Mexican Police Standoff

Lemons into lemonade...
Early in November, I traveled to southern California to train Cliff Ryder and Mark Broderick on the Flat Top for their upcoming Discovery Channel series called "Freefalling." They plan to use the Flat Top to scope out cliff jumps all over the world for the program.

We decided to head down to Baja with all of the toys for some better weather and infamous Baja LOBSTER. We met up with my good friend, Loyal Pennings who wanted us to base jump into a friends wedding at a major hotel on the beach. After a day of practice, we were heading to the hotel when we were pulled over by the Rosarito police. It turned out to be the Chief of Police and his partner. After about a half hour, we were told that we had about $500 in non-moving violations. Things like not having a red rag tied to the paramotor, obstruction of the rear view mirror and several other "serious" infractions.

I could see that they were somewhat curious about the Flat Top on the back of my truck and after I explained how it worked, they started asking questions about it. When I made the offer to take them flying, they seemed amused, but not really interested. But, after really talking it up, Cliff Ryder and I actually got them to commit to following us back to the beach to take them tandem flights!

We scrambled for a video tape and Mark Broderick captured some epic footage of the preparation and the flights (nice work Mark!)

They called most of the police department out to the site to watch and, after they all flew, the chief called his wife out and I took her on a quick flight before it started to rain on us.

Conditions were not great for tandem. We had no wind and heavy passengers. However, with Loyal Pennings and Cliff Ryder pulling them along from either side, we managed to have some great launches (thanks guys).

What started out as a potentially really bad day ended up with a really good group of new friends and a great story. They gave us their official police lapel pins and their personal cell phone numbers in case we were pulled over again. They also invited us to come back to visit them anytime. I'll let you know on this blog when we head back to Baja, so you can join us. We'll be shooting scenes for our next paragliding video there.

Moral of the story...never give up...you just never know how good things can get.

To my good friends, Chief Miguel and his partner Chili...
Hasta Luego y gracias para todo!