An important experiment.....  
Mick is a good friend of mine many of you will have met on the Box Hill to Brighton run driving the support van. As a faithful drinking partner we often come up with silly plans and ideas and recently we came up with a cracker. Mick paraglides. Paragliders are steerable parachutes you jump off a hill with and soar around for hours on thermals rising from the ground. Great fun but not my cup of tea due to my fear of being suspended by string from nothing more than a tent lining. I have my Monkey Bikes for fun. We decided over a few beers it would be cool to combine the two into one glorious spectacle so in November 2002 one damp Saturday afternoon we did just that. Here are the results
   
 
Take two people, one 86cc Monkey Bike, one paraglider, 50 feet of rope and a large field......  
   

What could possibly go wrong?

* Bike not powerful enough to get Mick flying

* Mick falls over and I don't notice, dragging him face down accross a field

* Mick catches a huge thermal and carries the bike and me on it dangling from rope

* We get arrested

This is Mick. We devised a very specialised and complex release mechanism involving some rope and a screwdriver. Remember we had absolutely no idea what would happen so we needed a release mechanism in case Mick flew off with me an Monkey dangling from the rope.....
 
 
Wing up, rope taught and off we go. I hammer the Champ as fast as I can. The field was soggy and the bike was slipping around a bit.  
   
 
Woah, is that about 3 feet of air I see under Mick? Could he possibly be up?  
   
 
Huzzah! It works! That's about 40 feet of air Mick got and amazingly maintained. Longer rope and more power required I think. We did about 20 mph there. So now you know, it is possible  
Following up - I recently received a few rather stern emails from the concerned paragliding community which we both found rather amusing. Mick however felt it best to protect his identity to avoid jeopardising his reputation in paragliding groups....