Birdies and Birdmen

By Chip Young

Anything can happen when you get out of the house

Here’s what can happen if you tear yourself away from HD digital cable (and your ‘utes from their Facebook and video games) and all get out into the wonderful world of nature and open spaces and blue skies.  (Reminded me of the Mickey Mouse Club’s “Anything Can Happen Day,” for those of you approaching a certain age.)  This is a true story.  Honest.

We were just minding our own business, playing a golf match in the Wednesday night Twilight League at Jamestown Golf Course. Me along with two fellow Jamestowners, my partner Kevin Welch and opponent Dale Buckey, and his Newport teammate, Ed Schene.  There was a perfectly clear blue sky, you could see the planes and going to and from T.F. Green Airport, and we were laughing about our golf balls nailing them when we hit our shots and followed them as they looked like they were flying right past the aircraft in the sky. That little pretend game got chuckles all round long.

Little did we know. 

On the ninth and final green, about 6:30 p.m., three of us were standing with the Newport Bridge at our backs gazing down past the hole at Dale, who was putting up the hill towards us.  He was sizing up his putt, and then suddenly stood up and pointed over our heads, and shouted “Look!”  We figured something had happened on the bridge, or there was another big cargo plane from Quonset going by worth our attention.  We turned, and about 150 yards behind us and 80 feet up, a guy in an ultralight solo glider (not a parasail, where you hang down, but one where you are lying flat out in a sort of sheath that encloses your body and legs) with about a 50-foot wing span was coming down right towards us.  He flew just over the treetops, sneaked over the telephone wires, and went about 20 feet directly over our heads—you could have said “Hi” and chatted and he would have heard you, but we were just gawking with our mouths open and arms outspread like welcoming the Messiah as we followed his flight.

He landed just past the sand traps in front of the green in the fairway on what was essentially his stomach, and then rolled on the landing wheels under his body to a stop halfway down the heart, like a perfect tee shot in reverse.  We were screaming at our friend Doc Barrett, another local boy, who was standing in the adjacent parking lot, only 20 yards away from getting run over, with his back turned, filling out his scorecard, totally oblivious, thinking the hubbub was because Dale had sunk his long putt for an eagle. 

When Doc finally responded and turned towards us, we all furiously pointed behind him where Birdman had come to a rest. Doc spun another 90 degrees, saw the glider, jumped about a foot in the air, and then raced over to the mysterious flyer to see if he was all right. (We had to putt out and finish the match, of course. First things first, and we do have priorities.) 

Our foursome went back in to the clubhouse, shaking our heads in amazement, leaving the mystery pilot to caddy his own glider off the course.  Doc eventually brought Birdman in and bought him a beer. When I asked him from across the room where he had started out his journey, figuring possibly a high spot in the state, like the Johnston Landfill, he announced he took off that morning in the Catskills (!?!?!?!).  This was met by a slight indication of disbelief (expressed by a roaring cascade of “Bull-___t!“), but it was true, and he had the GPS tracking to prove it.

It turned out that Birdman (since identified as one Stan Roberts, who is a professional drummer as well as hang glider pilot) took off six and a half hours earlier from upstate New York off a 1,300-foot cliff with two other gliders who he left in his slipstream 40 or 50 miles back. Riding the thermals in his cocoon-like little body suit and harness, with steel rods to support his legs and keep them outstretched behind him, he got up to 7,000 feet at one point as he headed east, before he landed at the Jamestown golf course because he knew it was here, having pulled the same stunt to little fanfare 10 days before.  (One of the witnesses to that appearance said Roberts’ first words were, “Where am I?”)

The point-to-point trip was 157 miles, which he claimed was a record for his hang glide club.  Birdman said he knew when he soared down over Narragansett Bay he was too low to reach his goal of a 200-mile flight, which would have been White Crescent Beach on Cape Cod, so he put down at the now familiar and wide-open links.

It was all fairly unbelievable.  Our awe-inspiring Birdman of a half hour earlier was standing there in the clubhouse with a Heineken, having doffed his flying duds, wearing a polo shirt, shorts and sneakers like some schlub who wandered in off the street for a beer and a burger.  He was awaiting one of a glider team network from Narragansett to pick him and his wings up, like he took just a quick stroll downtown and now needed a ride home.  Just a day in the life.

Oh, and that’s my excuse for three-putting the ninth.