Jon Davis
Puff Daddy Baggy Rapper Pants
In the spirit of a new (and lighter) topic for the SCAT e-zine here is a recent contest experience of mine. It’s pretty much a true story.
After successfully recovering from the latest Max Men 14 rounder I was reflecting on my FAI contest performance to see what I could learn. I intended to go to the contest and have my competitors trembling in their running shoes rather than the more likely situation of my presence earning a healthy yawn and the occasional “oh great, now that your here I don’t have to worry about being last” comments. Being the manly man that I am I don’t let those kind of comments bother me, I just let them fade away like fluffies in the wind and I moved forward knowing that I was walking onto the flying field in high style and current fashion. Yes, for those of you not hip to current fashion and too old to be part of the ³Generation X² goings on let me tell you that I was pioneering new ground in the fashion area of FAI sports wear.
My son Evan is convinced I am an incurable dork so to to prove him wrong I went to the Max Men contest with my brand new, very hip, very cool, and very comfortable “Puff Daddy Baggy Rapper Pants”. For those of you that are not as cool as I am and simply out of the scene let me tell you that Puff Daddy is the king of Rap music which is very much the rage these days. You know, the rappers are those “artists” who gyrate all around and sing songs in a simple ump-pah, ump-pah, ump-pah beat with simple words and a stupid rhyme kind of thing with bass notes so loud that you can’t hear anything else! I see and hear them when I drive through any hip and cool city like L.A., New York, San Francisco and Wasco. It may be everywhere in the U.S. but I’m the first on the flying field with these hip new clothes. In case you aren¹t clear about what Puff Daddy Baggy Rapper Pants they are those pants that are 5 sizes too large in all directions and they have to hang on your hips and look like they are about to fall off (which is true) and they drag the ground so much that the bottoms are all tattered and easily tripped over (which is also true and oh so cool) and when the wind blows they flap like sails around your legs and scratch off what few leg hairs you have left. My supportive wife calls me the butt-less wonder so I had to resort to using my slowly developing love handles to hold the pants up as my hips were not up to the task. Bad move, very dorkish, as Evan succinctly said” Dad, nobody wears baggy pants half way up there chest, it’s sooooo not cool” . Well, for me it was either that or have them falling down around my ankles for the entire contest. Clearly I was not off to a good start in my quest to be the coolest of the cool in FAI.
I actually had what I thought was a very practical reason for wearing Rapper Baggy pants while flying my F1A Gliders. Besides the obvious need to keep warm in those early morning February California rounds I was looking for some kind of alternative to my normal Levi Blue Jeans which have a tendency to be too tight in strategic places and give me a bad case of “Ohhh Pinche Huevos² whenever I execute my not so graceful trip, fall and bunt maneuvers. In addition to being a loose and comfortable fit rapper baggy pants also have lots of pockets all over them. Who needs those goofy plastic organizer boxes to keep all your modeling parts sorted out when you can have a whole bunch of pockets for them? I had my cat tails fluffies in one pocket, extra towline in another, stopwatch in a little pocket, tools in a big one, I was a walking hobby shop, I felt so cool. The one problem is that none of the pockets were big enough to hold my tow reel while I was sprinting around the tissue ripping stalks of Lost Hills. Just as with my trusty levi jeans I had to resort to tucking the tow reel into my waist band behind my back so I could tow with the utmost agility and freedom. I felt like I was in hog heaven at the contest knowing that all my gear was up to speed and I was ready, willing and able to kick some serious FAI butt while being so hip and fashionable. What a free flight stud!
I won¹t go into all the unusual things that happened to me in the contest and the ³clearly not my fault² reasons for my less than stellar performance of my contest scores but there was one particular round that really caught my attention. I think it was a mid morning round when I was really feeling in the groove and I was towing like Victor Stamov with long legs when I felt this great big cold metal thing in my pants competing for space with my little bitty warm thing that I realized that “oh captain, I think we have a problem”. I don’t know why I insist on using my Bob Wilder made all metal aluminum tow reel when I could use a nice light plastic one but I have a thing for metal gadgets and it overcomes my better judgment once in awhile. Well, sure enough as I was circle towing like a pro and feeling real cocky (no pun intended) when I noticed that my tow reel had managed to slip between my love handle and the elastic band of my rapper baggy pants and was slowing making it’s way down my pants. As any F1A aficionado will attest there are all kind of nasty things sticking out of a tow reel; wire line guide, crank handle, tow ring, reel edges, you know, all the kinds of things that would give any man pause when putting them into your pants along with the sacred cargo (aka Mr. Happy). In addition to all that my “all metal tow reel” was really cold and that’s what really made me perk up and take notice. Never being very good at rubbing my tummy, slapping my head and chewing gum at the same time I found myself in a once in a lifetime predicament and to make matters worse I had my model in the air and on the line.
No way was I going to let this slow me down. Using my ultra-fast and highly caffeinated early morning intellect I quickly surmised that the best solution was to work with nature and just let that tow reel slip down my pant leg and slide out the bottom. Pretty good idea huh?……………. Wrong! Wrong! triple Wrong! Rapper pants are baggy but when the pockets are crammed full of stuff they create this constriction in the pant leg that is just big enough to let your tow reel get half way down your left thigh but not as far as your knee. The good news was that my manhood was intact, the bad news was that the tow reel was in my pant leg on the inside so I kind of had to do the old ³squat & waddle² routine while towing. Being the fierce competitor that I am I made lemonade out of lemons and I psyched out the guy flying next to me by telling him that I got extra push from my legs when configured this way for the final launch & bunt. With such quick thinking I felt so smug, so cool, and so stupid. Clearly the living definition and example of a dork in action. How was I to salvage my pride after this embarrassing spectacle?
As someone famous once said “all’s well that ends well” and in my case I was finally able to “shake a leg” and get that tow reel down my pant leg and out the bottom with only a few scratches to my leg and a few bruises to my ego. I was in the clear now, lift was all around me, full steam ahead, feeling like a caged Gazelle broken out of the zoo I began to hear the music from ³chariots of fire² playing ……….and my brain went into slow motion ………and I was running as hard as I could…………sprinting towards the most graceful launch I’ve ever done, and as I looked to sky feeling that burst of freedom only known to free flight FAI flyers …………………………………………….I was able to see my inboard wing tip fold up like the leaf on a dining room table and watch my new model do a slow but graceful corkscrew into the dust of Lost Hill, the longest 40 second flight of my life, one I’ll never forget!
Damn I love this sport! Jon Davis, Mac the Bigot.