somewhat predictable accident at Highland

[RedBaron]

From my very own experience I'm also inclined to say that staying prone and in full control of the glider takes precedence until you know you've got it made regardless of wheels and conditions. There's people out there who never get tired of advocating to fly the entire approach upright. I think they're full of it. One midday landing at the WS primary on a West day would change their minds instantly. I actually think I should set my trim speed fast and practice going upright in ground effect. Like these guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KITzUrOTi_o

[Tad Eareckson]

JD,

If you go back, as I had requested, and read my initial post on this subject (2008/04/13 23:47:22) you will find everything I really wanted to say on the issue stated in a nice, calm, rational, concise, unambiguous manner. Same with my response to Brian at the top of this spinoff thread.

Keep reading down and see at which stage I start morphing back into a frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic and take a shot at figuring out why.

Funny thing - you only started getting it when I DID go totally ballistic. I don't like and shouldn't have to operate that way but - hell - oops - heck - if it works, it works.

Sorry - I don't do F@#$ or A$$. I think that kinda crap is cop out. I gotta live in a country that doesn't give a rat's ass about torturing innocent - or guilty - prisoners to death, mountaintop removal coal mining, mass extinction... but goes totally ape shit over an exposed breast at a sporting event which features huge steroid junkies trying to snap each others' spines in the course of trying to move a ball over a line. You got your stuff to find offensive - I got mine. If you don't wanna hear what I've got to say - don't read it. But if you don't read it I would really appreciate it if you wouldn't comment on it.

But I'm glad that we seem to be on similar wavelengths with respect to this issue.

Yes - that video is an absolute treasure trove. And, along with Janni's "myth" comment, it got me thinking that this face and neck issue that JR brought up is WAY, WAY more bullshit than I've been thinking it was.

New Theory

You're gonna break more necks opting for conventional foot landings than you will electing to roll it in.

Discussion

If you pull off the classic hang glider landing you're gonna come out smelling like a rose.

But - let's be real generous and say we, collectively, get it right ninety percent of the time - WHEN (not if) we fuck it up the chances of the consequences being something of an issue are pretty good. (That's the trouble, JD, they most assuredly DO NOT work all the time.)

In my post of 2008/04/16 I put out a call for instances of - let's call them - Cessna landings having undesirable results. I still got nuthin'. (No, that suicide attempt Lauren reported has zilch to do with the issue. I was wondering if he had spent the preceding parts of the flight also in modes the precise opposites of the actions he should have taken.)

I don't want to end this part of my post on a sour note with you but this business of having to have been an eyewitness to an accident to evaluate it is bullshit and every time I hear someone push that button he moves to the left on my idiot/genius scale.

We know all we really need to know about this accident. We have a relay of John's discussion with Paul and a consistent statement from John Dullahan.

But let's say that John Dullahan was on mushrooms and Paul was making everything up for some bizarre reason. So what?

We've got:

from Paul...

>
my worst landing accident (memorialized forever by Gary Smith's great video) happened because I missed a DT at the wrong moment
<

the video you referenced

Spark's report of the power whack from sometime within about three days of John's accident

How much more do we need?

Going upright ALWAYS results in a reduction of control authority in range in everything except the ability to flare and the ability to flare ain't all it's cracked up to be. It commonly causes way more problems than it solves. IT IS A BIG, UGLY, DANGEROUS PROBLEM.

Brian,

I'm not a Gandhi sort of person and I don't think a Gandhi sort of approach is always the best way to go about things, despite its merits in the right circumstances. Sometimes Little Bighorn, White Bird Canyon, and Warsaw Ghetto seem to be the way to go. Granted - none of those had really great long term outcomes but they sure must have been satisfying for a while.

I've asked both you and Mark for help in moderating these discussions but I always seem to get left twisting in the wind while trying to slap on endless banana clips and watching evil triumphing while good men do nothing.

OK - fine. I can defend myself but if I have to I'm gonna do it my way.

But it would help keep things under control if you, or Mark, or somebody everybody DOESN'T hate would just step in and and say something along the lines of, "No - (Jim/JD/JR...). That's not what he said. Go back and read what he said." Then I could ignore them and interested and qualified participants could go on to have a civilized exchange of ideas. And I wouldn't be emotionally drained and on the verge of getting kicked off the forum all the time.

But on to the technical stuff...

No.

This is not my description of the situation. This is John's description of the situation as relayed by Paul. And if I had botched the interpretation I'd have been cut to shreds by now. And...

No.

He hooked his feet on the top of the sign. Whatever degree of upright he was able to achieve would only have reinforced the solidity of that contact.

And - think seesaw again - the more upright he was the more violently he would have been rotated front end down into the ground.

This is a SOLID LOSE-LOSE-LOSE scenario.

Next... I'm not trying to be nasty here but I'm still smoldering from the earlier sequences of exchanges and some of this crap has been slowly brewing in me for decades.

This business about waist deep grass, rock piles, boulders, brick walls is bullshit. Those have nothing to do with landings. Those are emergency ditch operations which conclude major pooch screws.

You don't hear airline, Cessna, or sailplane pilots talking about waist deep grass, rock piles, boulders, brick walls 'cause they're not stupid enough to land around them. Just because we can - most/some of the time - doesn't mean we should. Hang glider performance has gone from four to one to sixteen to one but our concept of them hasn't kept pace. We're still thinking of them as Rogallo standards.

Yeah, you want to have the skill to do a nice crisp flare to stop the glider dead in its tracks in a zero wind situation but you should NEVER put yourself in a situation in which your safety is dependent upon that proper execution.

That is very much analogous to the parachute thing. You want to understand how it works, how to pack it, and how to deploy it but you don't EVER want to be in a situation in which you need it. 'Cause, as above, there's not much in the way of a guarantee that it's gonna work.

As I said to Spark yesterday...

If a field isn't safe to roll into - it isn't safe to land in.

I don't condemn a decision to cut into that safety margin and have often done and would still do so myself for a reasonable payoff - such as the opportunity to fly and/or extra minutes, miles, competition points... But the more you cut the more you're moving into getting-away-with-it mode.

And on that issue, for a moment - Lauren and Dustin and everyone else using Bailey releases now know they are towing in getting-away-with-it mode. Yeah, statistically, the odds are pretty much in one's favor. But what's the payoff?

These feet/belly decisions are not - and physically can not - be split second issues. You've ALWAYS got a LOT of time to make them and just about ALL of them ARE black and white no brainers. (Armand's decision - as I indicated earlier - was a sub brainer.) And if you're coming into a safe field the SAFEST option is ALWAYS gonna be to roll it in (let's see how much flak I get from that one).

Janni,

Pretty much a full ditto - except I'd leave the trim set for thermals - not landing - 'cause that's what I'd rather be doing (even though in practice it always seems to be more of the latter).

With respect to the spot landing contest...

In not a big fan of those things - in no small part because I've never been any good at them - but also because they encourage people to compromise their landings to try to win some gift certificate.

A lot of those guys look pretty good but if you look closely at the downtubes you can see a lot of them sweating bullets. Think how boring a series of Ridgely tandem landings would look by comparison.

As I said before, I plan to continue to land on my feet. I pretty much always land at the airport these days and I'm not gonna get hurt there. And it's kinda fun to get it right one out of five times and look cool and competent in front of the breakdown crowd. But every time I punch a flare in light air I'm risking a downtube.

If, however, I was really interested in maxing out the safety thing I'd modify my harness with skid plates and roll it in every time - just like the tandems.

Chris,

OK.

[brianvh]

Tad: Yes, in a well groomed field rolling it in is always safer than an attempted foot landing. No contest. But nothing new either.

For cross country rolling it in may not always work and you won't always know it until most of the way through final approach. Beginner wheels will help, but a flare could be more likely to save your aluminum. And oh, there is an LZ somewhere in california (I think) which is a dry river bed, rocks and all. It was the best they could come up with.

You might be advising people not to be stupid and go cross country, but it's kinda like telling people don't be stupid and eat that cheesecake. Much of what you are saying is a moot point. People will flare even when they don't have to for two reasons: 1. practice 2. it just looks cool. And they're gonna keep landing in fields you don't approve of.

Anyway, I've seen/heard of more than one tree-trunk crash. They're better off upright. And if you say they shouldn't have been in that position in the first place, I can't argue with that, but I wonder: do you fasten your seatbelt, or claim you shouldn't put yourself in a position to need it.

Once again, if all I'm dealing with is turbulence over a well groomed field, I'll roll it in. If I'm heading for a likely collision or uneven ground, I'm going upright.

[Matthew]

Tad,

The problem with your posts isn't so much what you are advocating. It's that your posts are so long and drawn out they are unreadable. I haven't made it through a Tad-post in years. So... get an editor! And if you can't get an editor, then write your post.... wait...... and then re-write it using only one-third the word count.

Also, still don't see your name as a paid member of CHGPA. Kinda rude using CHGPA bandwidth and wasting everyone's time if you can't even fork over 40 bucks to belong to the club.

And maybe come out to a CHGPA clean-up or event.

Matthew

[hefalump]

You might be advising people not to be stupid and go cross country, but it's kinda like telling people don't be stupid and eat that cheesecake. Much of what you are saying is a moot point. People will flare even when they don't have to for two reasons: 1. practice 2. it just looks cool. And they're gonna keep landing in fields you don't approve of.

I’ll add that going cross country is an absolute necessity to our sport. Without the current Cross Country format of our HangGliding competitions, glider development would stagnate. Imaging if competitions never left the launch and LZ area and were based on Flight time, height gained and spot landings, glider development would not progress further than a Falcon or at best the Sport 2.

It’s up to the individual Pilot to decided if he/she wants to venture away from the field, but we all benefit form the advancement of glider technology directly form the Comps and X-C flying. You may not fly a competition class topless glider or may never care to, but without glider advancement and challenging competitions our sport would wither away and die.

X-C flying is going to happen, it MUST happen, and with that HG and PG pilots will be landing in fields that will not always be suitable for wheel landing.

JD

[Tad Eareckson]

Oops, error in the very critical last paragraph of my 2008/04/13 post. Either change the "v" to an "r" or add a "run".

Brian,

I would hazard a guess that, despite the biased view one gets reading the forum, out landings represent a very small fraction of the endings of our flights 'round these parts.

I used to do a lot of ridge runs from Woodstock. I really like the primary there but it totally sucks compared to just about anything else you can hit once you get to fifty feet over the ridge. Huge flat fields all over the place and several private airstrips at which we're more than welcome.

I always used to look for cows 'cause:

you know you won't be damaging any crops; and
it's a pretty good bet that the grass won't be long enough to grab your basetube.

I've probably flown a lot more XC than you have and I'm having a hard time remembering too many instances when from a thousand feet over it I couldn't identify and have the option of landing in something rollable.

If we can't go XC and find something we can safely roll into then sailplanes can't safely get out of glide range of the airport.

I used to fly with the infamous and once ubiquitous snap-off wheels - the kind that would pop off when you did a hang check on uneven ground. I put sheet metal screws through the locking tabs so they wouldn't. I liked them 'cause they were light and aerodynamically clean but they're expensive and shatter easily so I said fuckit and went with the Finster (Wills Wing) pneumatics.

All the wheels have to do in botched stand up landings is rotate a couple of times to keep the dropped glider from coming to an abrupt stop. Beginner wheels just do that better on softer surfaces (sand, wet ground, plowed fields...).

I am taking a position that - overall - we are trashing A LOT more aluminum and bones opting for foot landings than we would be doing if we started thinking of ourselves as low performance sailplanes - including that dry river bed, rocks and all. (Mike Robertson had this figured out at least fourteen years ago but it's just REALLY sunk in with me.)

Their landings aren't any better than ours are so they are routinely blowing their flare timings, running behind their gliders, and power whacking with the same frequency we do in the windsock field. Same goes for Colorado - 'cept it's even worse 'cause of the density altitude thing.

But I'm not ADVISING people of squat - beyond thinking about the following two options:

1. MAYBE missing the sign so that MAYBE you can land on your feet; and

2. DEFINITELY missing the sign at a cost of DEFINITELY bellying in so that you will DEFINITELY be able to have another flight.

I have said - several times - that I'm OK enough with crappy fields that I'll take them if I've got a minimally good reason. It could be as little as having conditions shut down for the day as I'm approaching launch and wanting to salvage a sled run.

I have said - several times - that I will continue opting for stand up landings. I will do that primarily for three reasons:

1. I don't want to abrade and stain my harness;
2. practice; and
3. it just looks cool.

I have said - several times - that a field which is not safe to roll into is also a field not safe to land in.

There's a converse to that. A field that is safe to roll into is also a field in which a moderately botched stand up landing leaves you with a quite acceptable safety margin.

A tree trunk crash is not a landing - that issue belongs in a different thread. It is an emergency ditch operation at the conclusion of a major pooch screw. You can see the tree coming at you from a long way off and have plenty of time to consider and prepare for remedial action.

Under such circumstances I would keep up some speed and rotate to vertical to:

distribute the impact over as wide an area of my body as possible rather than focus it on my head and transmit it through my neck (splat versus crunch); and

be able to position my hands high up on the downtubes so I could flare the crap out of the glider and stop it dead.

If I'm coming in at Rylstone downwind into tall grass I'm going to stay on the basetube for a while to build up a lot of speed, close my eyes so's I don't get totally freaked out by the resulting groundspeed, rotate to vertical to be able to position my hands high up on the downtubes so I can flare the crap out of the glider and stop it dead, and punch that flare a little early, climb a little high, and end up with my ass and the glider's basetube on the ground - both of us with our noses up.

Yeah, I fasten my seat belt and try to drive in a manner which will preclude my ever needing it.

I fly with a parachute and - ever since I caused a near midair which could have easily killed John Middleton and me - have flown in a manner which has maximized its degree of uselessness.

I always launch with redundant weak links and secondary and emergency releases - even though my primary system is so good I will never need them.

I'm not seeing that we really have much of a divergence in our approaches to these issues.

[hefalump]

If we can't go XC and find something we can safely roll into then sailplanes can't safely get out of glide range of the airport.

I was going to mention this earlier because I knew it was going to come up, but I was trying to keep my posts brief. Sailplanes have a much greater glide range so they have more square miles to look for fields. Simply put they have more options. However, you don't see many sail planes in New England because of the lack of suitable outlanding terrain but you do see X-C hanggliding.

Of course we are always looking for potential LZ's while on X-C, but the higher I am, the less I'm concerned with landing and more I’m concerned about where is the next lift. If we had to think about landing when the available square miles was equal to that of a sailplane pilot looking for LZ's, we would have to think about landing at 5000 ft.

A sailplane at 5000 AGL at say 30:1 has over 28 mile radius, virtually there is always an airport in range.

If a sailplane pilot is at 1000' AGL they would have better than 5 mile radius to find a field or airport. Plus they have better up wind penetration to make an airport if they need to.

HG Pilot at 1000' AGL has less than 2 mile radius, and up wind may not be an option.

Many Sailplanes have motors now.

It's not unheard of for a sailplane pilot to put down in crops or a field plowed with furrows with little damage, neither would be suitable terrain for our base tube wheels.

I’m not a Sailplane pilot, but maybe some of our sailplane pilots can speak up.

JD

[hefalump]

I always launch with redundant weak links and secondary and emergency releases - even though my primary system is so good I will never need them.

What does this have to do with the current thread ... I've never seen anyone try to Hi-Jack their own thread!!

JD

[Batman]

Hey Matthew -

I brought up that point 6 months ago and Tad didn't see the logic. Since Tad has such a knack for eloquent prose and since 90% of the space taken up on this site is about Tad's theory du jour, it would only make sense that if he is going to use this forum he should at least be a member of it. If you're going to exploit/take advantage of/rant / use the CHGPA's resources, the least you could do it pay to be a member of it. But odds are logic was long ago lost on Tad so the day we see a check from him will be the day hell freezes over.

Chris

[brianvh]

Okay, it's more clear now Tad. You're just saying that if things are getting messy and rolling in is an option, we should do that rather than perversely struggle for a feet landing. I agree and have nothing to take issue with in your last post.

At the start of this thread you seemed to say we should always roll in, which is why folks are trying to argue with you. Clearly you mean something very sensible...end of story.

[hefalump]

Okay, it's more clear now Tad. You're just saying that if things are getting messy and rolling in is an option, we should do that rather than perversely struggle for a feet landing. I agree and have nothing to take issue with in your last post.

At the start of this thread you seemed to say we should always roll in, which is why folks are trying to argue with you. Clearly you mean something very sensible...end of story.

Is that what he was trying to say? Well sure, I agree with that!

Thanks Brian

JD

[Flying Lobster]

This forum needs a dickhead release.

marc

[Spark]

This forum needs a dickhead release.

marc

I agree, but if the release failed, it would be quite painful ... emasculating ... and debilitating

We would need a weaklink, just in case

That kinda reminds me of a story I heard ... about a european comp pilot who was relieving himself during flight, and trapped his hoo-ha stuck in his harness zipper ... on landing he found he couldn't get his harness opened ... so he landed on it ... ouch

[Tad Eareckson]

Ahhhhhhhhhh... Finally.

But here's what I said (with the typo fixed), nine days, forty posts, eleven and a quarter thousand words, and the usual sewage treatment plant's worth of unapologized for personal attacks ago from the last short paragraph of my original comment on the 2008/04/10 accident which I have repeatedly asked people to go back and read:

>
The choice (feet/belly) doesn't have to be all or nothing.

I would suggest that we be a bit more open to the idea of bellying in when we're low on stuff like altitude, airspeed, and time.
<

The circle is complete.

[Batman]

Tad -

If ALL of your posts could be this short, instead of the half page novels that you typical post, maybe we would look at them with a little more clarity. Its REALLY hard to read when 10% of your post is relevant and the other 90% is pure crap. If you want to be listened to, than keep it to the bottom line. And I'm dead serious on what I posted yesterday, you really do take advantage of a good thing here. The CHGPA membership pays dues to help keep up services like this one along with site maintenance, upkeep and insurance. The least you could do is pay your dues unless you are happy with only flying at Ridgely. I am fine with that as well, but don't expect to take advantage of the benefits of membership without being one.

Chris

[RedBaron]

Is everybody who posts here a current member of the CHGPA? I doubt it. How much does running this site cost the paying members anyway?

[Tad Eareckson]

Chris and Matthew walk into a bar. (It was two North Dakotans the way I first heard it - live from the Fitzgerald Theater.)

"Hey barkeep - Pour us a couple of tall ones! We are here to CELEBRATE!"

"Yeah? What's the occasion?"

"We just finished our jigsaw puzzle. And it only took us nine weeks!"

"Nine weeks? That sounds like quite a lot of time to put a jigsaw puzzle together."

"Oh yeah? Well on the box it said THREE TO FIVE YEARS!!"

So guys, whenever I write something dumbed down enough for y'all's comprehension level - I'll amend the subject line with:

- (3-5 years)

Example:

WARNING: STOW VG AND HARNESS LINES BEFORE DOLLY LAUNCHING - (3-5 years)

Chris,

The ten percent of the stuff you identify as relevant is probably just the portion which happens to fall within your educational limitations.

And is it every going to sink in through your incredibly thick skull that I've only had four flights since 1999/05/28 that WEREN'T at Ridgely? Two of them were as a participant in the 1999 McConnellsburg fly-in, one was at Manquin in 2004, and one was at Woodstock in 2005. Yeah, I'm a real parasite.

Matthew,

Yeah, it's pretty obvious you haven't made it through a Tad-post in years.

One of the reasons I can tell is that I've addressed those issues before and they've never seemed to have registered.

I'm not going to bother with most of them again but just a couple of points...

When you write an article for a magazine THEY PAY YOU.

When I post something there's often a lot of study, research, testing, analysis, engineering, experience that's gone into it. That way, when one of the forum folk takes himself out for a season anybody who wants to waste his time wading through my threads comes away with a better understanding of how to prevent a repeat of something similar than he would with some nice and concise but clueless and irresponsible comment like "shit happens".

So how 'bout this...

Figure out how much you get paid per word for the articles you write, multiply that by twenty to reflect our relative depths of understanding of the sport, and wire what Y'ALL OWE ME into my PayPal account.

Janni,

It costs some small fraction of a penny to provide for all the extra bandwidth I've ever taken up. (You wanna see something that really eats ones and zeros? Check out those Batman icons.) I figure they've gotten about a quarter million dollars worth of safety engineering work out of me.

[Matthew]

No Tad,

You've missed the point. The point is that you should write, wait, edit and re-write if you wish to make a point.

Matthew

[hefalump]

So how 'bout this...

Figure out how much you get paid per word for the articles you write, multiply that by twenty to reflect our relative depths of understanding of the sport, and wire what Y'ALL OWE ME into my PayPal account.

How about you stop posting until we pay you!

[brianvh]

Tad;
the last paragraph of the first post in this thread says most of what needed to be said, gently pointing out we should be more open to staying prone and bellying in. But right before that you spent a screen or so pounding in the idea that landing on your feet could be a bad idea. So that's what people brought away. Shorter posts make it easier to keep the balance.

[theflyingdude]

So guys, whenever I write something dumbed down enough for y'all's comprehension level - I'll amend the subject line with:

- (3-5 years)

The ten percent of the stuff you identify as relevant is probably just the portion which happens to fall within your educational limitations.

When I post something there's often a lot of study, research, testing, analysis, engineering, experience that's gone into it. That way, when one of the forum folk takes himself out for a season anybody who wants to waste his time wading through my threads comes away with a better understanding of how to prevent a repeat of something similar than he would with some nice and concise but clueless and irresponsible comment like "shit happens".

So nice of Tad to dumb things down for all of us.

If it's advice about hang gliding you're interested in, I'd suggest you to seek it from someone other than a poser like Tad.

JR

[CraginS]

Paid CHGPA members who participate in the forum have a few added admin capabilities here.
One of them is to block other users by name when reading the posts.
When used, you see the following line in teh sequence of posts:
=====
This post was made by nnn nnnnnnnnn who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.
==========

I find this a particularly beneficial feature in the current thread.

As the new CHGPA Treasurer, I encourage everyone to PAY YOUR DUES and gain this advantage!

[mcelrah]

I, too, lack the patience to make it through looooong posts.

A while ago, someone asked a sailplane driver to weigh in about landing out. I am but a sailplane driver in training, but the thumb rule being propounded in sailplane circles is to have the AREA you will land in identified by the time you are down to 3000 feet AGL, the field (and an alternate) identified by 2000 feet, because at 1000 feet you are already entering your pattern. Now this incorporates many safety margins for newbies, because I know real cross-country sailplane drivers pull out low saves just like HG pilots do. What impresses me is that landing out in a sailplane is an EVENT, whereas in hang-gliding it is the norm. The consequences of bending/breaking a $60-120,000 sailplane are greater and even a successful landing involves a trailer for retrieval etc. Ya need a bigger, smoother field, too.

- Hugh

[chgpa]

I've reviewed the contents of this thread, and found that there are many instances of
personal attacks, and some unhelpful posts that seek to fan the flames. A few examples:

Try giving the bong a rest for an hour or so

In my opinion it is the mark of an inferior intellect that can only
express ones emotion with profanity.

This forum needs a dickhead release.

10% of your post is relevant and the other 90% is pure crap

The ten percent of the stuff you identify as relevant is probably
just the portion which happens to fall within your educational limitations.

I'm sorry, but personal attacks are NOT what these forums are for. I don't care who
"started it", and I don't care who is "more at fault" or "less at fault".

So I've started a mental list, and everyone who has engaged in this stuff now has
a score of "one" .

If/when someone reaches a score of 4, any posts that they make to the forums will be held
for review prior to being accepted, for a period of one month. And that review process will
be at my convenience, once a week (or even less).

You know who you are.

MarkC

PS: I encourage users who cannot contain their tempers to explore the "Friends and Foes"
feature of our forums. See this FAQ for more information.

PPS: Any registered CHGPA forum user can make use of Friends & Foes, not just CHGPA
club members. But you *do* have to be logged in for the feature to take effect, browsing
as a guest won't do it.

[CraginS]

Out in western Kansas old cowboy Joe sent off to Kansas City and got hisself a mail-order bride. He got word when she would be on the stage into Dodge City, and rode in from the ranch to meet her. He didn’t have a wagon, so he hoisted her up onto his horse behind him on the saddle. They rode off, she holding her carpet bag.

A mile out of Dodge, the horse stumbled in a gopher hole and Joe and his bride nearly fell off. Joe said, “One,” and kept on riding.

As they crossed a creek on the prairie, the horse lost its footing on a wet rock and again they were nearly thrown off. Joe just said, “Two.”

Two miles from the ranch, the horse slipped in tall grass, and once more Joe and bride were nearly thrown. He said, “Three.” Then he climbed down, helped his new lady to the ground, removed the bridle and saddle from the horse, and shot the nag.

Walking along with his saddle over his shoulder and carpet bag in hand, Joe was still the strong silent type, new bride following along. After a half mile she whined, “Joe, you didn’t have to shoot the horse! Now we have to walk all the way home.”

Joe said, “One.”