I am so spoiled. There was a time when I would thermal on any little bump. As long as I was showing progress, I would be ecstatic and stick with it. Lately, if I hit a bump, and the vario doesn't show a solid 200 feet per minute, I'm not interested.

In the early 80's, I was a teenager flying 1-26's out of Rosamond, California. This was in the extreme western part of the Mojave desert; right next door to Edwards Air Force Base. In fact, the base leg for runway 25 was less than a mile from the restricted air space.

Bill Aronson ran a wonderful FBO at Rosamond. Besides being an all around nice guy, he had a 1-26 for rent, along with cheap tows. I used to fly almost every weekend; as often as I could bum a ride with other glider guiders from Los Angeles.

After I got my Private glider rating, I set up a small imaginary 15 mile triangle around Rosamond. On every flight in the 1-26, I would head to the nearest corner and attempt to complete the triangle. Two laps would equal silver distance. I had figured out the minimum altitude needed to get safely back to the airport. This was actually not as simple as one might imagine. You see, Rosamond is just east of the pass from the San Joaquin Valley into the Mojave Desert. In the afternoon, when the rest of the desert was cranking up thermals, Rosamond would get hit with 15 knot winds. If you figure out the final glide ratio for a 1-26 in a 15 knot wind, and add a little sink, you realize even a small triangle requires a lot of altitude. Typically, I would release and head up wind; rarely being able to penetrate the wind with enough altitude to make the first turn point. Often, I would start off thermaling up wind of the airport, but when I topped out, I would be back over the airport. Some days were better than others. I could usually make a few flights every season where I'd accomplished the first two turn points. During this time, Paul Bikle was flying from Rosamond in his modified HP-11. After we both landed, I would ask him how he did. He would invariably say something like, " Oh, I just went (40 miles) to Gorman and back."

Today I am flying out of Crystal, near the infamous El Mirage dry lake. Fred Robinson runs a nice operation there, The Great Western Soaring School. Crystal is a sharp contrast from Rosamond. Crystal sits against the north side of the San Bernardino mountains that separate LA from the desert. The mountains protect Crystal from the high winds I frequently experienced at Rosamond, and also provide year round soaring; slope and wave in the winter, desert thermals in the summer.

But Crystal is where I have become spoiled. It's been twenty years since my fun at Rosamond. But today, I am able to rent a very nice Grob Astir with nearly twice the performance of the old 1-26. At a little over a thousand feet above pattern entry, I can still be 5 miles from the airport and not be concerned with making it back. What a great plane. What a great gift from Fred to let me rent this steed (And from the owner, Tim, to let others fly this beautiful machine).