I'm
stubborn and maybe a bit naive or ignorant with my thinking. I still believe having
a two and a half year-old child will not alter my ability to fly sailplanes; at
least I hope not. Thursdays are my days to stay at home with Olivia and today
is the first good soaring Thursday of the season. The sounding predicts 5kts to
8000ft and a wind profile favourable for cloud streets. If I’m drooling a
bit, then I’m certain several of my club mates have spittle filled keyboards
and a desire to take advantage of the conditions.
The kettle starts
sputtering, a prelude to the full-blown whistle telling me the water is boiling.
I’d better hurry and turn off the flame before the sound awakes my sleeping
daughter. CLICK. Now the only sound in the kitchen is the, TICK-TICK-TICK, of
the battery-powered clock. The ring of the telephone interrupts my walk to the
pantry. I grab a tea bag and tossing it on to the stovetop I step over the dog,
around the coffee table before lunging toward the phone lying on the couch. All
this effort to avoid waking-up a child.
"Hello." I answer
just slightly out of breath.
"Kevin. It’s Paul. You see the
weather today?"
"Yeah. Looks like a boomer of a day. You plan
on flyin’?"
"Just cancelled two appointments. Can you
join me?"
"No. I’m on Olivia duty today. You need help
rigging and a retrieve crew?" I ask, just a bit desperate to play with a
glider.
"Yes with the rig; hopefully not with the retrieve but
I’ll put you on top of the list. 10:30 work?"
"10:30
it is. See you then. Bye" I hang up the phone, flop on to the couch and exhale
for a time that seems longer then the kettle took to quieten down. It’s 8:37
and I have time to fix my tea, grab some breakfast and get Liv ready for the day. Not
my normal land-out kit
By 9:45 we’re ready to make the
trip to the airport. Today I’ve packed a diaper bag, sippy-cup, and a Zip-loc
bag filled with Goldfish crackers in contrast to my normal kit of charts, a chute
and a land-out kit. Flying or not, I always wear a bucket hat chosen from a collection
of about a dozen stacked on to a hook in the mud-room. "Which hat?"
I ask Olivia.
"Ummm. This one, no the purple one." Olivia
directs as only a two year-old can. The logo is some Australian wetsuit manufacturer.
Dave my surfer friend gave me the hat after I told him about mountain wave flying.
He surfs the ocean and I surf the sky. We both surf so the hat’s appropriate.
"I
choose this one." I tell Olivia, a grabbing the teal and white checked cap
decorated with orange fish. "Put this on and don’t forget the sunglasses."
She
runs across the kitchen and pulls her shades off the table. "Let’s go."
The
three minute drive to the airport is uneventful. Paul has the LS-4 fuselage pulled
out of the trailer and is fiddling with something in the cockpit. We drive up
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