SECOND THOUGHTS

Jesse, a pre-solo student, was working on basic thermaling in light air and doing fine, but as we drifted toward a stony mountaintop his composure began to quaver.

“Feels like the ground is reaching up with malevolent talons, doesn't it?" I said, "But you know it won't move. The key to staying in this thermal, and avoiding those rocks, is to hold your attitude steady while we circle.”

“Yeah, but this leaping horizon distracts me.”

“So it's a mental problem. Keep track of position relative to the ground in your mind, but fly as if you were in wide open airspace.”

Easy to say.  As one craggy peak crept below, Jesse reacted with the instinct of a groundlubber, involuntarily squeezing back on the stick and forfeiting speed essential to control... while also flattening the bank and ‘correcting’ for that with more rudder into the turn. As we all (should) know, this was the perfect way to stop flying and spin straight down like a maple seed.

I sensed it coming like parents foresee a toddler’s fall and could have intervened at any moment, but while Jesse set the stage for disaster I held a quick, sober internal dialogue. He'd not yet been introduced to spins, but clearly the time had come. Thinking 'what could it hurt', I decided to let him lapse fully into the spin before showing him how to recover.

One heartbeat later he’d gone from the innocent entry stage to that ‘uhhh’ feeling of an unexpected stall. He followed the ‘How to Become a Statistic’ script precisely, pulling back further with opposite aileron deepening the stall and one huge, trembling intake of breath.

“It's alright,” I said with theatrical composure, taking control. "Opposite rudder to stop the rotation, forward stick to break the stall, and presto!" Seconds later we were pulling positive Gs and leveling out to normal flight attitude.

Jesse was shocked naturally, and happy to fly straight away from the mountains while I explained what had happened. (He knew what almost happened.)

We finished that flight high over flat ground, practicing more spin recoveries until time to land. Afterward I probed for negative reactions from the rude introduction, but Jesse seemed okay with it all.

Even so, I worried that the scare might discourage him, and was relieved when he returned two weeks later. He asked if we could maybe just go soaring and have some fun instead of training, which fit perfectly because the game on this day was something else still new to him: WAVE.

Jesse handled the crosswind takeoff well, and did fine towing through more turbulence than he’d seen, too. We released tow at the top of an especially big rotor, and from there bore straight on into the wind through one surge after another, fast in sink (slow over the ground), and min-sink in lift, climbing nearly straight up. Time and again the bottom would drop out, throwing us against our shoulder straps, followed by compression of heavy Gs. None of this bothered Jesse, and I remember thinking any negative association from our prior flight might really be gone.

I’d briefed him for a rough tow, but the sudden transition to that eery suspended feeling of smooth laminar flow caught him so by surprise it put not relief, but a tremor of fright in his voice.

"You alright Jesse?"

"Oh sure, it's just... wow!"

Stick-and-rudderwise, soaring in wave is simple and easy, the challenge mostly an intellectual one of observing new developments and making timely decisions. A student pilot with even the most rudimentary skills can do all the flying in wave while I sit in back and narrate, pointing up evolving detail in all quarters. But this time Jesse chose to stay off the controls and bathe in the panoramic view. Soon we were on oxygen, higher than he'd ever been and lofting ever further above an oceanic cloudscape. Personally this always gives me a feeling of deja vu, and I remember being glad it was handy for Jesse's 'back on the horse' flight.

Then abruptly he asked that we hurry down.

"Okay, how 'bout we spin down?" I was kidding, but...

"Hell no!"

Maybe he suffered some kind of acrophobic reaction, or the wave's sheer size and power intimidated him... I'll always wonder but we’ll never know. For with that flight Jesse spent down his credit on account with us and never returned…

Oh well, half a one, six dozen of the other.

Joe Garagiola, childhood pal and lifelong disciple of Yogi Berra