PORPOISE AND THE AIR
“To knock a thing down, if it’s cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood. ”
On a rare solo cross-country, I was soaring the well-known shearline north from Mojave up the Sierras. Lift that day was consistent but not high enough to form clouds, so I straddled every ridge, gathering energy from both sides of the crest, with few stops to climb. Not what anyone would call comfortably high this far from safe haven, but aggressive dolphin flight (fast in all bad stuff, slow only in the good) allowed for nominal separation above rising ground while keeping potential alternates always within reach. Then where the shear flattened across a gap ahead, courage quavered and I rolled into a handy thermal.
After one circle came a radio call from a locally notorious race cat advising me to look straight up. Which I did, and there he was, circling a thousand feet above. Embarrassed? Sure, and not the first time. Full disclosure, this fellow had already set a speed record on the same route and in that very plane… So so much for bragging rights.
Alas, his audio variometer matched his voice in both volume and vexatiousness, but only when he keyed his mic. You can bet his brain was anchored to some kind of complicated flight director too, poor guy. While my ship came with similar gadgetry, of course I never turned it on. Skipping rock to rock, all important information and hazard lay directly ahead, and so nearby that for miles I hadn’t even thought to look inside the cockpit, much less up.
When two more circles yielded less than the first I leveled out and moved on up the shearline, sluicing only the strongest convergence as before. Looking always forward and away from the race cat, it was easy to imagine him on my six, about to pounce at any moment, tortoise and the hare, but every time I did circle and get a look back he was always somewhere high up under the sun and hard to find.
Meanwhile the ground below rose incrementally, and each time he closed on me I was a bit higher. Sixty miles later we again shared a thermal, but now at the same altitude. We’d come an equal distance since meeting up, but his many more circles were carving such a long track that, even flying much faster between climbs he never did pass me — while I gradually gained a thousand feet on him! No boast, just a fact.
Naturally there’s terrific temptation to float along this way all afternoon, but no need to rub it in. And whereas the race cat’s home base lay only one hour behind us, mine was now two…
“Time for me to head home,” I called. “Wanna chase me back?” No answer. “Oh come on, I’ll even crank up my electronix to make it fair.”
He replied that he was some exact number of Ks from a declared turn point, and would get to me some other day.
“Gotta catch me first,” I smiled from the reciprocal heading. “Tag, you’re it. Nice runnin’ from ya.”
And all with those digital crutches stowed, for approximately double the fun!