To do or not to do...

Pigorilla Power!

56

19 – October 2009

Where it is that the days go is not a concern of mine, but what is particularly enamouring is that they are, indeed, going. It seems like there is imbalance in the air when I see and hear of all those that don’t have enough hours in the day because they are so busy trying to get stuff done with an unforgiving time-line. They can have some of my hours any day!

I spoke to my good friend, Louis Chanu, today and was grateful for the chat after almost a year of not talking to him. Louis lives in the mountains in a small town called Grabouw near Cape Town with a couple of twins, Enzo and Salvador, his daughter Malaika, and wife, Beth. He makes bronze sculptures that have found their way into the homes of Richard Branson and numerous other well known art collectors and people.

We started off becoming friends in the army as we were both drivers and had a penchant for pushing the military vehicles to their limit, and then a little bit further. After training at 5 SAI (5th South African Infantry Battalion) I had learnt how much Louis appreciated his food after receiving a well timed chop from his butter knife after trying to lift a chip off his plate during a moment when I thought he wasn’t looking. This is a scar I still carry on my thumb knuckle today and ironically, a constant reminder of our friendship. We went on to protect the South African borders while charging around on our “Buffels” (mine-proofed people carriers) in South West Africa, after which we went our separate ways until I bumped into him in Johannesburg and he was sculpting and casting garden animals which he still sells to the nurseries in South Africa to this day.

We were going to start a business together; taking aerial photographs from powered Para-gliders as Louis, at that point, was manufacturing the motors from a combination of lawn mower engines and rotors from Micro-light engines. I managed to get Agfa (the photographic film company) to sponsor my wing which I had designed and manufactured in Cape-Town. The business never quite got off the ground as Louis was out flying one day and flew through a thunder shower. It would take a few hours for me to explain how these para-gliders work in their entirety, but a basic understanding can be grasped from knowing that the wings are made out of a water-proof material that fills up with air giving it the same shape as an airplanes wing. The glider is then controlled by changing the shape of the wing depending on which direction that you would like to go. If you pull the right “riser” the Para-glider will turn right (not too hard, or you would end up in a spiral) and if you pull the left “riser” you would turn left. If you pull both of them and held the risers down, not only would the glider stall, but the wing would collapse. The problem with going through a storm is that the water doesn’t filter through the impervious fabric and before you know it, the wing is filling up with water which creates the wing to go into an involuntary stall. Depending on the amount of water, this can be counteracted by increasing your speed, but the storm was just too big for my friend Louis. He had a crowd of people waiting for him comprising of friends and family who, having heard his engine, were watching him come in to land.

 The craft and Louis were still about two hundred metres away and about seventy five metres in the air. “That wings not looking too good”, someone called out, and with that, the whole wing collapsed into a ball and Louis fell out of the sky. He landed with a mighty bounce (one and a half metres, I hear) and on his back, with the rotor breaking and the cage that protects the engine, and the engine itself, hammering into the ground with Louis the driving force behind them. A long silence followed......Louis could not have survived that, and no-one wanted to be the first to confirm his demise....he wasn’t moving.....someone ran over and while Louis was not well, he was alive, but too battered to have any further interest in my aerial photography idea.

 He kept his will to fly and has just completed making his third fixed wing air-craft. He took it up for its first flight recently and took his friend Tikky up with him for the occasion. Having spoken to me, he said how unfortunate it was that he had taken Tikky because he had chosen him because of all the people Louis knew, he thought Tikky had the least to lose if he crashed and killed him, but it should have been me! I thanked him for his concern.

I don’t know when exactly the change came, but lately I haven’t been sure whether the good things stopped happening to me or I just can’t see them. To be fair, the last couple of months haven’t been too good to me and my planet. A very good friend of mines aunt dying in a horrific road accident with her husband driving might have just been just another incident of how fragile life is, but I wasn’t happy when my good friend, Nick Slack died from pancreatic cancer shortly afterwards which was then compounded with bad news of a very good friend of mine and his partner being hijacked of their vehicle at gunpoint (also in SA...where else?); My sister was recently diagnosed with breast cancer which necessitated a swift mastectomy due to the bad news that it was the most aggressive 3^rd grade of cancer. While conveniently having been caught at the first stage, to try and knock it dead in its tracks she is probably going ahead with chemotherapy. One of my dearest friends felt like she’d had enough of this world recently and thought that it would be a good time to top herself in the bath with the aid of a razor blade. Thankfully, the process was a little painful, more than life itself no doubt, so apart from a bloody bathroom and a week or so of sleep therapy, I managed to keep that friend. My sisters ex-boyfriend just had a tumour removed ,yesterday, from behind his eye, the size of a golf ball...as of this morning he was still in intensive care after “complications”. He now seems out of the fatal danger zone, but I found out that the complications were that he had stopped breathing so it’s good that they sorted that out, I guess.

 There is a part of me that wants to say, “Hey....what are you moaning about? All of these things could have happened to you. Count your lucky stars and be grateful how well things are going!”....the part of me that says that, isn’t big enough, or ugly enough, to stand up to the part that says that all of this is an uphill gradient even a Land Rover in a low range gear should only have to tackle in the name of fun.

There is another angle which is telling me to stop taking everything so damn seriously....none of us get out of here alive!

The sun is shining, if not beating down any more.....there is a restlessness in the air that is intangible to the senses I’m used to.....great things are afoot....stay tuned into the programme, Young Pigorillians......there is much to do!

p.s.check out Louis stuff at www.chanuart.co.za