Icewind's Ramblings

Driving home each day I pass a power plant close to my house that usually has a large steam plume rising several hundred feet into the sky this time of year.  If there is no wind it goes vertically straight up over a thousand feet into the air and on days with a light breeze it angles up into the air until the steam plume evaporates.  The hot air continues to rise even without a visible plume to show you where it is going. The strange and sometimes funny thing that many of us driving by each day notice is the large flock of birds that are flying in circles upon the rising warm air.  When I used to fly hang gliders when I was young it is called thermaling and within the hot air rising you make tight turns so you can stay in and ride to the top sometimes just under the bottom of the clouds. It was a great feeling going up to the top of a thermal and then leaving that one to fly over to another rising air mass to start circling all over again.  Some flights I may...

I was looking for a flying segment from Alaska this afternoon that I thought might have made it to video on YouTube when in my search I came across an old video from my youth. It is from my hang gliding days when I was a free spirit traveling the world flying hang gliders, tow kites, and hot air balloons. Skydog has put up a video from the Chicago Fest Tow Gliding Invitational that was held each summer in front of the Holiday Inn on the Lakefront. It was a lot of fun as I was one of the “Moyes Boys” flying Moyes Gliders. They were made in Sydney Australia by Bill Moyes and his son Steve. I was flying for a team out of Georgia that owned Hang Glider Heaven. It’s funny seeing this after so many years ago as it reminds us what we have done in our lives and also what choices made or paths crossed over the years. This is footage from the four years that it was held from 1974 to 1977 and more or less was a competition between two Australians who started the p...