My son Andrés is six, and high on his list of things to do these days is throw stuff, preferably objects that can go a great distance and/or can break, dislodge, dent, shatter or otherwise have a big impact. Wonder where he got this passion? When I was six, one day I spent an afternoon seeing if I could throw a rock and hit a taxicab driving by our apartment. Timing my throw was crucial and I succeeded. After being grounded for a week, my mom bought me a baseball glove, jump starting my pitching career.
To help direct Andrés’ enthusiasm and minimize damage, we’ve been making a lot of paper airplanes. I know a few basic designs, we have a pretty cool book that has instructions for more advanced models and we improvise. Then we do test flights to see which ones fly the farthest or do the coolest stunts, which led me to showing him photos from the 2010 Lawrence Percolator International Paper Glider Fly-In.
The Fly-In was a part of the Percolator’s “Out of Thin Air” exhibition and was held in the lobby of the Lawrence Arts Center. Glider pilots, young and old, designed their crafts to excel in categories including: Distance Flown, Time Aloft, Surprise, Best Crash, Trickiest, Decoration, Weirdness, Launching Technique, Unusual Design, Elegance and Helicoptering.