On the head of a pin

In class I learned that the F-117 reacts to turbulent air as if it were on the head of a pin.  It wobbles and twists, bobs and rolls, with no rhyme or reason as the flight control computer battles the invisible currents.  Unseen bumps and waves can occur anywhere, but is some places you can count on them.  Like just beneath the layer of glass upon the white puffies lay.  Ever notice how the gray-white cumulus cloud bases all seem to settle at the same altitude, like cottonballs on a layer of glass?  (I remind myself to marvel at sight, stretching a hundred miles across the Arizona desert, despite knowing the physics behind it.) 

 

We were flying just beneath that glass in 4 F-117s.  I was on the wing of the flight lead, fighting to stay in formation – and watching his jet wobble and roll – exactly as if it were balanced on the head of a pin!  Nodding, slipping, and skidding along quite happily at over 300 miles per hour…

 

Many times, as I’ve flown into California, I’ve watched the dirt roads and hills pass beneath the plane and tried to find routes I’d ride if I lived there.  So many hills and trails.  So green and so many lakes and valleys.  So here I am, for my first Xterra Triathlon – only as it turned out, it’s on Sunday, and my flight leaves Sunday morning.  All the information I could find said this race was Saturday.  So I wonder if the info on the web was bad, or if I just wasn’t reading thoroughly enough – which would fit well with so many things of late.  I’m either too busy or too distracted to process the information I need.  At least there was a duathlon that I could do and still make my flight.  And it’s beautiful out here; the trails and the views are all I thought they’d be when I scouted them from above.  More than that, I won my age group in the duathlon, I got to see a rattlesnake and watch a turtle eat, and best of all, I got to spend time with fellow crazy athletes: one of the few times in life when I can really relate to people.

 

Hope you’re enjoying the spring and the people around you.

Donna

sunset picts

As requested by some…  Grass roofs are in Mexico.  23 is on my deck.  Enjoy.

Donna

Four sunsets

The sky was ablaze as I climbed above the white sands of the national monument just off the end of the runway.  It was another breathtaking sunset painted on the canvas of high thin cirrus.  I was enjoying the beauty, trying not to let it remind me that that same darkening sky, hanging between day and night, also made finding the tanker a challenge.  It was too dark for him to be a black smudge on a blue background, and too light for him to glow bright green through the Night Vision Goggles (NVGs).  Nevertheless, it was a beautiful sunset and I found the tanker with minimal delay, the cruised out over New Mexico and Texas for more practice at guiding bombs to targets.

 

The next evening, I was bumping over sand roads in Mexico, watching another beautiful sunset, and trying unsuccessfully to find a hotel, a race meeting, and most of all, dinner.  On the third try, instead of driving, I walked down the beach to the hotel, wishing they’d told me I could do that 2 hours before, and enjoying the last vestiges of the orange sunset while waves lapped at my feet. 

 

The muted sunrise called me out of my warm sleeping bag.  There was a race to run, and it started in less than 2 hours.  The swim was in the northeastern corner of the Gulfo de California, the bike wandered around the countryside, and the run canvassed the streets of Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico.  I finished the 10^th Annual Rocky Point International Distance Triathlon in a bit under 3 hours, and less than 90 seconds behind the girl who won my age-group.  My reward was a day of relaxing on the beach, listening to children playing soccer, adults playing volleyball, parents playing with their children, and waves playing on the sandy beach.  Periodically a crowd of parachutes would descend from far above (and I’d look for the plane that dropped them).

 

Evening brought yet another brilliant splash of paints on cloud canvas, a very welcome Mexican feast, and the company of 2 fellow triathletes, a retired California school teacher, and a former Mexican TV anchor now seeking a new profession.  Aida is in my age-group and finished not far behind me.  In encouraged her as much as I dared, amazed that she did so well only a couple years after mounting a bike for the first time in her life as a 31-year-old, and having already recovered from a broken collarbone caused by a bike accident in a previous triathlon.  Much as I enjoyed her company, I’m not looking forward to racing her in the future!

 

For the fourth consecutive evening of vibrant color, I was leaning on the railing of my deck, looking over the valley, distant mountains, and white sands, and enjoying a moment of stillness after my whirlwind “international vacation”.  It was good to be “home”.