GLIDING.

FOR THOSE WHO DARE.

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. My cloud was laced with gold. The decision to give up squash racquets was not an easy one. For thirty years, playing at a tolerably high level, with much pleasure and many comrades, it was a tough call.

Actually it's a decision that all sportmen have to make. When is the right time to hang up your boots? Before the heart attack or back operation or after it? It shouldn't have been difficult, but it was. Every match for the last three months, was followed by three days of low back pain, no matter how much warm up and preparation I did, proper cool down, training ... so I quit.

And found pure gold.

In total I have enjoyed 501 flights in a glider. Actually the 501 th wasn't such a pleasure. I made my Dutch friend sick, so I decided to call gliding a day too, and stick to my next pure gold discovery. The bicycle, but for that you will have to wait until Stones in my Clog is in print.

Back to the 500th. Schlepping gliders around South Africa was not my idea of fun, but every year, when the list went up for the annual club outing to Harrismith's Platberg, my name was on the list. Harrismith and it's surrounds is amongst the best soaring in the world. Championship pilots regularly do 1000 kilometre flights! I was not one of them. Apart from anything else, you need a $ 200 000 glider to do that. Not for chiropractors! The longest I ever made in GEA, undoubtedly one of the top ten memorable experiences of my life, flying over very rugged forested and mountainous terrain, rising to over 14 000 feet you can read about in Bats in my Belfry.

Just look at those clouds. Rising to 30 000 feet they make the Highveld of South Africa the place that soaring pilots the world round dream of.

Harrismith's Platberg ("flat mountain") didn't look that imposing from our B&B, Mount Roses,

but the closer you get, the more you begin to appreciate the fiercesome nature of this mountain rising to 10 000 feet asl.

What makes Harrismith interesting for pilots is that the air is always going up or down at speed, and you with it, your heart in your mouth. You are either in rapidly sinking air, in transit towards the centre of the Earth, terror-struck, or you are soaring towards the moon, awe-struck. Every moment is a flip-flop. Will I make it home?

I didn't. I made a wrong decision, flying downwind of another smaller mountain towards my goal, Sterkfontein Dam, and was fortunate to land Golf-Echo-Alpha safely in the lee of the hill. The very place that pilots, who know better, avoid.

My ancient Ka6, more than 50 years old, looking dejected. Of course, she's a little younger than me, not by much, and I was feeling far more out of sorts than old GEA. She has outlanded many a time, on this occasion without mishap or injury. She too carries her scars.

The Harrismith farmers are the amongst the most hospitable people in the whole world. They helped me dismantle my precious birdy, and when my clubmates arrived we, total strangers, were invited to supper and a long night. Mampoer, homemade peach brandy (highly illegal) kept us very merry as we celebrated my safe return to Planet Earth. My last flight in GEA. Sniff!

Bernard Preston in the green shirt. Fingered as usual.