Elias

13.05.2020

Thursday, 14.05.2020 – Retrospective

My birthday was more of an experiment than a celebration to me. Given the circumstances I had not planned a celebration in advance, quite similar to last year where I didn't tell anything to anyone and just kept doing what I was doing back in these days – tinkering around in the workshop. During this day a lot of people came around and visited me in the workshop. It was a good day, but later I realized that I had somehow missed the party.

So two days ago, on Tuesday, I started thinking. I worked the day at Hans' workshop and talked with Ben and Nils during the evening before hurrying back home. During the day I had found it clever to invite only those people who would certainly not come without an invitation despite me wishing them to be there. My old school friend Ryder from Mainz, my brother Fynn from Dieburg and Jo and Lilith, who are both somewhat distant friends who are not yet a fixed part of the circle of friends I had been hanging out with during the last weeks and months. I supposed that this close circle of friends would automatically come by. I had been on a camping tour with most of them the weekend before and they all have a calendar that has all our birthdays marked in it.

To my surprise, the only two of this close circle who came were Laura Katze and Micha. After coming home with a few bottles of wine I made Spaghetti Caccio i Pepe for Sarah, Fynn and Jo before Laura urged me to also eat something. The many joints that were going around during my cooking session had somehow muted my hunger and appetite.
I was happy to be able to make delicious food for them. It felt like a gift to me. Lilith and Jo seemed happy to be invited, but sometimes the table still sunk into an awkward silence that I did not really want to fill with anything.

My overall feeling was weird. Rather than putting me into a mood of celebration, my 25th birthday put me into the mood of studying my current life situation. I felt hyper-aware of the interactions between my friends, who mostly didn't know each other very well and I thought about the social context that I was currently part of.

I was missing the friends who I had seen most of the days before. I had hoped for them to come even without an invitation. But that's an old lesson: If you don't invite, most people won't come.

I thought that probably I was not such an important part of the group as I had thought. I had always felt like I had been at least partially responsible for assembling the current group by introducing Micha and Nils to it, but assessing it honestly, Micha, Mattis and the group of girls are the ones who really keep it running. And I myself am just a mediocre guy, moderately entertaining, but mostly happy to huddle around in the background.

The only thing that really carried me away were not the conversations but the music that was playing. I do not remember every song, but among them were certainly those:

Pretty early after midnight I got a bit of an headache, probably from drinking little water during the day and a lot of alcohol during the evening. In the end, only Ryder and Fynn were left and I was definitely ready for bed. I left them alone, Ryder went back to Mainz and Fynn joined me in my bed. After a good sleep I had breakfast with Fynn, climbed the roof and smoked a small joint with him. He clearly enjoyed the spirit of Darmstadt and our cute old shared flat. We visited and fondled the chicken at the workshop, I changed my bike for my RC glider and we walked to the Mathildenhöhe where I threw the Alula a few times. Soon later we walked to the bus station and I asked him what he thought about my friends the evening before. He said that he felt that they're all really nice people and that compared to his friends they seem to put less value on superficial things like clothes and more on inner values. Asking him who he found most sympathetic he named Micha. I have to admit that I share his perception. Micha is a highly entertaining if sometimes shameless person. I could not really believe that he ate half of the fish that Mattis prepared during the last evening while I was cooking for everyone else. Had Mattis not offered him food, I'm almost sure he would not have come. After dropping Fynn off at the Bus stop I walked to the Rosenhöhe (La altura de la rosa) to try to catch some upwind with my glider at the slightly sloped Oberfeld (Campo superior). On my way there I read a nice message from Gaby from Madrid and felt thankful for knowing her. I thought back to my visits to Madrid and compared the landscape of the Rosenhöhenpark to my memories of the outskirts of Alcobendas. It was amazingly green and I tried to imagine how she would appreciate that lush green.
I was amazed how the plants had all grown despite the relatively dry weather of the last weeks. At the eastern edge of the park the wind was indeed good East-Northeast but the grains were much taller than two weeks earlier. At the beginning I landed 1-2 m next to the path into the field and it was not nice to walk in there, trying not to step on any plant. I knew I could not land too far into the field or I'd have a serious problem. The path I was standing on was lined by the grain field on the northern side and a flexible fence on the southern side. It was mildly frequented by different people walking between the Oberfeld and the Rosenhöhe and a lot of children were amazed by the little glider that I threw into the wind again and again. Sometimes I was able to stay aloft a bit longer and after a while my approaches back to a hand-landing were precise and successful, most times along the path down the light slope. When people were walking on the path in the line of my approach I would fly outside the fence next to the path and cross it just before reaching myself. It's a highly enjoyable game to estimate the energy needed to perfectly fly the glider all the way back to my hand. One time I had just enough energy left to cross the fence in a wobbling motion that allowed the wings to pass over it one after the other and looked almost like a Fosbury Flop. It was intense fun to see that move work out as if the Alula had magnetically repelled itself from the fence. People seem to love when I catch the Alula with great ease and precision but they also seem to love when I do it in a real hassle. When I approach with a bit too much energy and a small gust lifts the glider and adds some more energy it quickly becomes too high and fast to easily catch it. But as I also didn't want to fly it into the field behind me I once jumped to hit it hard from below and catch the tumbling and falling Alula with a quick grip. Stressful, but to the spectators it probably looked like it was planned this way. At one time a young Spanish boy was standing at the entrance to the Rosenhöhenpark with his father observing my plane. He was so excited about it that he was constantly vocalizing the movements of the plane while rapidly tripping from one foot to the other. It was fun to not only control the movement of the plane but also the voice of the boy. Another time an old woman stopped by and asked me what I'd do if I land in the field. I told her that I'm constantly trying my best to avoid that very case and started a pretty long conversation with her. She was actually lovely. It felt like a novel realization that more than many other things, flying this little model makes me happy and enables me connect to random people. I then walked back home, ate a snack and decided to postpone cooking Mushroom Risotto until the evening when Mattis and Julia were back home.
So I walked to Nils who had also not visited me the evening before and talked to him about our current flying wing concept. He seemed very happy for me to visit him and get him out of his boring day.
As my parents had announced to visit and bring some beer and cake I notified Sarah about their plans and went back home. Because they hadn't arrived yet I went to the roof to relax for a moment. After a while I wondered where they might be, but I thought that they'd call me when they arrive and don't find me. As I found out later, they arrived just minutes after me and Sarah thought that I'm in the bathroom because she saw my backpack was there. After a while she doubted that I'm in the bathroom and offered my parents to call me. They declined and said that I would surely arrive soon. Of course I didn't. After making tea for my parents and talking with them for half an hour, Sarah finally called me and I immediately climbed down the roof. During the last days and weeks it has become my favourite sunny spot in the house. It's easy to get there, you have the best view and it's always sunny.
Later when my parents had left I started cooking Mushroom Risotto for which Sarah had given me all the ingredients. While I was cooking, all the people I had missed the day before came by. It was a happy evening, again with the joy of preparing food for my friends. I actually don't really remember what I did on Thursday except starting to write this and having a relaxed time. In the evening I went for a walk with Astrid who had not joined on Wednesday. It was nice to see her again. After our walk I invited her to our flat where we had another good evening with some of our friends.

Friday, 15.05.2020 - First Flight of the Season

Nils woke me up to get to the airfield. We rigged the two-seated ASK-21 and brought it to the other end of the runway where we found out that it was still missing one signature. It was clear that it was flyable, but nonetheless, without that signature we couldn't legally fly it. So we towed it back to the hangar and decided to share the LS-4a. Our tow pilot had promised to stay until 16:00 so we still had three hours to rip off some flights. I flew first and was amazed how easy it still was after nine months without flying. Circling the thermals was a bit harder, but I got it. I tried stalls and spins and spin recovery, parables, flew a bit into the direction of Darmstadt and soon decided to go back to landing because I got a bit nauseous and wanted Nils and me to do at least two flights each. Back on the ground after 30 minutes I felt like I could as well stay on the ground and told Nils to fly as long as he wanted. His start was stalled by a mistake of the tow pilot that neither Me or Nils were fast enough to compensate. Before the rope was tight he pushed in the throttle and accelerated. I still had my arm up and thought something like "Alright, here we go" and lowered my arm to indicate the acceleration. What I completely forgot in that moment was that my job was to indicate the first movement of the sailplane when the rope was tight. But the LS-4 with Nils hadn't moved. Nils had also noticed that and had thought about telling the tow pilot via the radio. He took a second to notice that this wouldn't work anyway and that he had to release the coupling to prevent the rope from ripping. In that very second the rope pulled tight and ripped off from both the tow plane and the glider. Luckily it was a quite easy repair and Nils could start 30 minutes later. He flew 3:30 while I learned how to mow the runway with the tractor. It was exciting at first but incredibly boring after an hour. In the end I was happy to go home and thought that weirdly my flying experience had been no more fun than flying an RC glider. Difference being that this 30 min flight had actually cost me 12 h of my time. My closest explanation for this is that flying the Alula is always a challenge to me - I never know how I'll fly, if I'll crash, if this thing that I'm trying is going to work out - but it's never dangerous. It's in now way stressful. Flying a real glider is not a challenge to me. I always stay in the envelope where I feel safe. And right there it's boring. Back home we had a beer and watched Ponyo, a really beautiful movie. While watching the movie, Sarah called me and asked why we were not coming to the barbecue in Julia's backyard. They wanted to hear some stories from our day of flying. I told her that we were watching a movie about "The adventure at the sea" and probably won't come.

Saturday, 16.05.2020 - Holy Shit

Again, Nils woke me up to get to the airfield. I didn't want to get up, but I did anyway. "You're gonna wake up on the bike!" Nils told me. I really did. When the first car passed us way too close I got furious. I took it up a notch and while that motherfucker slowly turned left I passed him really close and fast, almost so that I was scared, and started pedaling heavily. He honked and passed me again really close and fast. Now I was on fire. Nils was a hundred meters behind and when he caught up with me affirmed the legitimacy of my action and we both took it up a notch. Because of a stop at the bakery we were still running late, arriving at 10:15, just after the morning briefing had started. Everyone was standing at a distance, some wearing masks, giving a really awkward picture. I planned to take the last available glider, the old Ka 8, polished the canopy, checked everything and towed it to the starting area. Down there, Nils discovered that the LS-4b was also available. But I called dibs and started preparing the LS-4b for myself. And while Nils prepared himself for the Ka 8 I discovered that the LS-4 was still missing a parachute, a battery mount and a battery cable. Down the runway in the hangar I could find neither a battery cable nor a parachute. So I helped Nils get ready in the Ka 8 while other people engaged in the hassle with the LS-4. After they found the battery mount and the parachute the only thing missing was the TEK tube for the variometer. I drove down to the hangar to search it, didn't find it but instead found Max and took him with me to the staring area. Back there everyone looked at us as if we had done something horribly wrong. But we hadn't been driving over the runway during an approach of a glider, we hadn't hit a rabbit with the car, so everything seemed fine to me. We found out that two people in the car are only allowed with masks. Peter told me in a reproachful tone that it's crucial for him to not get infected with Covid-19 because of his work. How does that relate to Max and Me in the car? I don't know. I followed their orders and disinfected the steering wheel and all other surfaces and decided to go for a walk. My desire to go flying had subsided anyway. I took my phone and my bottle of water and subverted the train tracks behind the airfield. The first view behind the railway dam was amazing to me. No fucking people. I thought that I actually really liked being on the ground, listening to the sounds of the animals, smelling the plants, seeing the horizon. From above, especially when you're 2000 m above the ground, you loose all sense for the details. You see the big picture, but you see nothing of the things that are actually happening on the ground. For birds, this is different. They start circling right above the ground, land in trees, fly close over streets, talk to each other, and most of all, they have the best and purest flying skills you'll ever see. On my walk I saw a lot of interesting things and despite my tense mood happily helped an old couple to push their car. The woman was much to weak to push the car sufficiently fast enough to start the motor. The man didn't know how to do it. He repeatedly turned the key without any result until I yelled at him to let the clutch go. The car stumbled and the motor came on. I was happy, they were happy and I continued my walk. For a while I followed the Ka 8 who was circling low in my field of vision. I marvelled at the tall trees that I found, at all the people outside working, at the ugly expensive houses and the beautiful gardens.
Feeling inside myself I couldn't really find any feeling except the subsiding anger and sadness. I felt that this switch between sad / angry and happy / thankful that I had found in my head some time ago would still work - I had control over my feelings - but that it was better to follow the current feeling instead of forcing that switch to the other side. I tried to follow that feeling but I didn't find much. I thought that apparently I was not suffering from anything. I had a glider pilots license and the possibility to just fly, I had friends, food, a warm home and everything, so there was not much wrong. But apparently there was also not much right with my life because I didn't feel any contentment, any happiness. I thought that a life without any joy was not actually worth living and that maybe I just had to end it. For the sake of fairness I would have to enable everyone dear to me to have a last conversation with me and arrange my demise in some sort of ceremony. That thought finally stirred up some emotion in me. I stopped to answer Marcy's message from the morning. She had written that she's thankful that she had the privilege of meeting someone like me. I had thought about that message basically all day long. I couldn't really understand it. Of course I feel like I am special, but that's simply because I am the only human through whose eyes I have ever and probably will ever see this world. But objectively, I am just a normal boring dude. Nothing special, nothing really enjoyable about my life. On my way back I finally layed down in the grass and rested for a while. I felt that I had not enough sleep during the night. When a dog started barking at the other side of the small stream I got up and walked back to the airfield. Nobody seemed to have noticed that I had been gone for two hours. I had switched back to thankfulness and kindness again and told the few people that I'd leave soon. Martin and Martin followed me and on the way to the Hangar we met Karin. It was her birthday and when I asked her how old she was now, I was shocked by her answer: she got 39 years old. She never seemed so old to me. When I finally left after a few more conversations I felt really happy. It was highly unusual to leave the airfield at 16:00. After a kilometre on the bike I spotted the Ka 8 in the sky. I thought about getting back to the airfield to catch the Ka 8 after her landing, but I was determined to keep going. Back home I took a rest, wrote a little bit and talked to my friend Ryder on the phone. His response to my experience was that if my feeling in the negative state of mind was still neutral, why wouldn't that be a good sign? Most people, he concluded, would rather be unhappy in their negative state of mind. At 20:20 I started to pack my climbing equipment and raced to the boulder hall. I was three minutes late but Sarah arrived exactly on point with me. It was unusually empty, of course, because they only let in the people who logged in for that specific time slot. It was good, we were both at a roughly equal level of ability and tried every green route we could find, sometimes also trying a blue one and in the end dialing down to white because of our fading grip power. In the end we were both pretty exhausted and went to Michi and Simon, where we also met Mattis, Julia, Louisa and David. Soon later the Pizza they had ordered arrived and my hunger was kicking in. Thankfully, Simon offered to make some more pizza. Around 01:00 I drove back home and had a great evening. I decided to watch "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind", a 1984 movie that enabled the founding of Studio Ghibli, and I knew after the first twelve minutes that it would become one of my favourite movies. It's story is interesting on multiple levels and it perfectly matches with some feelings and thoughts I had today. As I was kind of pissed by the complicated nature of flying gliders and their limited flying fun I had been thinking about the best plane I could imagine. The glider that Nausicaä is flying in the movie came amazingly close to my dreams of the day. What's funny to me is that a Japanese team tried to build a real-life version of the protagonist Nausicaä's jet-powered glider which can land anywhere, fold its wings and seems super-fun to fly. This was the state of their project in 2007:

This is how it looked like in 2018:

At 03:15 I suddenly got aware that this was one of the few evenings where I am completely alone. Sarah had stayed with Simon and Mattis probably went home with Julia.
I like it when I have time where I can make any sound without taking care of someone who is sleeping but where I also don't hear any sound that doesn't come from me. Loud music while trying to watch a movie is not really a fair deal for also being able to be as loud as I like.

Sunday, 17.05.2020 – A better day

Today I stayed in bed as long as I wanted. I didn't consider going to the airfield for a third day in a row.
Around 13:00 Sarah knocked at my door and asked if I also wanted noodles, and so I had lunch right after getting up.
I noticed that Nils had tried to call me around 12:00 so I called him back. When he answered the phone, I could hear the high-pitched beeping sound of the variometer indicating a strong upwind. He had driven to the airfield and was now flying the old Ka 8. Now he had caught my interest.

I packed my stuff and hurried to the train station. On my way I almost crashed into a car, but I got the train. An hour after Nils' call I was at the airfield. Conny had just landed with the LS-4, so I jumped in and went for a flight. Unfortunately, a thin layer of clouds was just moving over the airfield, so the thermals were too weak for me to stay in the air.

After the clouds had moved past I went for another flight. This time I could easily stay in the air. After an hour or so my battery was empty and I had to shut off the electronic variometer. In addition to the mechanical variometer it indicates the climb rate with a separate beeping sound and two separate displays, showing the current and integrated climb rate, a marked circle and a color-coded flight path. While watching all this information I had been trying to optimize my flight path all the time.

Without this information it was suddenly silent and I had to trust my intuition. I flew much slower, 75 – 85 km/h instead of 90 – 100 km/h and tried how slow I could thermal the LS-4. The magic line seems to lie around 65 km/h. Surprisingly, she didn't want to tip over the wing but simply started sinking in a stable curve. Gradually slowing her down in level flight surprisingly caused a heavy tip stall and beginning of a spin.

Steering her upwards with an angle to quickly reduce speed results in a stable nose-down turn where she picks up the needed speed again.

In the end I opted for a low pass over the fields next to the airfield. With 230 km/h 50 – 100 m above ground I could clearly see the bikers on the bike path, feel the speed and then pull up to get back up to 200 m above ground to start my landing pattern.

The whole day felt really good and after landing I finally met Nils who had come to the airfield with his car. This was perfect because it enabled us to quickly visit my parents before driving home.

They had invited me for coffee and cake in the afternoon, but at 20:30 there was still some cake left and we got a nice dinner with Pommes Frites, Salmon and well, strawberry cake.

Wednesday, 20.05.2020

The last days were good. Yesterday I went climbing with Sarah and her brother and while lying on the Sofa spotted Stefan, an old friend who was equally happy to see me as I was to see him. It was a good time.

Just a minute ago I spotted The Winter Queen by Adelphi in our kitchen. It's a very special Whiskey that Laura gave me for my birthday. She had apologized for the bottle already being open, explaining that it was from her personal collection and that she had bought it in times where she had more money. It may well be the most valuable gift that I have received for my birthday.
I poured a tiny sip into a glass and now I'm waiting for the alcohol to evaporate. I'm in no way someone who knows much about Whiskey, a connoisseur like Laura, but now that I have this bottle around I must learn to understand and celebrate it.

During the last few hours I've been helping Sarah with cleaning our flat while Mattis and Julia are working at Hans' workshop.

I cleaned the bathroom sink which was awful, wiped the kitchen floor and put rubber feet on the feet of a foldable chair that really likes to slip away.

Friday, 22.05.2020

Yesterday was also a good day. I met Nils at the airfield at 10, but because so many people wanted to fly he decided to go home and do some work.
My original plan was to fly the Duo Discus with Nils and tell everyone that we live together. Then my plan was to invite Sarah for a flight.
But as she already had different plans my only option would have been to fly alone in the double-seated glider which seemed quite stupid to me.
So at 14:00 I also decided to let other people fly, go home and get some Falafel on the way. When I arrived at home I was surprised to find Nils sitting on our balcony. Soon later, Sarah arrived with Anita and we helped them to carry the 4 ½ palettes to the balcony. Now we have a palette sofa at one end of our balcony and it's iiincredibly comfortable.
Nils was super-happy and we had a really good afternoon.
At the end of the day I was super-tired and had a bit of an headache, probably from spending too much time in the sun, so I went to bed quite early while our flat was still full of friends cutting each others hair.
Three hours ago Sarah woke me up to offer me eggs and bread. Julia had advised her not to wake me up, but when I stood in the kitchen five seconds later she revised her opinion. I love being woken up with food.
Now I'm sitting on the sofa on our balcony, the sky is clouded but the air is warm because hot air from the southwest is flowing towards us.
We have 23°C now and temperatures will rise to 25°C which is weird because the sun is not visible at all. But tomorrow colder air from the northwest will sweep over us and produce some rain. Looking forward to that.

Originally I wanted to swap my Vitus for my Canyon Mountainbike that Nils has currently borrowed to drive to Arheilgen and pick up a wood board.
But Nils wanted to escort his flatmate Antonia to the river Rhein where she wanted to meet her boyfriend and drive to his home in Eltville.
I couldn't resist to join them and planned to pick up the wood board on the way back.
At the beginning, I was pretty bored with two Mountainbikes in the wind shadow behind me. I barely needed to apply any force to the pedals. Later we drove over some pretty shitty paths – broken concrete slabs and gravel from fine to coarse. After a while I was pretty pissed.
At the meeting point I was incredibly hungry and bought some ice cream and beer. After a while we started our way back home. I looked up a route to Arheilgen which would theoretically lead us straight to the East.
After a few kilometres we missed a turn and ended up driving rather south, again finding the broken concrete slabs and gravel routes that we had been driving before. I was getting exhausted from the coarse ground but Nils felt good on my Canyon, so he was getting off to the front, leaving me behind in the headwind. I was too tired and frustrated to accelerate on the loose ground so I shouted at him to slow down (which I have never done this year, so it took some effort). But he didn't hear me so I continued chasing him. When I saw a nice looking concrete path turning to the left (the East!) I thought that this could be the solution for the kilometres long gravel path ahead of us. I shouted really loud at Nils and stopped. I was really pissed at this point.
I tried to look up a new route on Komoot but had no internet connection. I was so pissed that I decided to give way to my impulse and throw my bike and my phone into the meadow. It felt so good to despise these devices for their insufficiency, even though it had been myself who brought me into this situation.
It's so easy to blame the county for the bad bike paths, the phone for its poor usability and the bike for its poor off-road capabilities. It's a mood where I suddenly noticed all the things that I disliked in this world. It would be impossible to continuously live in this state of mind where I believe that 90% of everything is shit. But I have to admit that I still enjoyed this state of mind for a while, especially because I noticed how quickly my mood lightened up.
I think as long as you do not destroy anything that should live (whether it's a living being, a relationship or merely a thing) even the feeling of wanting to destroy is usually appropriate to be set free. It is part of our human emotions and the opposite of the need to create. They are both in a way the same thing. So when you increase the extend of one thing, it would be logic that you also increase the extend of the other thing. Following that logic it would mean that you can also only love to the extend that you are able to hate. And that is where it seems quite odd to me. But maybe it is true.

Now it is 18:55 and I'm again sitting on the sofa on the balcony. It has surely been the best 20€ investment in a while.

Sitting there I read Chapter 7 of the waitbutwhy-series The Story of Us. Reminded of the concept of the human brain being split into the Primitive and the Higher Mind I recalled my experience from the afternoon. It was as if my Primitive Mind was not like a dog on a leash but rather like a huge predator kept in check by a dompteur. My Primitive Mind was in overdrive, but my Higher Mind still kept it under control to make sure that it didn't really destroy anything. I was actually aware to not throw my bike onto the side where the drive train sits and to not throw my phone onto the gravel. I hated my phone, but I knew I would be sad if it broke.

Monday, 25.05.2020

Yesterday was also a great day. I joined Nils in his mission to buy a road bike and then built a lot of paper gliders. The tiny Pioneer 3 really convinced me with his amazing flight characteristics.

And I read a bit more about the Spanish Revolution.
It's a story that's almost too sad to be true. But it's probably also a very valuable lesson from recent European history.

I also saved some new music that impressed me in the last days.
Some of it has already been on my mind for a while, but some of it is completely new to me. The first song was probably the one with the biggest impact for me.

So, if you read all the way through this, you got my respect.
Feel free to comment on it in a mail or phone call.

Also, I decided to continue writing this logbook-like text in a new post.
It's titled May 25 because this was the day of transition both of this format, but coincidentally also of my overall feeling.