New Adventure

Today I participated in the Civil Air Patrol's "Fly a Teacher" program. I met up with five men over the age of 65, most of which had been in the military much longer than I have been alive, this morning and was briefed on the way a plane works. This was a great review since I had forgotten most of what the branch president told me when we went to Watsonville in January. Someone was from the CAP was writing a story about it for the paper to pump up their publicity so as I was re-learning the way a plane works, a camera was going off in my face every few seconds. After the review we went out and I got to help clean off the glider. Yes, I said glider. I jumped at the chance to try a glider, since I have already flown in a small plane.

It was a great coincidence that my glider pilot is the father of one of my co-workers. We had a grand time! First the tow plane took us up to about 8,000 feet and then we detached ourselves from the tow rope and the ride suddenly became smoother. Gliding is basically a prolonged fall unless you can find some thermals to give you lift. We searched around for some thermals for a while but didn't find anything that gave us lots of lift.

This is a picture of us at about 8,000 feet.

Frank, my pilot, let me take the stick for a while and we just flew in a straight line. Then he asked me to apply what I had learned on the ground and make a turn. I had to keep the nose slightly down, the aileron (sp?, wing flaps) to the right and push in the right rudder hard. I did all of that but then couldn't keep my line straight in the turn, and so the glider naturally straightened out again. It was fun to fly for a while.

After a bit we decided to head back to the runway because we were running out of altitude to play in. We fell at about 100 feet per second, but we were traveling at a speed of about 60 MPH. It was the longest fall I have ever had, taking in total about 25 minutes.


If you ever get a chance, try gliding...it is a blast!


We kind of hung out on the runway for a while after we landed. I got to see a few parachuters. Maybe that will be my next adventure in the sky... ( :