PORPOISE AND THE HARE

On a rare solo cross-country I was soaring the well-known shearline from Mojave north up the Sierras. Lift that day was consistent but not high enough to form clouds, so I straddled every ridge to gather energy from both sides with few stops to climb. Not what anyone would call comfortably high this far from safe haven, but aggressive porpoising, or dolphin flight (fast in bad stuff, slow in the good) allowed for nominal separation above rising ground. Then where the shear flattened across a gap ahead, courage quavered and I rolled into a handy thermal.After one circle came a radio call from a locally notorious race cat advising me to look straight up. I did, and there he was, circling a thousand feet above. Embarrassed? Sure, and not the first time. Full disclosure, this fellow actually set a national speed record on the same route and in that very plane… So so much for bragging rights.I’ll say this, the audio on his variometer was 5-by-5, loud as his voice every time he keyed his mic. And you can bet his brain was anchored to a complicated flight director too, poor guy. My ship came with similar electronic gadgetry, and of course I never turned it on, relying as ever on one instrument that’s nearly always accurate: the altimeter. That said, while skipping rock to rock all important information and hazard lay so near below that for miles I hadn’t thought to glance inside, much less up.When two more circles yielded little I leveled out and moved on up the shearline. Looking there and always away from him made it easy to imagine the race cat on my six, about to pounce at any moment, tortoise and the hare, but whenever I did circle and get a look back he was somewhere higher, under the sun and hard to find. Over all, his many more circles carved a much longer groove through the air and he never did pass me.Meanwhile the great range below us rose incrementally and each time he closed on me I was a bit higher. Sixty miles later we again shared a thermal, but now at the same altitude. Though we’d come an equal distance since our paths met, by seeking out the strongest line of convergence and hardly ever stopping I had gradually gained a thousand feet on him! No boast, just a fact.Of course there’s terrible temptation to float along this way all afternoon, but at that point the race cat’s home base lay only one hour behind us — and mine was now two.“Time for me to head home,” I called. “Wanna chase me back?” No answer. “I’ll crank up my computer to make it fair…”He said he was some exact number of Ks from a turn point and would get back to me some other day.“Your call,” I answered from the reciprocal heading. “Gotta catch me first. Nice runnin’ from ya.”And all with those digital crutches stowed, thank goodness!