The mission was distance in the days of reliable recovery at my home site. He or she who flew the furthest was monarch of the mountain and the competition was fierce! As the peer group dwindled over the years, and the recovery options dried up I took to flying out and return routes and triangles mostly out of necessity. In one memorable stretch, five of these flights were consecutive hundred kilometer FAI triangles performed on average to poor days in winter. I had adopted the attitude that every day was a hundred kilometer day and I would go to the mountain without checking the weather beyond severe storm or wind warnings.
At some point the valley appeared to simply surrender to my irrational determination. Her secrets were finally laid bare. It felt as though the conspiracy of the elements relinquished their hold on the hidden code that is embedded in the universal interplay of fire, earth, and air manifest in wind and cumulus. There was no struggle. No wrestling with the environment. No second guessing nature. No angst. No gnashing of teeth or clenching of fists nor cursing of gods. I just felt a timeless state of flow that was somehow balanced despite the dynamic chaos of the inherent physical systems and their relentless entropic vectors.
I finally realised those patterns repeat with eerie consistency... Never exactly the same, but predictably similar. There was no victory over, or conquering of the elements nor any grand claims or declarations of prowess. It was as though, in the haze of first light, a glimpse of the underlying patterns in the localised system are seen, or perhaps felt, as remnants of a golden thread that is the path through an invisible maze. I guess through more than twenty years of flying cross country I had experienced this regularly, but it finally emerged into my consciousness for some unknown reason as an epiphany of sorts.
A cynic might say this is true everywhere and there is no need to frame the fact in mystery or mystique. It may very well be true everywhere and I have flown most of the 'fly-by-numbers' sites the world cup has to offer where local experts set a course in a prime flying area tailored to the conditions for the expert horde to fly together. It is quite another matter to go solo in the flatlands and to remain airborne for the entire duration of thermal activity throughout a random day covering significant ground in the process.
The question of familiarity with flying sites and the generalisation of what represents that familiarity as exportable 'patterns' is demonstrated by the very best pilots who can 'flash' new sites in the language of rock climbers. These pilots regularly arrive at an unseen site and dominate whether by standard routes or Beta-breaks. How is this possible? Why does it happen so often? Most likely it is by intuition borne of experience and instinct honed from the emergent heuristics of trial and error. The keenest intuition and sharpest instincts belong to the best... and, as with any knife, the quality of the cutting edge depends on the source material, the manufacturing process, utility, and care of the knife.
1 comment:
I read you.
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