SOME NUMBER SMALLER THAN NINE

The point of this flight was to dolphin along a well marked shearline and demonstrate for an overcautious student (call him Eephus) that we wouldn’t need to stop in every patch of lift.“Imagine driving all day and pulling in to fill up at every gas station.”“We’d never get anywhere and it would take forever.”“Right.  So I want you to slow up in weak lift but not stop to climb in anything weaker than four knots.”“But…”“No, seriously.  Hurry through anything that doesn’t at least tickle the seat of your pants, and in real sink carry a minimum of eighty knots indicated.”He asked me to repeat that and I did, twice.  By then even I wasn’t sure what I’d said and he was entirely stumped, so I started over."Just go faster than you normally would in general, and don’t stop to climb unless the lift is so plush you can’t stand it.”Privately I was conscious that stretching runs too much in this way and needlessly getting low was often my own worst problem on long flights, but declined to mention that part.  Even as we fell below the altitude band of optimal lift, like a dad with squirming kids in the station wagon (except I was in back), I insisted we keep moving on.“Should have snagged that last thermal a few miles back, but we were making such good time then!  We’ll stop and climb in the next gusher, I promise.”“What if it’s not there?”“Worst case, we always have at least one place to land.”And then our trusty street ended as we dropped over a small range of hills where I’d already declared there had to be lift.  Poor Eephus, trying hard to not protest after several more minutes of gliding down, began to crane his neck back toward home.  That’s a good instinct worthy of encouragement, so I said, “Nice idea, but in this haze you won’t see that far.”“Okay then, now what?”“Not to worry Eephus, you still have nearly a quarter tank.  Here’s where we gas up for the trip home.”“Here?”  ‘Here’ was a rolling, brushy few square miles of nowhere.“Let’s say between here and those convenient air strips that just happen to be on that low hill near the shadow.”   Undue bravado, considering how smooth the air felt...Too sure of easy success, I’d again exceeded my grasp, this time beyond glide from any suitable landing place except one remote private air field.  Though still on the chart, it was rumored to be abandoned, and I’d never heard of anyone landing there.  “This is on my list of places to jeep out and inspect, but haven’t got to it yet.”The closer we came the spookier it looked.  There were no aircraft or other vehicles except two rusted mob cars like dead bugs half buried in tumble weeds and a battered utility trailer listing toward its flattest tire.  No recent tracks anywhere – and yes we were now low enough to process such information!  A lone pole between runways stood naked except for its circular cage at the top, without even the faded shreds of ancient windsock that normally flutter beside unused strips.  The whole outfit was on a broad bluff, so each runway had either a lengthwise slope or a side hill.  How steep?  Hard to say, but it was seeming steeper each second.  Viewed from still lower, deep gullies meandered across at uneven intervals, and the roof of what had been some maverick pilot’s dream home lay collapsed beneath a fallen cottonwood.   All around that ruin the ground fairly glittered with a million shards of broken glass.“So where’s the house thermal gonna be?”  That should have been my line, but Eephus grabbed it first.  Mulling the answer reminded me it wasn’t July anymore.Having made at least two major mistakes, pushing too far and forgetting this was September, I now had ample motivation for a valiant save.  Would motivation be enough?  In July it might have been.  But motivation of my caliber cannot by itself throw a half ton of dead weight high into the air.  I put us in a situation where we needed luck to save the day, and that’s the worst mistake of all.  (Fact is you should expect luck, nearly always – but you can’t control which kind of luck it is, good or bad, so you can only afford to bet on the bad…)Oh yeah, once more the verdict was kind eventually, an uncertain brew of luck and other factors procuring escape from a dreadful trap.  But not before teaching the instructor a full season's worth - easy enough to say now, though at the time I was too busy flying the landing to ruminate.  In sink on downwind to base, the perverse little scrap of ungullied runway I'd settled for was obscured by backlight, encroaching shadow, near crushing fear (of shame, not injury), futile regret and anguish worth a fortune in court were I not so deserving.  Besides, I'd have only myself to sue.  On my next glider I'll pay extra for the reverse function.It was a random dust devil on base to final, the one usually seen only when we don't want it, that delivered the magic.  Beyond there I credit the deity soaring pilots should most love and fear, Aeolis.Did any of this affirm my methods?   Hell no!  It was just one more cat’s life used up with... uh huh, far fewer than nine remaining.