Brian Doogan takes to the air

"IF the good Lord had intended you to fly, boy, he'd have given you wings."

Maybe. But the good Lord gave us the Wright brothers instead and the effect was more or less the same.

Aeroplanes have since taken transport to a new dimension.

But transportation of a different nature drives a growing number of people who get their fix through paragliding, and the even more daredevil pursuit of skydiving.

Cynics suggest that they must be running out of room at the asylum.

But however inevitable charges of insanity might be, they are based as much on ignorance as cold, hard fact.

No one would try to disguise the risk involved in aerial sports which, collectively, claimed 135 lives in Britain alone between 1982 and 1992.

But mad? - then I'd be a candidate for the straitjacket myself. AJ Moler was an operations engineer in Las Vegas, principally employed in the supply of air conditioning which you will recognise can be, in the oppressive heat of the Nevada desert, a profitable trade to have.

In his free time he did have a tendency to ride fast bikes, scuba dive and climb rocks. But otherwise his life was consistent with your average Joe Bloggs.

About 10 years ago he experienced his first skydive and was instantly hooked - he has since completed over 2,300 jumps.

"If people want to say I'm mad, then they're probably right," he said, shortly after he had pencilled in number 2,317 and I, in tandem, had accomplished my first.

"Nobody's going to get out of this world alive anyway and I want to experience as much as I can.

"Skydiving's like nothing else I've found.

"When I'm out there I don't have a care in the world. "It's an escape from everyday reality.

"And there is absolutely nothing to compare with that shot of adrenaline - it's ecstasy.

"The tandem jumps are very rewarding in themselves for you are sharing that experience with other people who, without you, wouldn't be qualified to jump.

"I still get the same buzz from my 2,000th and something jump as I got from my first."

The surge of excitement induced by that decision to jump was an experience I have found nothing comparable to either.

To be honest, the plane in which we went up took care of any potential reluctance.

If someone had told me this contraption was the Wright brothers first shot at it I wouldn't have disbelieved them.

The first 45 seconds, after thrusting ourselves into nothingness at 10,500 feet, was complete freefall and undiluted exhilaration.

A strong urge to look for a soft place to land quickly subsided into awe as, powered by gravity, we drilled a hole through the air. When the chute was released at approximately 7,000 feet it was as if, momentarily, we came to a standstill.

The experience from then on was similar to the paragliding in which I participated, closer to home, at Chipping - Mark Levine, my instructor, has recently established a school for diehards in Darwen.

I was unsure whether to show up wearing a metal hat or metal underpants.

I settled instead for again looking out for a soft place to land.

For some reason the thought of taking off from the ground (albeit about 1,000 feet up) with a parachute strapped to my back freaked me out more than jumping out of the plane (go figure).

I have a vivid childhood memory of letting a balloon slip through my fingers and disappear into the clouds.

Perhaps my fear was that when this great balloon got airborne, there'd be nothing to bring me back down either.

My mouth dried and my throat tightened. Perspiration was suddenly flowing more freely down my spine than the whiskey at an Irish wake.

It was possibly the same feeling experienced by a boxer before he is called to the ring.

But I steadied myself sufficiently to convince Mark that I would be a compliant passenger.

About 30 feet off terra firma, the internal torture gave way and, yes, there descended a feeling almost of tranquillity.

"It's so natural, we're flying just like the birds," said Mark, expertly sidestepping the fact that we are both human beings.

"You can glide around here for hours and feel at peace with the world.

"Every precaution is taken to ensure our safety.

"For hours the feeling is of total escape."

Many might be tempted to escape into a bottle of the hard stuff, or worse, when life's pressures get too much.

Hallucinations, though, are only a substitute for true escapism.

Paragliding, skydiving, aerial sports, at least to this mind (messed up or otherwise), are about as close as it gets to the real thing.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.