Gregg Writes

This Year I Flew Like A Bird

Christmas Times, 1995.

COPYRIGHT 1995 by Gregg Butterfield.

Permission is granted to make one printed copy for personal/non-commercial use only.

Permission is granted to make one copy and one backup copy on electronic storage media, for personal/non-commercial use only, as long as these electronically stored copies are accessible to a single personal computer only, and are not accesible from a network of any kind, including the Internet and World Wide Web.

Any reproduction of this material must include this copyright notice.

Written permission from the author is required for further reproduction, by any method.

---

Literally. --- Look Ma, no propeller, no jet engine, no kind of engine at all. Just me, a plastic bubble, a parachute I hope I can remember how to work, and the ground a lot further down than ground ought to be. Please Al, don't have a heart attack. We do something called a four leaf clover. My head snaps back, forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, forward. The dry lake bed at China Lake spins beneath me.Al is behind me. I am stuffed into a space that is not exactly bigger than I am, the hairs on the top of my head touch the canopy. The wind roars. This is a triple, Triple EEE, ticket ride. Al asks me if I'd like to fly it. Without warning I am a sailplane pilot. I hold the stick steady. My fist tight, my feet balanced one against the other on the pedals. No turning for me. No up and down, especially down. Straight and level, that's the kind of pilot I want to be.

Didn't know simulation engineers had so much fun, did you? After the simulation conference we went up for the annual weekend at June Lake. Ate a little and drank a little (and a little bit more and a little bit more...), played poker, hiked all the way around Carson Peak, lied a lot, and on the way home took up the China Lake simulation crew's offer of a ride in their sailplane.

More Sailplane Pictures

---

Gregg Writes

---

Best of Christmas Times -------- * Best of the Best *

1989	Besieged	Claire de Lune

1992	Flood --- Riot --- Earthquake!	* Two Days Before The Mast *

1993	* Gregg and the Trail Bike *		A Stabbing
	Under a Full Moon	Burt Rutan	I Meet a Bear

1994	* 7.2! *	A Star Is Born	* My Car Is Stolen *

1995	This Year I Flew Like A Bird

---

Contact me by e-mail. You are This Year I Flew Like A Bird reader