Dear NOVA Team Members,
needless to say, I’m proud that I became part of the NPT (thanks, yeah !!!!!!!!).
Imagine a boy, still sleeping in the morning sun in a bright, yellow room, dreaming a half-conscious dream of flying above the roofs of his hometown like Superman. This was me, almost 40 years ago, and whenever I caught one of those dreams, I woke up with a great and thankful feeling (ok, I was angry if one of my 3 brothers woke me up too early). Since my parants ran a small electric shop, I was already taking care of high-voltage lines during my dreams.
After my studies of telematics and economics in Graz, I earned my first real money at the semiconductor company austriamicro-systems, money which I did not have to save any more. So it didn’t take long and I joined the parachute club at Graz airport. It was a great feeling to play around in the air like that. But since the pleasure was very time limited, after some years and just about 50 jumps I joined a friend of mine and started paragliding in 1999. And there I found my childhood dreams again. In 2005 I started escaping from the Schöckl towards Upper Styria and together with Hans Tockner it was logical to head for other paragliding areas and long distance flights. Flying my best season with the Mentor 1 and reaching the podium in the austrian standard class was top of the fun last year.
Today I’m almost 45 (what the heck), having two great sons Erik and Leon in the age of 7 and 4 (at least half of my weekends are theirs) and I work at the start-up semiconductor company SensorDynamics as business process engineer with a boss, who prefers 1-2 days absence with short notice instead of 2 weeks in a row. Looking ahead, I see a lot of fun & safty coming up for me and to share the experiences and stories with a great community.
Cheers, Joe
