Brad Hill:  

Back in high school, my future seemed pretty planned out: Running my parents small industrial business, and continuing to live in Vancouver for the duration. That worked fairly well for several years, but things took a bit of a left turn one winter when I started a part time job as a ski instructor at Mt. Hood. The money sucked, but meeting all the happy people and spending so much time outside in clean fresh air really struck a chord with me. In the summer of 1992, I discovered the sport of Paragliding that shortly thereafter sent my previous life plan skidding painfully sideways into the gutter. By 1994, I had started my own Paragliding school, and was working towards closing down the previous business just as the industrial economy in the US was really falling into disfavor. Late in 1997, with only three months left on her travel visa, I met another paraglider pilot from Germany. We hit it off, and both rather imagined having a three month 'fling' until her visa ran out. Another good plan shot to hell. When she left, we immediately found out that neither of us liked the original 'fling' idea, and several months...Expand for more