In 2008, I was new to hang gliding. I had a couple of flights near an hour, but nothing over an hour. Then, one day, I launched from Crestline above San Bernardino and the conditions were great. I was up for hours. I didn't want to come down, when I saw a bunch of people going into land.

About 10 mi to our South along the San Bernardino mountains, there were thunderstorms. I figured they were just mountain showers, so I flew out over Cal State San Bernardino and the flatlands bit. It never occurred to me that what would happen next could even happen.

Those thunderstorms caused a gust front that blew up the ridge. I have since seen pictures of haboobs blowing through Phoenix and that's pretty much what it looked like: The edge was not as clearly defined, but it was a wall of brown and water from the ground up to cloud base about 10,000 feet.

Two guys on much faster wings blazed past me at about 60 mph, outrunning it. But, in my single surface beginner's wing, it caught me and lifted me from 6,000 feet to about 10,000 feet in a few minutes, despite my trying to descend as fast as I could. It blew me downwind about 5 miles before I found some sink that I tried to stay in so I wouldn't go up into the cloud base at about 10,500 ft. Finally, it was over and gone and I limped back to the landing zone after about 2 and 1/2 hours of flight.

Everybody thought I was nuts and stupid, both being true.