Fly Rum

Day 253

yikes, a six week drought is up...

Perhaps needless to say, stuff came up and I got a bit swamped with things for a few weeks.



Anyways--in early spring here, I took off with some friends for a weekend in Wadi Rum and Aqaba. Rum is always a treat but the draw this go around was a new program offering flights over the Wadi in a microlight plane. A young female instructor pilot Basima, after smashing the glass ceiling at Jodan's commercial aviation academy, came up with the idea to fly the short jaunt from the airport in Aqaba, land on the dry lake bed outside Wadi Rum park and take up weekenders and tourists for 15-30 min. hops. The twist is, she goads you to do most of the flying (outside of landing). Fortunately it's pretty hard to screw up in such a light plane and I had a blast flying over Rum village and Jabl Rum. If you're an actual pilot, like one of my friends, you can pay half the price essentially and tool around solo.



So yeah that was amazing. Then we took our 4x4 truck way out into the reserve near the Saudi border and set up an isolated camp. I was still in training mode for a half marathon (more on that later)...so I did laps around the dry lake bed one day, and went for a sunset run from camp the next. Sunset run, alone, in the desert. Not a great idea. This is the happy pre-run picture, in which I am oozing (misplaced) confidence at my adventurous idea. I figured I could squeeze in 4 miles before dark, but turns out all your landmarks look different at dusk and from reverse. Short story is I made a wrong turn somewhere, and ten miles of frantic and frightened running via crude star navigation later, I finally saw the camp fire. The real fire, I should say--desert mirages are not just the stuff of myths. So a little dehydrated and bloodied (thorny desert bushes are hard to see and harder on the legs), I wolfed down our lavish BBQ feast and slept easy that night.

Turns out there is a (well-marked) nighttime race in Wadi Rum in late May. For various reasons I will not be partaking, but much respect to all those who do.