UBC Reports | Vol. 47 | No. 08 | April
19, 2001
Weekdays he’s grounded, weekends he’s airborne
by Andy Poon staff writer
Over the past 25 years, Ivan Tomecek has been quietly tending to the
electronic needs of the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy in his role
as an engineering
technician. But when the weekend arrives, the 58-year-old climbs up
the mountains
to jump off them.
Tomecek is an avid practitioner of what he calls para-hiking — hiking one
to two hours up a mountainside and then launching off strapped to
a para-glider.
“I use to climb in Germany and my dream was to fly like a bird off
the mountain and not have to climb down after I reached the top,” he says.
Tomecek says he was attracted in part to Vancouver in 1974 because of the
local mountaintops.
“I consider my home the mountains,” he says. When he was
considering immigrating
to Canada in pursuit of a better future for his family, the
clincher came when
some Canadian friends showed him pictures of Whistler mountain.
Although he
didn’t immediately join UBC when he arrived in Canada,
Tomecek says that
he had always aimed to work here someday.
He had learned about the university in Germany and been impressed by its
reputation.
Tomecek’s work day can take him from making repairs on X-ray machines to
building electronic circuit boards for researchers and students to experiment
upon.
“It is ideal work,” he says. “I like the wide variety of activities, knowledge
and skills I use — it’s never boring.”
