Ah, bad luck, Goosey.
However, all is not lost – there is an alternative to the 'jog across a field with a rucksack' mode, in the form of the 'take advantage of gullible kids' mode.
With a normal wing and a suitable harness, what you should do is recruit either four or six young scouts, number depending on your personal avoirdupois.
Each young scout, hereinafter referred to as 'undercarriage squad' , is issued with one of those big lawn corkscrew jobs they sell in the Coopers catalogue for tethering dogs to in the garden, together with a length of rope each (old climbing rope, bit of clothesline, whatever) and bottles of panda cola and packets of monster munch. (This is important, as any kid who will neck down that amount of e numbers and other artificial ingredients clearly has the under-developed sense of self-preservation we are looking for).
Each undercarriage crew member ties themselves to one end of their bit of rope with a bowline (scouts are usually good at knots, you see) and the other end is tied to the lawn corkscrew thingie. This is all set up at a suitable paragliding site where we are looking for ideally a nice flat hilltop with a steep hillside facing into the wind and a rounded edge (sharp corners at the edge can generate rotor which we include in the list of things that are not good). We want about 10mph wind.
The undercarriage members fix their corkscrew thingies into the ground at a suitable distance from the edge then position themselves around you in the harness – one at each corner if in four scout mode, otherwise three along each side if in hexascout configuration.
Your wing should be laid out at right angles to the wind and you can tweak it so the openings catch the breeze and start to inflate the wing, building your 'wall'. Strap into the harness.
Pop the wing up and the scouts lift the harness with you in it. As the wing comes overhead the scouts start to sprint towards the edge of the hilltop. We are after 'speed to fly' which is a combination of the windspeed added to the speed of the sprinting e-number powered scouts. As some point between the start and the edge of the hilltop you should get to flying speed.
As the scouts arrive at the edge of the hilltop, the ropes attached to them cause them to stop suddenly, avoiding falling down the hillside which shows you are a responsible employer, caring for their well-being even if by hovering down fizzy pop and monster munch they clearly don't care themselves.
As each scout is brought up short, you of course will be travelling at the same speed as the sprinting scouts were, but without a rope to stop you will continue moving forward, slipping out of their hands and into the air. A gently dab on the brakes, settle into the harness and get yourself into the lift band, and relax into soaring high mixed with wishing you had ducked behind a wall for a wee before taking off.....
Simples.
Extracted from "The HamsterGBert guide to free flight"
