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Soaring is a sport like no other. So what is soaring and what brought me to this amazing sport to begin with?

Soaring simplified:

Soaring is the act of using rising air to extend the duration, and distance of unpowered flight. An unpowered plane also known as a glider, or sailplane, is powered strictly by gravity. in other words, its forward momentum is created by the downward pull of gravity. Efficiency of a glider is expressed in l/d or lift over drag at a certain speed, which translates into glide angle. This is a ratio like 38 to 1 (the ship I fly) up to 68 to 1 or slightly better for the most cutting edge "racing gliders" these numbers translate to  the number of miles  flyable for every mile of altitude.

So, in other words a sailplane or glider is always going down, losing altitude, and from 1 mile up will have to land within 30-68 ish miles. So how can a glider, that would land in 20-40 minutes travel 1550 miles and stay aloft 15 hours (world record)?

As seen in this video, gliders use updrafts called thermals to climb in rising columns of air exactly as eagles do. Circling slowly in a thermal increases altitude (the beeping you hear is the electronic variometer, the faster and higher the pitch the stronger the lift source, and faster you climb. You then can turn altitude into distance, and speed.

Other lift sources exist like ridge lift and wave lift, both caused by wind flowing over the mountains. Ridge lift is used in racing to fly very fast, very long distances, very close to the mountains.

In this case, the closer you fly to the ridge the stronger the lift and faster you can fly.

Wave lift is downwind of a mountain these standing waves can carry a glider higher then any powered plane can ever fly. the perlan 2 project is a "space glider" that will soon take mountain waves to a new altitude record..to the edge of space, without power!

Gliders also offer extreme, unpowered aerobatics like this:

But for me, the greatest challenge is cross country racing:

This is my eventual dream, to compete in glider racing.

How did I get involved in soaring? I grew up just below where the gliders released from tow. All my childhood the sound of tow planes throttling back and diving after release, was the soundtrack to my childhood. At a young age, maybe 8 I took my 1st ride. At 14 about I left home and lived right next door to the airport I now fly out of.

But, it wasn't until I was in my early 20s, and broke my back, ending up in a wheelchair for life, that I discovered that very gliderport that was such a part of my life already, was also home to www.freedomswings.org  a non profit that teaches people with disabilities to fly gliders

 With both disabled students, and instructors, this was something that really opened my mind to the possibilities that lied ahead of me. After listening to long lists from doctors of things I would never do again, here was a group saying you can do more then you ever dreamed of doing.

It was just 2 weeks after getting out of the hospital that I took my 1st flight, and began lessons the very next day.

Due to lack of transportation, after my 1st 2 solo flights I was no longer able to fly, for nearly 20 years.

2 weeks ago I resumed my lessons! And finally I'm back in the sky where I belong.

This video is very informative into all aspects of soaring.

Life and evolution make me wonder. Cats' and dogs' hairs grow to a certain length, then stop. So does our leg hair, arm hair, underarm hair, etc. Why does our crown hair ever grow? I believe there's some sort of spiritual reason for this, but I can't be too sure what it is. Maybe it's a manifestation of our spiritual energy, maybe it's a way of marking our human species as a special one. There's no denying that our species does have the most power on our Earth, the most self awareness and cumulative knowledge. There's something about letting your hair grow out that is so primal, so natural, so beautiful that you can't help but feel its positive energy. Hair is also such a personal thing to have, being literally the same thing in every single human being, but why are we subscribing to a mass idea that it all needs to look the same, that it has to be dyed and straightened and cut to a certain style and length for people to understand who you are? When did this happen that instead of seeing another human being as just another human being, one of our own species that we can communicate and share with, we started judging them on how well we think they're being human, to our standards, and don't want to get to know them? We need to take off our glasses that society makes us view other people with, this type of worldview or perception we are expected to have, and see with our own eyes, because there is so much goodness out here. We need to let go of society's grip on us, this image and life we think are expected of us. Live your life! Drink water, let Nature take your hair in her hands and create beautiful branches and roots like in the trees, and be proud of who you are! One Love, Peace

     For the last four months I have experimented with making Kombucha. For those who do not know, Kombucha is a fermented tea full of probiotics and enzymes. The tea is brewed as usual and sugar is added. Then, once the tea is cool a scoby is placed inside. A scoby is a Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast. These are living organisms. This scoby and tea are allowed to ferment for an allotment of days. This is the first brewing. 

At first, I stuck to the first brewing of my Kombucha batches. After a few weeks, I started to pour the finished product ( minus the Scoby) into sealable mason jars with flavors of fruit tea. This is the optional second fermentation that will increase any carbonation in the beverage and add additional flavor. So far, I have made Kombucha out of English Breakfast Black Tea, Pu-Erh tea, Jasmine Green Tea, and Yerba Mate Teas. My second fermentation has included teas from Teavana: Citrus Lavender Sage, Lavender, Dosha Chai, Fruita Bomba, and Sakura Allure. They were all very good, my favorite being the Lavender brew. My current second fermentation is with fresh strawberries, so I am excited to taste this one in a few days. 

Hello Everyone, So I am starting my dreadlock Journey. I am using the twist and rip method and it is taking forever! which is what i expected since i have so much hair and i already knew getting dreads was going to be something that takes time and patience. I was actually Just wondering if anyone had any advice to give me for starting out. Like what kind of shampoo to use? Where i can find essential oils locally? I have 4 or 5 sections twisted and ripped and knotted up. I was wondering how i can go about keeping the knots there while they lock up and just little things like that. Im really excited to start this journey. and can't wait to share it with all of you. 

Thank you. 

Hi all, just want to share some photos of my dreads. Only started this week. I'm going for natural/neglect. Enjoy. X

Stop, drop , and dread. That is, stop worrying , drop the comb.. And boom, they begin. Slowly blooming like the flowers of the Forrest moments before summer. All our planets flowers need are water and heat. We humans don't go into the Forrest to water the plants and tame them and give them heat. They grow beautifully as they are, left alone and over time and patiently they sprout with unique shapes and sizes. Treat your hair as these flowers and plants and trees that dwell in the natural sections of the earth. Wash them with nature. Use friendly products with only our earths finest herbs and flowers found inside and keep the attitude of a true natural spirit. A soul who keeps it simple and let's your life sway happily in the breeze as your dreads will begin to do. The back starts first working its way through the rest of your jungle , vines tightening and taking root. Enjoy the ride friends! It's a cool one

Okay, so this time around I'm going to update my hair every month. I was thinking about doing it different this time around. I wanted to take biotin for 3 months and then cut my hair and let it grow from there. Around a year I would stop combing it and let it dread from a big afro while still taking biotin. Then I'll start using the rosemary and aloe plants. They worked really well for me the first time so I'm pretty excited. Any questions let me know. Not sure if I should upload picture now or after 3 months. I think I will just blog for now and once I get my final hair cut I will start uploading pictures. Well, now that, that's settled. Cool beans. Stay tuned!

It's been a few years me thinks, or almost, since I've been on the site. Life's been treating me very well as it continuously unfolds into more understanding of who I am and what I'm here for. If you've seen my previous lock timeline, you may not know that on memorial day of 2014 I shaved my head clean. The locks were amazing and I was deeply connected to them. However, I must say that the point in my life in which I chose to begin allowing my hair to lock was probably my darkest hour. I was in a bad mix of habits that perpetuated my own suffering haha

My first set of locks were meant to be a reminder, a reminder to stand firm in loving defiance and to keep true to myself as I go through the typical 'day in day out' mealstrom of matrix life. To recognize the flame within me, that for my entire life my 'peers' could not relate to or were very uncomfortable acknowledging within themselves. Letting my hair lock was sort of a self-initiation into my own personal discovery, a commitment of sorts to actively begin seeking my humbled power within and to fan that flame. That continues to hold true today.

So when I shaved my head clean it was a deep energetic release for me, a sort of liberation. My first set of locks, bless them (I do not know what happened to them) had served their purpose. The original intention had been fulfilled as I saw it. So I decided to release the energy that they contained, the energy from all of my negative experiences and the past from which I had come. This was most liberating. I immediately felt free, yet at the same time there was a great disconnect that I was picking up on. This can be likened to the natives that served in the armed forces of wars past, who had to cut their hair which led to the 'discovery' that their long hair had provided them a tactical advantage. 

I have not cut my hair since and it has been a year and a half of growth. This set is already taking shape, and has been sectioning for months into a new set of beautiful locks formed by Jah. Again there is that parallel between the locks being formed and my own spiritual growth, but on a higher octave. Another cycle on the spiral of this life! The more my hair grows and forms into locks and the more my beard grows, the more I begin to recognize the man in the mirror. Isn't that odd?? Or is it natural? 

 

I thought I would share some of my dread journey in the hope that it might help someone else who is considering going to a salon. I started my journey with the neglect method initially, about Sept-Oct of 2014. I had found several videos on YouTube by NatureLover, a member of this site, and thought her free form dreads were so beautiful, I decided that was the way I wanted to go. But several months in I started hearing that sectioning was really important, and so I made the mistake of going to my hairdresser to have that done. She was just supposed to section, nothing more, but before I knew it she was sectioning, twisting and ripping, and backcombing. Even though I protested at every step, she assured me that she had training in making dreads, she knew what she was doing, and that she wouldn't do anything that would be bad for my hair (she had been my hairdresser for eight years). Even so, when she said that she wanted to use wax on my hair "Just to hold the dreads in place," I put my foot down and said, "NO! Absolutely not!" Thank God I was already a member of this site at that point and had read all the horror stories of wax being used on dreads, otherwise I would have had no idea and probaly would have let her do that as well.

Three separate sessions over the course of three weeks, eleven hours total, a whole lot of money and EXCRUIATING pain later, and I had what at least my hair dresser considered to be "dreads." My head was so sore and covered with so many dreads all tightly bound with tiny elastics that she told me to leave in for at least a month, preferably two. Two MONTHS? I lasted three weeks. I couldn't STAND the elastics! They hurt my head every day, not to mention that they were awful to sleep in. After three weeks the only way I could get them out was to cut them out because they had become so miserably knotted in my hair. It took three hours to get them all out and it was very painful. 

Fast foward to two weeks ago (2nd week of Oct 2015).  I have taken well over a dozen of my hairdresser's "salon dreads" out because her sectioning left the back of my head looking so bald and scalpy I couldn't go out in public. For a while I was terrified that I had Alopecia, but after much research I realized that was not the case. Even so, I can't begin to describe the EXTREME stress, time money, pain, energy, and work that I have gone through to have dreads from the moment I set foot in a salon. I now have returned to the neglect method (which I should have never left) and my poor dreads at least seem to be recovering from what has been done to them. They are full of kinks loops, and bumps, which personally, I'm loving! I am using nothing on my hair except products I've purchased on this site, which is the Tea Tree shampoo, and occasionally the sea salt locking spray.

I consider myself very lucky that it doesn't "appear" that any permanent damage was done to my hair.  But believe me, it wasn't from my hairdresser's (unintentional) lack of trying. My advice to anyone wanting dreads, watch lots of reputable dread videos on YouTube, and read every bit of available information on the Dreadlocks site. The misinformation that salons and hairdressers seem to cling to is truly scary. My hairdresser actually ordered me at one point to "Stay off that dread site!" Never going to happen. I hope this info has been helpful.

 While hurricane Patricia was making landfall in Mexico, supporters of Donald Trump showed their true colors and reasons for supporting Trump who often makes racist and sexist comments.

YouTube had several live feeds of the hurricane Patricia making landfall with people dying on live cam. There was a live chat that was clearly divided along political lines. Although there were people from every nation, including many from Mexico scared for their lives, trump supporters took it upon themselves to drown everybody out with some of the most horrific remarks I have ever seen.

These are just a few of the remarks that I can remember, but there were thousands and they were flying by very fast.

"Donald Trump's fulfilling his promise to wipe out all Mexicans"
"thank God for Donald Trump. I hope there's less than 1000 of those dirty wet backs left when this is all over."
"I can't wait to see some dirty wet backs flying through the air."
"I'm glad Donald Trump's getting his way and will soon be rid of all of those Mexicans and when that's done we can start wiping out the N-word's too. Starting with that N-word. Obama"

There were heartfelt concerns and prayers going out from all over the world to the poor people in Mexico were already struggling and are now facing the largest storm ever. But for every person that tried to express concern, they were drowned out by dozens of trump supporters shouting racist hate, and making it clear that they wanted nothing less than total genocide.

It was the most horrific thing I had seen. I posted about it on Facebook and everybody who replied had seen the same thing from supporters taking over every chat about the tragedy in Mexico and turning it into a racist genocidal hate-fest. All fueled by Donald Trump's blatant hatred of Mexicans.

How can anybody support a candidate's whose supporters are happy to see people die?

One by one each of the lied feeds had to be taken down because of the racism. The trump supporters got their way. Nobody was able to give their heartfelt condolences to those who were suffering and in harm's way.

This year's race, it is clear that one party is taking the high road and talking about the issues and the other party is simply trying to be a bully.