's white peak as I climbed, seeing it from different angles, different times of day, and in different weather - so much so I started to think of my experience as Thirty-Six Views of Mont Blanc. Anyway. I rode a lot of cable cars (and chairlifts, and a cogwheel railway, and a couple of funiculars!) and loved it. There is an amazing cable car that goes up from Chamonix to the Aiguille du Midi, a peak next to Mont Blanc, which is as high as you can easily go in the Alps without being a serious mountaineer. There's another cable car that goes up from Courmayeur on the Italian side to another neighbouring peak called Pointe Helbronner. And then there's a third cable car, the Vallée Blanche Cable Car, that links the two peaks, with a spectacular route across a glacier with an extraordinary view of Mont Blanc. I was pretty keen on going - it looked awesome - but the price was truly awesome, and I regretfully decided not to. Last week there was a terrible incident with 110 people trapped on it, many of them overnight. Helicopters came to help, and dropped rescuers and supplies down. Some people were able to escape by rappelling down ropes and climbing up the glacier to the cable car station, some were winched off by helicopter, and about half of them had to spend the night suspended above the void after the weather closed in and the helicopters couldn't fly, until the system was fixed in the morning.
Third example: Man assaulted and then hit by bus outside Camden Town Tube station. I went in to Camden Town Tube station last Thursday on my way home from a night out with friends and missed this incident by minutes, arriving just as multiple police vans and an ambulance closed in and incident tape went up. Pretty minor as disasters in London go (the chap is apparently going to be Ok) but closer than one might like.
Fourth example: TV show catastrophe. At the weekend I watched an entire episode of the Great British Bake Off for the first time. It's very nice - wonderful baking, a sprinkling of stupid-joke innuendo, the least competitive competition you could actually have, and everyone is lovely about it all. I quite liked it but decided I wouldn't make a habit of watching it. It is as BBC a production as one could imagine. So today's shocking news is that the show is leaving the BBC for Channel 4, Mel and Sue (the presenters) are going, and the fate of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (the judges) is unclear.
I'm not sure I should offer to meet up with any of my good friends in the near future until this trend has stopped. Except ... what if I decide not to meet up with someone and that's what causes a disaster to happen to them? Argh!
Edit: Just realised. It's Open House London this weekend, and I considered visiting 10 Downing Street, but it was only by lottery and that's closed already. So I'm not going. Let's see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/323831.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.