Excerpt 2: The First Flight

Now when a person does something exciting or unusual for the first time, there’s often a heightened sense of awareness. My awareness was so heightened I was even aware it was heightened. The sky had only one dinky cloud in it, somewhere to the southwest over by Dallas Divide. It was a titch hazy. It’s always a titch hazy, thanks to the huge coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners region.

The neighbor’s three dogs were all at the fence surrounding their dog run, deciding whether to bark, each eyeing me to see if I really was the neighbor who lived next door. For once they didn’t bark. Actually, they’re not bad dogs at all. They usually have a good bark at some totally unexpected and strange phenomenon for a minute or so and then they are mercifully quiet. I like dogs who get it out of their system quickly and then let us humans have some peace. Wagner eyed me reproachfully through the window, since I was leaving without him, depriving him of his walk. I also noticed that the mud from the rain that morning hadn’t dried everywhere—in fact, there was a puddle in the middle of the back yard. I decided to try my flight from the deck. There was no wind to speak or write of.

Exuberant, a condition not unlike mania for those of us who are bipolar, and, yes, I should’ve taken some Ativan before trying this, I faced toward Mt. Sneffels, put the broom between my legs, pulled it up firmly underneath me, gripped it with both hands, and tugged up gently.

I lifted off.

Drunk with the novelty, I pressed gently forward and glided out over the backyard, wobbling horribly. I gave myself a little bit of altitude, at the same time steering myself to the southeast. This would take me out over the woods, away from any prying (or unsuspecting) eyes. I quickly found that zero wind at ground level does not translate into zero wind at treetop level, and I found myself drifting to the north, right back over our little development. Gritting my teeth a bit, with a tiny flutter in my stomach, I pivoted the broom into the breeze and pressed forward.

I think I’ve mentioned motorcycles before, and this is a good time to mention them again. Those of you who have ridden a bicycle or a motorcycle know that you must lean when you are turning. On a bicycle and especially a motorcycle (much heavier than a bicycle), you have to first countersteer, lean, and then (unconsciously, since it doesn’t seem like you’re doing this at all) you steer in the direction you want to go. Some people who are learning to ride motorcycles have to be walked through this, because it’s more pronounced than on a bicycle, and if you don’t get it right the motorcycle will fall over.

The broom requires a similar form of leaning. The point is to keep your center of gravity (the point you will spin around if you’re in zero gravity) directly over the center of thrust, meaning what’s holding you up. In this case the broom. So, when turning left, you first nudge the broom slightly to the right, which makes you fall to the left, then apply pressure to turn to the left, and you don’t fall off your broom. I’ll go into this in a lot more detail later, but you get the general idea. The bottom line is to keep the rubber side down, so to speak.

I was so enthralled with the whole idea of flying I wasn’t paying attention to the philosophical musings associated with being airborne. I did keep an eye on the terrain to make sure I was away from people. Actually, this is easy to do, since from our house to the east is pure woods and grass for maybe fifty miles. That’s called boonies. I tried left turns, right turns, stopping, going up, going down, etc., all at a walking pace. I quickly found I could go down a whole lot faster than I could go up, just judging by where my stomach was after trying the maneuver. When I came to a stop, I found that sideways pressure moved me sideways without repointing the broom. I also found that more than a titch of forward pressure made me slide backwards on the broom, which was unsettling. I was wishing for a seatbelt.

One last observation. The human body is not designed to straddle a rail and like it. I felt a modification coming on.

As I hovered about halfway up the little walking path where Wagner and I like to take our exercise, I thought of something. What would happen if I let go?

I hovered about two feet off the ground in a clearing, somewhere between a dead pinion pine (the ips beetle gets them during drought years) and a juniper tree (they grow big enough around here to be trees, though I guess technically they’re bushes). I held my hands so they surrounded the broom but weren’t touching it.

Nothing.

Gingerly, I released them, holding them about six inches above the broom.

Nothing.

Intrigued and lost in thought, the breeze gently backed me into the dead pinion pine, right into a branch with a point like a stiletto. Startled by reality, I at least had the presence of mind to nudge the broom back into the clearing. I landed.

So, I thought, the broom has some sort of inertia. With no control input, to the point of removing my hands, it will maintain its altitude even with my weight on it. Put another way, any control input, which seemed to come entirely from my hands on the broom, would cause the broom to reposition itself. And, the wind could blow me around. Weird. This would require more study.

I had a choice at this point. I could either walk home (and get some exercise, which my psychiatrist is constantly on my case to do), or I could fly.

I flew.

I kept myself about twice the height of the trees, meandering above the footpath below me. Maybe that would count as exercise? I was a little more careful as I approached our development, since I didn’t want to be seen.

I was seen.