Remember,
Only You Can Prevent Bears From Soaring

People who first lay eyes upon a glider are often apprehensive, scared or maybe confused. I was first struck by a sense of beauty and elegance, but at the same time, power. Not power like engine-type power, but the power to make women and men come outside and get burned like lobsters for maybe an hour's worth of fun.

Yes, the glider is very powerful. Powerful enough to make me spend most of my summer fetching this, running the wing of that, catching the dogs who frequent the airport, "Excuse me, are you the Joneses,?" and other jobs that those of us not sick with the glider-bug would have thought tedious and boring.

Yes, the very same glider held enough in its power to make me come out on my fourteenth birthday last November and renew the insurance for an extra week and solo in the snow. Gliders are powerful things.

Now here I am, waiting to save up a few glider flights so I can go up again and be bitten anew by the rabid glider that has enveloped me in its foaming jaws before.

People gather from all around to be bitten. This may seem senseless, but it is the feeling you get when at nine in the morning you go up into the air and feel the wind from the vents rush against your face. You hear the quiet "whoosh" over the wings you think, "Did I leave the coffee pot on?" But you don't care (This is the danger in soaring. Many are victims of "Coffee Pot Indifference Syndrome." or CPIS.)

You stay up and soar, seeing the birds, the mountains and the billowing cloud of smoke emitting from your house.

Remember, only you can prevent bears from soaring. Please buckle up your coffee pot. We now return you to your regularly scheduled newsletter.

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