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The Outer Banks' obsession with flight Travellers get a taste for the airborne as this coastal strip of North Carolina prepares to celebrate the centennial of the Wright brothers' historic first flight
KIRA VERMOND
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

12/14/2002
The Globe and Mail
Metro
T2
"All material Copyright (c) Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved."

OUTER BANKS, N.C. -- The first time I barrelled down the main highway running through North Carolina's Outer Banks, I learned that the cultural fabric of the place was based on anything and everything airborne.

First Flight Middle School. First Flight Inn. First Flight Insurance Group. First Flight Maintenance and Repair (for those interested in second and third flights?). First Flight Mortgage. Wright Flight Golf. Wright Place Gourmet Market and Catering.

There were kite stores, hang-gliding lessons and places to buy boomerangs and beanies with propellers. Local school kids received lessons on how the Wright brothers flew the first working airplane almost a century ago on what was once a very large sand dune. A community television station advertised a "build your own toothpick glider" contest. Even the birds looked a little more buoyant as they rode the thermals along this finger of islands and towns that runs down the Atlantic coast.

Orville and Wilbur Wright would have been a little astounded had they known their first historic powered flight on Dec. 17, 1903 -- on a crummy, grey day that nearly drove them back indoors -- would eventually build a community based on their accomplishment. In fact, one of the only reasons the Outer Banks, once a wasteland of sand and a smattering of houses, got a bridge and main road in the late 1920s was so that builders could erect the colossal Wright Brothers National Monument that sits on Big Kill Devil Hill.

The town is now a thriving tourist destination with seven million visitors arriving annually to join the area's 50,000 residents. Summer is the busiest time of year, when accommodation prices double or triple and a typical wait for a table in a restaurant can be an hour or more.

Still, even at its most hectic, the Outer Banks is serene compared with other beach vacation destinations. Most of the oceanfront properties run the gamut from two- to 12-bedroom rental beach houses and mom-and-pop motels. Even the most built-up neighbourhoods are devoid of high-rises. And the area, once you venture off the main highway, has retained a quaint, weathered look that appeals to the more genteel traveller.

The look of the place still hints at its isolated past, but getting to the Outer Banks is much easier now than it was in the mid-19th century, when people first came to vacation here. No bridges and few regular ferries served the cluster of barrier islands along the Atlantic seaboard that curve 200 kilometres from the Virginia state line south to mid-North Carolina. Today, there are numerous bridges and ferries connecting the strip of islands to the mainland and to each other.

And now, with the centennial anniversary approaching, the area is ready to launch a year-long party starting Tuesday that will run until Dec. 17, 2003, 100 years from the day of the Wright brothers' first flight. Pilots will be flying replicas of the 1903 Wright Flyer on that day on the original site, and there will be local events every month until then.

But the best way to mark the occasion, and experience the region's passion for flight, is to get into the air yourself. Flying is the most fun you could possibly have, Andy Torrington, a 12-year veteran hang gliding instructor at Kitty Hawk Kites, assured me. The school conducts 12,000 to 14,000 lessons a year for everyone from children to seniors to paraplegics. (The inventor of hang gliding, a former NASA researcher, lives in the Outer Banks.)

Students can choose a simple beginner dune lesson that includes a training video and five solo flights on a sand dune. This might sound ambitious, but it really isn't. Instructors run alongside students as they fly a couple metres -- tops -- above the sand. I signed up for a 20-minute tandem flight: hang gliding at 600 metres with an instructor tucked above me in a matching oversized body sock. It was amazing rising and falling with the thermals high above the ground. And surprisingly loud. I had expected to experience silent soaring on this motorless device, not the torrent of the powerful wind that surrounded us.

Hang gliding and the Outer Banks are a good match. There's a lot of sand and a lot of wind. Just across the highway from Kitty Hawk Kites is Jockey's Ridge State Park in Nags Head, keeper of the tallest natural sand dune on the U.S. East Coast. The huge hill of shifting sand is an awesome sight from the highway, especially after driving by outlet malls, Dairy Queens and mini-putt courses.

While the sand-dune system may look a little out of place today on the Outer Banks, when the Wright brothers made their foray here the whole island was a huge shifting mound of sand. The land was stabilized in the 1930s when a public works program employed people to plant grass and other vegetation.

The soft sand was one of the main reasons the Wrights chose the Outer Banks. They had learned from other would-be flying inventors' mistakes. Mistakes that led to broken bones and, in some cases, death.

The wind was the other deciding factor. When trying to find a place to fly their aircraft, the Wright brothers contacted the National Weather Bureau in Washington and inquired about locations with steady breezes and open space for low-level flying. Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks fit the bill.

But there is such a thing as too much wind. Storms and high winds are common, making flight some days, engine-propelled or otherwise, nearly impossible. It's common to buy hang-gliding lessons only to get a wind check for another day. My solo hang-gliding lesson has been bumped three years in a row.

But good wind means good kite flying. Almost any day you drive by Jockey's Ridge, you'll see at least two or three people flying kites. After leaving the Kitty Hawk Kites with my own beginner's kite under my arm, I visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial, a national park. Standing on the ground where the first flight took place -- an unassuming stretch of land no longer than a length of one of today's airliners -- is inspiring. Such humble beginnings, but such a phenomenal legacy.

Sure, you can make gliders out of toothpicks or chuck a boomerang in hopes it will come back. But the truth of the matter is that nothing comes close to soaring through a bank of clouds in an airplane on a rainy day only to discover a radiant sun hanging in an bright blue sky.

And we have Orville and Wilbur Wright to thank for that.

If you go

GETTING THERE

Fly into Norfolk, Va., and rent a car at the airport. The drive from Norfolk to the Outer Banks is about two hours. Take the new Highway 168 and follow the signs leading to Nags Head, N.C.

WHERE TO STAY

If you're planning to visit during the main centennial celebration week, Dec. 17, 2003, make reservations early. Some hotels are booked; others will start taking reservations next month. Another option, especially if you are travelling with friends or family, is to rent a beach house. Sun Realty is the largest rental company with more than 1,400 properties. For more information, call (800) 334-4745 or visit www.sunrealtync.com.

INFORMATION

The Outer Banks Visitors Bureau: Web: www.outerbanks.org.

First Flight Society: phone:(252) 441-1903; Web: www.firstflight.org.

Wright Brothers National Memorial: 1401 National Park Dr., Manteo, N.C.; phone: (252) 441-7430; Web: www.nps.gov/wrbr.

Kitty Hawk Kites has stores along the Outer Banks, but its hang-gliding school is based in Jockey's Ridge State Park in Nags Head. Phone: (800) 334-4777 or (252) 441-4124; Web:

www.kittyhawk.com.

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