The Longest Glide
August 11, 2023 – Astoria, Oregon, USA
For 10-year-old Nathan Giddings, a family trip to The Column was about the best thing you could do in Astoria. The Column sat on a hilltop overlooking the city and after climbing the 164 spiral steps to the top, on a clear day you could see all the way to the Pacific Ocean and for miles up the Columbia River. Nathan’s family liked to visit at least a couple of times a month during the summer and watch the sunset while they ate a picnic dinner.
When the family arrived for their first visit in August, Nathan scrambled to get out of the car before it was parked. “Come on! Let’s climb it!” he called.
“Hold on a minute. I’m not sure your little sister wants to go up again,” Nathan’s dad replied.
Dad and Mom conferenced and decided Mom would stay below with Nathan’s three-year-old sister while Dad got the privilege of climbing The Column’s staircase. Mom grabbed a blanket and headed toward a grassy slope with a good view of the bridge crossing the Columbia. Nathan clung to his dad’s hand and dragged him across the wide square of paving bricks surrounding The Column’s base.
“Let’s see how fast we can go,” Nathan said as they passed through the entrance of the tall, narrow cylinder.
His dad looked at the spiral staircase that filled the space between the cement walls and said, “I’d rather take it slow.”
Nathan raced up ten steps at a time and then waited for his dad to catch up. They passed several visitors who were making their way down from the top. Nathan’s dad was happy to wait patiently and let them go by. Nathan wriggled his way through any human obstacles he encountered.
Nathan’s dad was sucking hard for oxygen by the time the interior brightened from sunlight streaming through The Column’s glass dome roof. Nathan pulled his dad through the exit and onto a viewing platform that encircled the outer wall. The temperature at the top was noticeably cooler, influenced by a steady wind unblocked by trees or geography. Nathan pointed excitedly to the big ships on the river, clearly visible beyond the dark green forests.
As they slid their way around the platform, Nathan and his dad found a man holding up a wind measurement device. He looked like a serious scientist on the verge of a discovery. At his feet stood a box holding three small wooden gliders.
“Wow! Are you going to fly those?” Nathan eagerly asked the man. “Can I help, please?”
Nathan’s dad interjected and said to his son, “He probably doesn’t need your help.” Then he said to the scientist man, “Sorry, my son can be a little pushy.”
“It’s okay,” the man replied. “I am going to fly them, but I need to launch them all myself. I built them special for the contest.”
“What contest?” Nathan asked.
“The contest for the longest glider flight. People have been throwing gliders off The Column for a lot of years. We want to find out how far they can go.”
“Did you make those all by yourself?” Nathan asked, pointing to the wooden gliders in the box.
“Yes. The contest rules say they have to be made of balsa wood and be a maximum of one foot long and one foot wide. And they each have a tag.” The man bent over to show Nathan a small tag attached to the underside of a glider. “When someone finds it, they scan the tag with their phone. That’s how we’ll find out how far they go.”
“What if no one finds it?”
“Well then, we’ll never know. I sure hope someone finds mine.”
Nathan held tight to the platform’s railing and hopped in anticipation as the glider scientist launched his three designs. The first flew no farther than the tall pine trees 100 feet away from The Column. The second and third caught better air currents, cleared the trees, and drifted downward. Nathan shouted louder than the scientist for them to keep flying.
When the last glider disappeared, Nathan turned to his dad and said, “I want to build a glider.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start. Please don’t pester me about building a glider,” his dad answered.
“You could always buy one,” the glider scientist said. “The gift shop down below sells them for a dollar. They don’t go very far. They won’t win the contest, but they can be fun for children.”
Nathan’s dad nodded. “Thanks. We know all about the gift shop gliders.”
The glider scientist carried his box and wind measurement tools down the spiral staircase with Nathan and his dad right behind. As soon as they reached the ground, Nathan begged to visit the gift shop.
“Please Dad. Please, please, please.”
His dad dreaded another trip up The Column to launch a $1 glider so he mumbled an excuse about not having any money. He pulled his son toward his wife and daughter who were sitting on a blanket surrounded by grass and dandelions. On the way, Nathan let go of his dad’s hand and ran toward something he spotted in the grass. He picked up a perfectly intact $1 glider someone had already thrown from the top of The Column.
“Look at this! Now we don’t need any money!”
Nathan’s dad uttered a grim, “Hurray.”
Nathan rushed to show the glider to his mother and sister and sped through an explanation of the contest and the man they met. The found glider was small and primitive compared to the designs launched by the expert. Nathan turned it over but could not find a locator tag. The thin balsa wings were painted with an image of The Column.
“We have to get a tag first so I can be in the contest,” he said.
“How about you climb up with your mom this time?” his dad suggested. “I want her to have some fun too.”
Nathan was not picky about who accompanied him, so he grabbed his mom’s hand and pulled her toward the gift shop. There, they found a teenage girl working behind a counter and Nathan explained how his glider was missing a tag for the contest. The girl was happy to write down his name and phone number and attach a numbered tag to his glider’s wing.
“I hope somebody finds it and I can put your name on the board,” the girl said, pointing to a chalkboard showing the top ten longest flights.
“I’ll be on there for sure,” Nathan said.
“You have until the end of August,” replied the girl. “You can keep trying as many times as you want.”
Nathan was so full of adrenaline, he raced up The Column’s spiral staircase without waiting for his mom. She found him standing at the spot where he had seen the glider scientist launching.
“The man held his glider like this and let it go straight ahead,” Nathan explained with an accompanying demonstration.
“Let yours go as soon as you’re ready.”
“Maybe we should do something for luck. Here, kiss the wing.”
Nathan’s mom leaned down and kissed the glider’s wing. Nathan kissed it too. Then he pulled back his arm before pushing the glider forward in a flat, smooth motion.
It may have been the luck of the double kisses that made the glider catch exactly the right wind gust. It rose and headed east, clearing a tall pine tree obstacle. Riding ideal air currents, the little glider made a slow arc over houses and tree patches and then headed toward the river. Nathan and his mom cheered as it dipped and rose. It stayed aloft so long they could not tell if it was truly the tiny speck they thought they saw in the distance.
“That was way farther than the glider scientist’s throws,” Nathan concluded. “Now I know I’m going to win.”
“Remember, someone has to find it and take the trouble to scan it.”
“I’m not worried.”
Nathan and his mom returned to their picnic blanket and watched the sun slowly sink. Before the family drove away, Nathan insisted on stopping at the gift shop to see if his name was already on the longest glides board. It was not.
If it was entirely up to Nathan, his family would have returned every day to check the leaderboard. His parents tried to be accommodating. By the end of the month, they visited six additional times and flew more $1 gliders. But none of his attempts showed up on the list of impressive glides. At the top of the board was one that went 4800 feet, almost a mile.
“What happened to mine?” Nathan asked. “The first one I threw went farther than we could see.”
His mom shrugged her shoulders and said the glider must have landed somewhere where no one could find it.
And then on August 31, the final day of the contest, the top of the leaderboard changed. The longest glide went from 4800 feet to 4800 miles. Next to that hard to believe distance was the name Nathan Giddings.
The teenager in the gift shop was thrilled to report that Nathan’s glider had been found in Busan, South Korea. The finder sent a picture of the plane next to a sign with Korean characters.
“It went all the way across the ocean!” Nathan cried.
While Nathan and most of the general public were excited by the idea of a tiny balsa plane gliding across the Pacific, the contest organizers and local glider experts were skeptical. They said it was physically impossible and investigated the story more thoroughly. They discovered that the little glider had been found by a crew member of a Korean container ship that had sailed from Portland to Busan. The experts concluded that the glider had landed on the ship’s control deck when it passed Astoria. Somehow it survived the ocean journey before being discovered. It had floated most of the 4800 miles.
Still, in order to make its miracle landing on the ship, the glider must have traveled at least 1 ½ miles from The Column to the Columbia River channel. The glider’s reported distance was drastically reduced, but Nathan was declared the overall winner. The gift shop was overjoyed that one of their $1 gliders thrown by a child had beaten all the flight experts.
Nathan won a whole package of prizes. The one he was happiest about came from the gift shop. He was entitled to one free glider every time he visited for the next year. Nathan’s dad rolled his eyes as his son talked excitedly about all the stair climbing they would get to do together.
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