p. has a soft spot for planes… so this year, for his birthday, i offered him a flight on a glider. the teacher was very nice and let me sit in on the pre-flight lesson too, so i got to learn about the four forces keeping the plane in the air (weight, lift, drag and thrust!) and how gliders go up (using thermal columns). some of the things we learned were actually quite technical, and i took lots of notes.

there’s a lot of physics involved in flying a plane, as you’d expect, but i loved every bit of it! it also brought back fond memories of listening to cabin pressure. so anyway, after the lesson, the boy strapped on his life-jacket parachute, pushed the glider onto the runway, hopped in and off they went!

a plane towed the glider to a decent altitude, and then suddenly let them loose to do their thing, up and down across the sky, and then slooooowly back to the ground…

after an hour or so, he landed safe and sound (whew!), and quite happy! :)

afterwards, we went for some peas with poached eggs with the flight instructor — the perfect ending to a great day! :)