NO KIDDING SHERLOCK

You can watch the game or observe the game.

Sandy Alomar, second baseman

Desert thermals can be huge and powerful, but bigger usually means further apart, and stronger lift in them corresponds with stronger sink between. When they’re not marked by cumulus you might glide blindly by any number of fine opportunities, getting lower all time, and soon be desperate...We’d gotten low enough to see a tarp fluttering on a shed below. The pulsing glitter of that sun-beaten rag revealed surface wind’s direction as well as some indication of its speed, and it was really popping. If wind were blowing that hard everywhere the air would be filled with dust, yet it wasn’t. First guess, a thermal in-draft feeding lift somewhere downwind.As it happened, that’s where we were headed, toward a choice of two dirt strips a mile apart. On we glided, ever lower, finally close enough to see one field’s windsock standing straight out, but in a different direction. It was pointed toward the other strip – whose sock hung quite still… Just then we entered sink.So, Watson, what now?Elementary. Turn straight toward the limp windsock, where these surface currents are merging. If it doesn’t work we have two choices. Land there or reverse to the other strip, back into a localized breeze that’s strengthening as we go.And? We were already climbing when the devil’s first swirl kicked off right below us. Soon it peppered us with material from the ’becalmed’ runway, sounding more like gravel than dust. A mile higher all of that was ejected and falling away, but the lift continued for most of yet another vertical mile…Seems detective Holmes is not the only one who does his best thinking under a goofy hat.