SACRED HELIX

We offer beau coup warnings on this page and confessions of your scribe's stupidity galore, but perhaps too little celebration. Soaring is the art of high times after all, and Lord knows we see too many of them to let a day go by without thankful recollection of glories past.

Not that boasting is ever appropriate. Even if there were much to brag about I wouldn't enjoy that, so how could you? Love of this game transcends laying claim to some number or forcing one's name to the top of a list for others to notice. Where's the charm in that compared to... everything else? Each moment aloft we're blessed by splendors that most of the people who ever lived could only imagine. Human flight, and in particular the ability to soar is a miraculous achievement that mere decades from inception is taken too much for granted by many direct beneficiaries. There is no room in the sky for arrogance or conceit, no more than any other holy place. We're not entitled, we are privileged. This is a sacrament, dammit! Leave your vanity on the ground. Sadly, most pilots soar only by themselves, which is to say for themselves only, while we all know joy that's shared is an order of magnitude better. Soaring is not about you, it's about IT. The following paean boasts nothing for it's teller but kind fortune, being one of only two in all of history to witness the event. Such honors are all the fish tale this duffer's ego needs.

dalem

Ships asail, distant vessels on the ocean of life,

we pass and hail one another…a look, a voice, then silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Try to forget that you really need to pee.

You glimpse a flick of light ahead between Mount San Jacinto and the day’s last cloud.  Peering closer, only the hazy backdrop, then that pinpoint glint again.  You’re rushing toward it nearly two miles a minute, so the third flash leaves a white speck and soon you’re close enough to identify the signature cruciform of a sailplane wheeling slowly beneath the cloud, higher each time around.  Meanwhile you're lower every moment.  Will you be high enough to catch that thermal when you get there?  Only if you fly right.

You know there'll be down surrounding the up like a mote around a castle, demanding more speed and even nastier sink rate before the climb can begin.  Hard bargain but a good one, supplying momentum for a stronger zoomie when you finally score.

You slide in a thousand feet below the bogie, feel the sweet surge and pull up... wait, wait, then roll into a climbing turn and regain most of that thousand in seconds.  Your circle is eccentric to the other such that seen from above or below they intersect at two points, but seldom are both ships there at one time.  Given differences in speed and diameter, rhythm between the paired circles resembles orbits of comet and planet superimposed, more than race cars on a track.  When eventually flight paths do meet, they draw together with immaculate parabolic grace.  You admire the ivory figure banking overhead, sensuous lines sculpted simply to pass through air with minimal resistance, a dazzling 3D Imax, only REAL.  At the nearest point it seems almost to pause a moment as if to pose before arcing away for another round.  No need to hide your grin, say it out loud, ‘That’s how I look, too!’

Because it's a weekday the air-to-air frequency has lain quiet for hours, but now, “Glider over San Jack, Alpha One.”

“Alfa One," you answer, "this is Delta Mike at San Jack.”

While pirouetting together high above alpine wilderness you enjoy brief cordial exchanges in clipped lingo, port of origin, objective, and impressions of the day's weather.  Alone on the frequency, proper dialogue decays into banter and soon a friendship forms.  Oddly however, faithful to a peculiar aspect of radio etiquette, you never attach a name to either call sign...

From launches more than a hundred miles apart, you've rambled singly all afternoon above far-flung tracts and just happened to cross paths on the way home.  Alfa One is a high-performance racer capable of amazing glides, while Delta Mike, a bigger-winged two-seater bearing only yourself today, can float slower and climb quicker – theoretically.  Much of the time you inhabit opposite sides of your roundelay so each can observe where the other finds stronger or weaker lift and adjust to take advantage.  For all is relative, every circle a fresh adventure awash in trillions of molecules, each on its separate beat.  Like fishing buddies on either shore of a narrow stream, what began as a collaborative alliance now intensifies and becomes competitive.  Chatter lapses.

Soaring is a deeply mental activity, profound physical exhilerations dwarfed by the cognitive thrill of actually sailing across the sky!  It’s a process of thinking nimbly as possible, devising solutions from fractally convoluted information, and continually making quick decisions on which everything depends.

A cool mile higher your do-si-do continues but the cloud that attracted you has died, and even the most precious climbs inevitably wane.  Then juuust as you're reaching Alfa One's height she levels smoothly, noses over and skates away to the south, silent.  What a tease!  The parting is melancholy, though a sudden moistness in your vision betrays not regret but bottomless delight.  One circle later Alpha One has vanished, only now calling over the shoulder, “It’s a beautiful thing we do.”

Truer words... With a lump in your throat and a wide smile you reply, “Roger that! Thanks for the dance, Delta Mike out.”  And in a corner of each eye a single tear does swell, nearly to the brim.

Feeling lonely for the first time all day, you're glad to leave now too.  Evening seems to be coming, surprise surprise, and you have eighty miles still to go.  The good news:  half of that could be final glide.  If you fly right.  But you’ll need one more climb to reach that point – okay at least two – with no more clouds to mark the way.

The bad news:  yes, you do still need to pee.