The sport is soaring and your wings come in the form of a sailplane, a modern-day pterodactyl that is made of aluminum, fiberglass, carbon composites and specially treated fabrics.

Sailplanes vary in size from under 40 feet to over 80 and are designed to withstand G forces more than that of an airplane. They’ve also been known to fly at altitudes that jetliners cruise.

Sailplanes have a glide ratio from 35:1 up to 50:1. Glide ratio is the horizontal distance covered divided by the amount of descent.

The size and vastness of this massive chunk of granite dwarfs the human form. Located a stone’s throw away from U.S. Highway 50, the superb walls of Lover’s Leap loom over the hamlet of Strawberry, 40 miles east of Placerville and 18 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe.

The Leap's steep, north-facing walls are at least a half-mile wide, and several climbing routes on its main and western walls rise dramatically to 600 feet. Rugged points of rock form a cliff band that separate into four distinct and forbidding bluffs.

I'm not the only one who's paranoid about law enforcement, especially when it resembles Haiti's Touton Macoutes. According to a current poll, 11 million American adults view the government as their enemy. Fortunately, only 10,000 of these people are members of armed militia groups of which there are at least 224 now in operation.

"Put that thing on a leash," he spat.

This tale isn't that interesting. The question is why was this guy so rude? What made him think I'd accept it? Does he always push his luck with strangers? No doubt he has his story. My view is that he was a little man sorely testing the patience of a big man who does almost anything to avoid confrontation.

The regiments of the rude, once an irritant on the periphery of our lives, has become a mighty army. This is especially true at Tahoe in August. With the crowds of tourists, traffic, and Caltrans, the rude are inescapable.

Only one generation apart themselves, In 1995 Jerry Garcia, 53, died of a heart attack brought on by decades of drug abuse. A few days later, Mickey Mantle, 63, died of complications resulting from decades of alcohol abuse.

Lives like Mantle and Garcia illustrate all religion most lugubrious warnings about the vanity of human wishes. Nothing is so prey to entropy as celebrity, as the fortune of the great.

Casablanca opened in theaters in 1942. At the time, the real Nazis occupied Casablanca along with most of Europe and Northern Africa. In Hollywood's version, the white suit Paul Henreid wore in playing Victor Lazlo represented civilization. Although Henreid, along with Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Ingrid Bergman, have all passed away, the film they made decades ago has achieved a peculiar state of permanence: It has transcended its classic status to become practically embedded in the collective unconscious of America.

As most anglers are hardy outdoorsy people who enjoy catching all manner of fish nearby to civilization, the golden trout enthusiast is the Henry Stanley-in-search-of-Livingston of fishermen. Going after golden trout can become like a fishing safari into unexplored regions of the Sierra’s dark continent. If you like bushwhacking, tripping through wooded manzinita and feeling like the Tin Man after a good thrashing by the flying monkeys, you’ll enjoy fishing for Golden Trout.

Once, being a never married, middle-aged male was considered a pretty good gig. Instead of becoming part of the food chain one unfurled the Jolly Roger. Instead of capitulating to the budding need for ritual one slipped a condom on the male/female war zones and ran with the wolves. There were the true romantic role models: the sophisticated Henry Higgins; the dashing James Bond; that all-time single good guy, Superman.

Lifelong bachelors were considered urbane, worldly, self-aware, blissfully free, with unlimited options. They were even objects of envy.

In celebrating the Fourth of July, see how many questions you can answer about "the great act that brought a nation to its birth," the American Revolution.

1. By what trade did Patriot Paul Revere make a living?

2. What the signal agreed upon by patriot messengers to warn Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington that the British were coming to arrest them?

3. What was the first naval battle of the American Revolution, since referred to by historians as the "Lexington of the sea"?

My father had to be one of the last of the Cavaliers, or gentlemen-soldiers. Not that he ever glorified war, far from it. He was a quiet, well-educated man, with a warm sense of humor whose connections to the world were sentient. But war had been a major part of his life.