It was a fine day yesterday at the Soaring Club of Houston – even for the crew who launched and retrieved gliders much of the day in broiling heat.  There were enough of us that nobody got worked to death.  And there were these interesting circumstances:

A very large, very well positioned spider has a magnificent web on the porch of the clubhouse.  She’s been there for several weeks.  She set up shop right in front of the knockout roses where nobody would accidentally walk into her and everybody could admire her.  Her admirers flick crickets into the web, whereupon she pounces on the offering with lightning reflexes.

A pilot came calling from the Greater Houston Soaring Association in a motorglider.  The pilot/owner (pink shirt) attracted a great deal of attention upon landing, while parked on the Field, and when making a takeoff  (a) without need of the tow plane, (b) with an impressive rate of climb.

Lastly there was a landout when a SCOH pilot flying cross-country (in a conventional, motorless sailplane) found himself in weakening conditions and landed at the residential airfield called Sport Flyers.  A couple of us got to go get him by hitching his glider trailer to his SUV and driving to Sport Flyers.  A very nice airport it is.

The landout pilot is the fellow in the bucket hat.

Retrieves are fun when someone  has landed without a scratch on pilot or glider.  And a sailplane and a trailer as well engineered as these make for fast, satisfying work.