The plastic Jesus
Back
in 1997-98 I had working for me an ex stripper. She was about 40ish and had given
up taking her clothes off for working a normal job. Part of this was her conversion
to religion and she would go to church every Sunday. I was describing the
ASW22 to her one day when I had first got it (I only had 200hours at the time)
and telling her how hard it was to fly compared to the "kiddy" gliders
I had been flying.
I also added that when I waggled the rudder to take off
I would ask the tow pilot "we are not going to scare each other are we?" Next
Monday she came in with 2 plastic Jesus's one for me and one for the tow plane.
"Here you go" she says handing me the plastic jesus's. "These will
keep you and the tow pilot safe" So they were installed in both aircraft,
I even photo'ed mine in flight (thats the pic of me with it on the silentflight.com
gliding index. The towplane Jesus suffered an early demise when the tow pilot
who had him clipped onto the side window did a tow with the windows down in the
pawnee.
To his horror Jesus had taken a free fall somewhere in that tow never
to be seen again. But to this day I still have mine in the cockpit and people
come to Minden from around the world in a search of fine soaring and a Jesus sighting.
It blows them away when they are timidly looking around the 22 on the ramp and
there he is stuck on the wheel brake handle with a "remove before flight"
flag around his neck. He can be seen in this video here last spring.
http://www.mindensoaringclub.com/int2/index.php?option=com_weblinks&task=view&catid=16&id=65 And
that children is the story of how Al got his plastic Jesus. Regards Al. Back
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