Orbital

Two Catching Air

I was ten years-old the first time I really flew. I’d been in airplanes before and would take the stick of one a few years later when an ex-Top Gun instructor let me hitch a ride. But the first time I remember the feeling of being aloft, soaring through the sky of my own accord, was when I took a home-built soap box racer down a hill and over a ramp.

I made the cart using lawnmower wheels, two-by-fours and a seat from a bass boat. To steer it, I used a piece of rope tied to either end of the front axle that pivoted on a bolt I drilled through the wood.

The ramp was a piece of rotted plywood I pulled off a neighbor’s tomato garden fence and propped up on some old tires.

Had any sane adult seen this scrawny kid dragging the cart up the steep hill and noticed the chalk line I’d drawn to mark out my path, they would have put a stop to it and had me see a shrink for suicidal tendencies.

But this was no death wish. It was a life wish — if there is such a thing.

I’d seen some older kids jump their BMX bikes off a ramp. I decided I’d do the same with a vehicle of my own design. I called it Davey’s Comit. Which was stupid on two accounts: I didn’t know comet wasn’t spelled like “vomit” and nobody called me “Davey,” not even my prodigious inner monologue.

There were no witness to what I did that day — which also means that had the attempt gone horribly awry, I’d have been laying on the pavement with a broken neck for hours.

After dragging the cart to the top of the hill I took a seat in the plastic chair and put on the flimsy helmet intended for a kid going zero miles an hour on a skateboard. But hey, I’d spray painted it silver and only got some of the paint on my fingers and hair.

Looking down the hill at the ramp, it seemed like a tiny shingle on a gingerbread house. I went back to my old neighborhood a few years ago. While the hill wasn’t as long as my memory, it was every bit as steep.

When I lifted my Keds from the ground and let gravity pull me, the going was slow at first. My lawnmower wheels weren’t exactly Pirelli’s.

Soon enough, I began to pick up speed. I quickly passed the point where I could bail out and avoid a nasty scrape or sprained wrist.

Every pebble in the asphalt jostled my suspension-free kart. It soon became just one steady staccato rhythm as my velocity increased.

The tiny ramp grew larger at a fast pace as I fought with the cords to keep the nose of Davey’s Comit straight along my chalk line.

I’d designed my ramp carefully, accounting for the distance between the front and rear axle. When I hit it, my forward motion was gradually changed into upward momentum.

The impact was anything but smooth, but it didn’t stop me. Hell no. I was a bat out of hell — on lawnmower wheels.

I remember the front of the kart leaving the edge of the ramp and could feel the precise moment in my ass when the back wheels left. I was goddamn airborne!

Twenty feet? Fifty? It felt like I was jumping the Grand Canyon.

Yes, when I went back to measure how far I’d gone, there were clear indentations only 29.5 inches from the ramp to where my rear wheels actually landed back on Earth. But don’t tell me I didn’t make a giant leap.

The landing was just the beginning. While the ramp was at the edge of the pavement, the hill still continued down through the Montgomery family backyard.

I slid down their green lawn picking up even more speed.

At some point one of my front wheels came lose and the end of the wooden axle dug a furrow into the grass.

Did I come to a stop? No, sir. Davey’s Comit proceeded to spin around as it plummeted down the hill in sideways cartwheels.

Eventually the inertia was too much and I was thrown from my craft.

I pulled my arms in and rolled with it until I came to stop. I laid there, arms stretched out, watching the world spin around me as my inner ear tried to process what the fuck I just went through.

I just stared up at the sky, seeing right through the clouds. Past the blue of the atmosphere and straight into space.

I saw stars, not the dizzy kind that tell you your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. These were the real ones. Surrounded by planets and asteroids and mysteries.

In my mind’s eye, I was seeing space.

How far did that ramp jump take me?

I couldn’t tell you.

I still haven’t landed.