Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9311020238
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
But that was where he spent 11 days last month.
``Our national organization received an invitation from the Russian government to send a delegation,'' he said.
The organization, in turn, sent letters to its members to see who might be interested. ``And I was interested,'' Newberry said.
He was one of a dozen Americans who made the trip. ``We had to pay our own way, and it was expensive,'' he said. The cost was about $5,000.
The group arrived in Moscow with no problems, but then waited for a couple days for their gliders to show up.
They never did. The gliders got bumped for other cargo somewhere in Germany, Newberry learned later.
``Our gliders never showed up so we had to fly homemade Russian gliders,'' he said. ``They looked kind of rough but they flew good.''
Most of their flying was over the Caucasus Mountains.
``First flight, I got up and went across country, which wasn't too smart,'' Newberry said, since he didn't speak the language or know the geography that well.
Luckily, he carried a paper to identify himself to whoever he encountered wherever he came down.
``After drinking a little vodka with a farmer, he hauled me out to a road and waved goodbye,'' Newberry said. ``That was on my birthday.''
He had visions of waiting on that road forever, but others in the group had tracked him down.
Newberry flew farther than anyone in the group, about 10 miles. ``They gave me a real neat compass for getting the longest flight,'' he said.
Hang-gliding competition is carried out by declaring a goal, based on the day's flying conditions. Everybody takes off at the same time, and tries to make it to a named landmark or turnaround point. The flier snaps a picture with a camera mounted on the aircraft to show he has reached the designated point.
``I've always been interested in flying,'' Newberry said, and even his first look at a misguided hang-glider pilot didn't discourage him. ``The first I saw, he went in the bushes three times before he got off.''
The process is not simple. ``The wind has to be in the right direction,'' Newberry explained., ``into the mountain, which causes the lift. The harder it's blowing, the less you have to run to take off.''
Newberry, an officer at GIV Injectibles in Bastian, flies with a friend from that area, and with friends from Blacksburg and Roanoke.
Having lived in the agricultural area of Bland County, Newberry said he liked the look of the Russian countryside with its plowed fields and solid-black soil, which was good for generating thermal currents to fly on.
``The language barrier was the problem, and the roads were terrible,'' he said. ``We stayed at the finest hotels. They really took care of us.''
At one point, they stayed at a ski lodge frequented by Boris Yeltsin. ``He wasn't there,'' Newberry added.
``We had four or five people leading us around all the time,'' he said. ``We made a lot of friends.''
Newberry found that some old habits from living under the communist regime apparently die hard. ``You meet people on the street and they won't make eye contact with you,'' he said. But once he was introduced to any of the Russians, he said, they would be very friendly..
``You pull out a camera and you got all kinds of friends. They love cameras,'' he said.
``We didn't see the poverty we expected, and we didn't see the high prices we expected,'' Newberry said, although some items were high enough. Others were lower - cigarettes cost the equivalent of $1 a pack, and a liter of vodka was about $3.50.
When he got back home, Newberry had to make another trip - to New York - to collect his wayward glider.
``I liked the city of Moscow better than I did the city of New York,'' he said. ``It seemed a little bit more user-friendly. I could understand the road signs a little better in Moscow than New York.''
Newberry is ready to travel again. He and another hang-glider pilot or two are scheduled to take part in flying competition in Argentina in February.
by CNB