by Ken Renshaw
"Is that really true? That's disappointing, for the Sodastroms, I mean."
Agnes leaned down as if she were going to share a confidence with Tina and said. "The boys over there think you were the girl who beat up Chester Dawson at The Claim Jumper yesterday. Is that true?"
Tina bent her head down in mock embarrassment and replied in her fake southern accent, "I was at The Claim Jumper yesterday with one of my lady friends and I saw those big cowboys scrabbling about something. How could somebody like little old me beat up a cowboy who weighs twice as much as I? Well, I'll say."
"I'll tell them," replied Agnes.
As we got back in the car, I said to Tina, "You have created another legend for Rocky Butte. You're probably the biggest thing since Sasquatch was sighted. I don't think any locals heard about Mr. S's little surprise. Buster had requested the FBI keep the affair secret for a while. He didn't want to risk having the car bombing interfere with the trial."
"We visited the Sodastroms briefly, and returned to the Ranch to pack up. We said our goodbyes to Buster and Sofia, with Sofia, and Tina acting as if they were long lost sisters."
Elizabeth would stay a few days to clean up some paperwork, and take Ben up on his offer to give her riding lessons.
She blushed slightly and added, "Ben also said something about learning something called 'wrangling.' Do you know what that means?"
"I'll expect a full report when you get back to LA," I joked.
Elizabeth smiled, "I need to take something back: Catered dinners, fine champagne, clients who fly in Lear Jets, twenty–million dollars, that's big time. I am delighted I got to assist." She offered her hand.
"Thank you," I replied, and shook her hand.
As we drove away Tina said, "Well, that's one more chapter in our lives."
'That is more true than you think,' I thought. I didn't want to discuss Colson's letter until I had sorted out a whole bunch of things.
****
Chapter Nine
THE QUIET TIME
We had a leisurely trip through the Gold Country in the foothills of the Sierras where the California Gold Rush happened, through the sleepy towns, so isolated from larger towns that they did not become bedroom communities. They've maintained the character of an early California small boomtown, isolated from the changes in industry and immigration.
We had fun panning gold, riding logging trains, swimming in ice-cold rivers through tame rapids; being tourists.
At one point Tina observed, "I was expecting we would rush back to CrystalAire and your sailplane. Here, we are playing tourist."
I replied, "That's where we are headed. Somehow it doesn't seem so urgent now."
I wanted to talk to Tina about my letter from Colson. I though it was such a huge subject that it required a spectacular setting to discuss. I suggested to Tina that we go to Yosemite, it was not too far off our route, and neither of us had been there for many years.
We spent a day and a half in Yosemite Valley, mostly hiking. Since we were both consumed by the excitement of exploring the beautiful place, for the first time since we were kids, I didn't find a suitable, quiet time to discuss grown-up plans with Tina. Reluctantly, we started the drive to Southern California.
After we left drove out of the Valley, we came to a sign for the turn to Glacier Point. I said, "Let's go there. There is a place there that is one of my favorites."
We drove for about a half hour over an area that was mostly grey granite outcroppings with scattered clumps of trees. We came to the Washburn Point turnout and parked. We walked over and sat on a low granite block wall.
Tina exclaimed. "This is really spectacular! Look how dark it looks down in the valley below us and how the shadow is creeping up the other side of the valley. Are those the falls we hiked up where there was all the mist? Look at how golden Half Dome looks in the late sun."
I recalled to Tina, "The last time I was here, a geology teacher, standing on that boulder over there, lectured his class. He was really in his element, talking about eons of time, the glaciers grinding their way through the valleys, He was silhouetted in front of hundreds of miles of Granite Mountains. I had never really thought about it, but geology has a lot to do with space-time, the four-dimensional kind. Speaking of space-time....."
I reached in my pocked, produced Colson's offer letter.
"Tina read it with astonishment and said, "What does this mean?"
"This will be essentially a new career for me. I will change my life plan. Stand up a second." I stepped to the ground and held her hand as I directed her to stand on the wall.
She looked surprised, slightly alarmed, as though she thought I might push her off the wall. The golden light of the late afternoon sun made her face and hair glow.
"I am making big decisions and changes in my life, and I would like you to be part of them. Will you marry me?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Or more succinctly, Yes." She jumped down, threw her hands around my neck, kissed me for a long time and then pulled her head back, looked me in the eyes and said, "That means yes...maybe, I should clarify that, Yes, Yes."
After a lovely and emotional few minutes, and some disapproving looks from a couple of elderly grey-haired ladies who drove up, Tina asked for the keys to the car, dug in the picnic basket, and produced a wine bottle and two glasses.
"Easy for me," I said, "I'm the designated driver and we have a bit of mountain road to go on before we get to our hotel."
We held hands, looked at each, conversed with tears in our eyes, as the remnants of the late afternoon cumulus clouds turned gold and faded to night.
Back to the main highway, I noticed Hesperus leading his invasion of the night sky. It seemed as if he wasn't as alone as before.
****
We arrived at CrystalAire in late afternoon the next day. I drove directly to my sailplane trailer, opened it and was looking inside when Dan drove up and walked over.
"Everything is OK. That FAA inspector nearly took everything apart. That other man with him paid me to help. You got a free annual aircraft inspection and then some. They took the parachute away and brought it back with a certified repack. It's back where it is normally stored. I have to ask you a favor."
"Sure, but first, I would like to introduce you to my fiancé, Tina Quail."
I caught her off guard. Dan got an 'Oh my God!' kind of stare and handshake.
"I have talked to the field owner, and he would like to keep what went on out here quiet. He doesn't want other sailplane pilots worrying about the safety of their equipment."
"Agreed, I think everyone has already forgotten about it. I know I have."
I mused to myself that some people in the FBI and Mr. S. would be thinking about it for a while longer.
Dan started to walk away and turned to say, "We have a great soaring forecast for tomorrow. You will want to get ready early."
"Great!" I replied.
****
The bright sun coming through the bedroom window woke me. I quietly slipped out of bed and got dressed. I walked out to survey the sky and I felt the warmth of the sun on my face. Not a hint of wind. I went inside and found there was an email from my friend, the weather person, at LAX: she said there would be strong soaring conditions for the morning with a twenty-five-knot northwesterly wind developing in the late afternoon.
"Sounds good," I thought. 'It looks like flying north up the Sierras will be good for an out-and-return goal flight.'
The Fédération Aéronautique Internatinale or FAI has awards for soaring achievement. There are silver, gold, and three diamond awards. My goal has been to make a single flight in which I achieve the silver, gold, and all three diamond awards. To do that I will have to fly out to and return from a stated goal two hundred and fifty kilometers (155 miles) away, gain five thousand meters (16,368 feet), and be in the air for five hours. This might be the day.
Somehow being awarded a small gold pin with three diamonds to wear on my soaring cap seemed rather unimportant
now. I wanted to make the flight for fun.
I said to myself. 'That's how I will do it: forget all the hard planning, the calculations, and the logic. I'll use my intuition and simply flow with it.'
Tina and I hurried through breakfast and got an early start so we would "put together" before it got hot. Tina insisted on joining me for assembly, saying, "I am now going to make sure the wings are bolted on and you don't take off without your little bottle of water and lunch."
The sailplane trailer is almost twice as long as most cars, a big cylinder about five feet high, which opens like a giant clamshell. Inside, the wings are stored alongside the fuselage. Everything is mounted on dollies and is easily rolled around and assembled.
Dan stopped by and showed me where Mr. S. had put his surprise package. No sign of anything unusual now.
I told him my soaring goal for the day and he, acting as an official observer, loaded the information into the flight-recording computer in the sailplane. Upon my return, he would read the computer and officially verify that I had made the flight I planned.
He walked away and returned with a pickup with a tank in the back. I took the hose from the tank and began pouring clear liquid into openings in the top of the wings.
Tina asked, "What are you doing now. You don't have an engine, so why do you need to add fuel?"
"I am filling these long bladders in the wings with water to make the plane fly faster in strong conditions. I'll drain them out later in the day if the weather weakens."
I was ready to fly. We sat under the shade of the wing and waited, holding hands, feeling the love flow between us, and having quiet time. It was midweek and no other pilots were here this early.
At 10:15, I noticed a small whisp of a cloud over the Devil's Punchbowl.
"Look up there, above the Devil's Punchbowl. That wisp of cloud indicates that there is a thermal there. It will be time to start soon. Let's push the plane out and get ready to launch."
When Dan saw me moving onto the launch area he started the Pawnee, taxied to the launch area, stopped a couple of hundred feet in front of me, and turned off the engine. He unrolled the tow cable and handed me the end that I attached to the bow of my sailplane. "It looks as though you can get an early start. Let's wait about ten more minutes."
I put on my parachute and climbed into the sailplane. Surprisingly, I was feeling butterflies in my stomach. I was sweating in the ninety-degree heat as I stuffed my sweater behind the parachute.
Tina was fussing with my shoulder straps and telling me where my lunch and water were. I loved it. She volunteered, "You will be home late but very happy. Can you accept that prediction?"
"Gladly" I gave her a nervous kiss goodbye, closed the canopy and, gave 'thumbs up.' Tina held the wingtip off the ground, Dan started the Pawnee and we were soon airborne. We circled once around the field to gain altitude and then turned toward the mountains. There was no significant lift until we got over the Punchbowl. It was there, but weak. I released the tow cable, Dave dove away and I started to circle in about a hundred feet per minute lift.
I loitered there barely gaining any altitude for about ten minutes, and then I shifted to a thermal coming from a white mountain in a valley to the East. It was stronger, and I gained a thousand feet in a half hour. Somehow, flying was different now: I was not getting uptight about getting away on my cross-country trip. I was enjoying the scenery, the joy of flying, and a quiet sense of freedom. High performance sailplanes make no noise as they fly. They have mirror-like, highly polished wings and snug fitting canopies. Anything that whistled would waste precious energy. Stealth is important when you don't nave a motor
As I looked North to the Sierras, the Mojave was what soaring pilots call a "blue hole," a large expanse of air with no clouds, and therefore no thermal activity. It was still too early to leave.
When I reached nine thousand feet I looked at my watch and saw that it was 11:15. I was joined in the thermal by a hawk, which made one circle with me and then turned and began soaring out into the Mojave.
I said to myself, "If the hawk says it is time to go, it is time to go," and turned my sailplane to the North, starting my journey. It is always easier to let someone else make such decisions.
I picked my way from weak thermal to weak thermal for forty-five minutes and found myself down to five thousand feet, only fifteen hundred feet above Rosamond Dry Lake. Despair was settling in.
'I'm going to have another visit with another Mason jar down there,' I thought. Then, I saw a dust devil moving toward the lake and thought, 'I'm saved!' Over the dust devil I found a very strong, narrow thermal requiring me to execute nearly acrobatic fifteen-second turns pulling a couple of g's. At first, I barely gained any altitude, but by a half hour later, I was up to ten thousand feet. Saved!
I had been flying for an hour and a half and only gone about thirty miles with two hundred eighty to go. Ahead, cumulus clouds were forming above hills and mountains. Things were looking good. About fifteen miles farther north I found a powerful thermal over a small blood-red cinder cone mountain, the home of the Silver Queen Mine.
As I circled, I remembered the time I had been forced to land near Silver Queen and had been greeted by a miner, the kind of rusty pickup driving, shaggy bearded, grimly clothed, shotgun–carrying kind. He had that wild look in his eyes, like one of the attorneys at my firm, which comes from a life driven by selfish greed. I had to pay him fifty dollars and a six–pack of beer for "crop damage" to his dry, barren field before he would let me remove my sailplane.
I topped-out in the thermal at fourteen thousand feet and sped north. The crisp air at high altitude made me feel good, and I was having fun. I put on my Cannula oxygen feed.
I passed the Mojave Airport on my right. I could see the rows and rows of a graveyard for airplanes; most wearing the paint jobs of the airline they retired from. They were stored for scrap and salvaging parts. Here in the dry desert air they age slowly, like ones' discarded toys from childhood.
To the West of me, the barren tan Mojave Desert ends at the up rise of the Tehachapi Mountains. The area was calm today, a good sign for soaring. Most of the year the Northwest wind is funneled through the Tehachapi pass to make this one of the windiest places in the state. I could see hundreds of power generating wind turbines, row after row, lazily turning, waiting to do their thing.
I was now at the southernmost end of the Sierras. The lift was getting stronger, and steadier, rising from the barren east-sloping faces of the low mountains. I didn't have to search for thermals; I could easily maintain altitude. When the air was going downward, I sped up to get through it. When it was rising, I loitered.
To the right, in the distance I saw California City, sprawling, still waiting for the boom times of the last century to return.
To the north of California City I saw the Honda automotive test center, dozens of laboratory buildings and the seven–and–half mile high–speed oval track where people had driven autos 24 hours a day in high speed life tests. It was now abandoned, for sale, a suitable major industry for California City.
Now, I was flying over low mountains stippled with green trees. Ahead, I saw Owens Peak. Judging by the clouds, it would be a great source of lift today. I sped up, now flying at seventy knots. I circled in the vigorous lift, looked at my watch, saw it was now 1:30, and heard my stomach complain. I had been too busy to think of lunch. I ate my sandwich and enjoyed the views, Lake Isabella to the West, nestled among low mountain ranges; and the magnificent Owens Valley to the North.
The Sierra Mountains are a massive block that tilted up eons ago. The Sierras rise slowly, over a hundred miles or so, on the western slope, On the eastern slope they fall precipitously, going from high points at Mount Whitney (14,000 feet) and surrounding mountains, to the Lone Pine in the Owens Valley (3,700 feet) in only fifteen miles. A couple of dozen miles to the East, two ranges of high mountains arise, the Inyos and the White Mountains. Their highest peaks are only a few feet lower than Mou
nt Whitney. Death Valley, the lowest place in the United States, is only a few more miles to the East.
These tall granite mountains heat the air rising from the low areas and produce magnificent thermals.
I had finished my lunch and was now circling at seventeen thousand feet, barely below the ragged bottom of a cloud. It was sixty degrees in the cockpit so I put on my sweater. I turned north and sped up to seventy knots, porpoising through the lift and sink. Soon, I was at Olancha Peak overlooking the Owens Lake bed.
During the Gold Rush, Owens Lake was full of water. A steamboat ferried miners to the eastern shore and hoped–for riches. Now, it is dry, dust–blown. Early in the twentieth century, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) bought most of the land in the Owens Valley, drove out water hungry farmers, dammed the river, and piped the water to LA, so people could water their lawns.
A few small towns that predate the DWP stewardship remain in the valley, mostly dependent on the tourist trade. I was now flying past Lone Pine, the gateway to Mount Whitney. I could see Mount Whitney below me a few miles to the West. I was tempted to fly over it and buzz the people at the summit, but didn't want to delay my trip.
In about a half hour, about 3:00, I was approaching my turning point, the town of Independence, and the county seat of nearly nothing, about the size of Rocky Butte. The lift was weakening so I circled to gain altitude. At seventeen thousand feet I turned east for the dash across the valley to the Inyo Mountains, which spawned a street of clouds that went south toward home.
Air that goes up must come down the rising air over the mountains comes down in the valley. For about ten terrifying minutes I flew fast to get through the sink as I watched my altitude drop, until I looked up at the peaks and dropped to within couple of thousand feet of the bottom of the valley. At the bottom of the Inyos, I found weak lift. I circled slowly and tried to assuage the adrenaline flowing in my body. I looked at my watch. It was 4:00, uncomfortably late in the soaring day for someone only half the way around the course. The lift slowly increased and then got strong as I went south. Soon, I was at eighteen thousand feet again, traveling at ninety-five knots, silently scraping the bottom of the cumulus clouds.
