18 Soaring • August 2019 • http://www.ssa.org
happy to not feel any irregularities. I
then forgot about feeling for any other
possible damage areas, because I was
getting very cold and was consider-
ing that most probably I would need
to wait about an hour for my fellow
club members to return to help put the
glider away in the hangar.
Then I thought that I might as well
try to push the glider towards its han-
gar, because it would help keep me
warm and give me something produc-
tive to do while I waited for the club
members to arrive. By running back
and forth, pushing first on one side
and then on the other, I slowly got
the glider much closer to its hangar.
At this time, I thought about a pos-
sible practical joke that maybe I could
pull off on my fellow club members –
if I could manage to actually get the
glider into its hangar and get the doors
closed in front of it before the return
of the members. After much “Braille-
pushing” and clearance checking, I
managed to accomplish this. I then hid
behind the hangar, out of the beams of
the returning car headlights, to enjoy
the unfolding fun that would surely
happen when they returned to find no
glider on the airport. I only had to wait
a few minutes ....
Well, it indeed was funny, because
one of the retuning cars immediately
ran up and down the runway looking
both to the right and left to see if they
could find me. They then returned to
a location near my hiding location
to confer with the rest of the club
members who were waiting to hear
the search report. The ensuing lively
discussions between the club mem-
bers indicated that I truly had pulled
off a beauty of a practical joke. They
just didn’t know what to do next, and
they were very worried about the grim
possibilities. Realizing that further si-
lence on my part would now be more
sadistic than funny, I stepped forward
to relieve them of their concerns, andwe all had a big laugh and preceded
on our way to Julia Clark’s usual club
weekend barbeque.
This last flight of the weekend
turned out to be my last one for a few
weeks, because I visited home during
the school term break. Upon returning
to State College, I stopped in on my
good friends, Bill and Julia Clark, to
announce my return and to give them
some fresh Florida fruit. Bill thought
the fruit was great, but he asked
me why I didn’t tell them that I had
damaged the glider instead of hiding
it away in the hangar so that no one
would see the damage. It seems that it
was indeed easy to see the small fab-
ric rip caused by a runway light dur-
ing the daylight of the next Saturday
morning when the club members went
to get the 2-22 out of the hangar for
another day of flying. My practical
joke had backfired!