//------------------------------//
// March 1 [Springmonth] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

March 1

Today is the first day of Springmonth, or what the humans call March. It was a good day to wake up cuddled by Aric, and I stayed in bed maybe a bit longer than I should have but he wanted some attention.

Then he helped me put on my flight vest and I took to the sky.

It was a kind of blustery day, not quite squalling but it really wanted to. There just wasn't enough moisture in the air.

Flying in gusty winds is always a challenge, because you have to be one step ahead of them, and you have to have a recovery plan in mind for when you aren't. That's what flunks a lot of pegasuses out of storm duty, especially on the coast. Clear days usually aren't so bad; even when it's nasty out you can see where you are. If you're in the clouds, though, it's pretty easy to get disoriented, and sometimes the base of the cloud deck is really low.

I couldn't fly in clouds, so at least I didn't have that to worry about.

If you're flying into the wind and it's clear, you can sometimes get clues about what's gonna happen by seeing how trees and grass responds. Or over water—you can see little wavelets form as the wind whips across them. When you're going downwind, though, you don't get that much warning, just a brief pressure on your tail, and that's all the warning you have. So altitude is important.

I think that's why airplanes always land into the wind, so they can see what's coming.

Back when I was a foal, I used to not care about it so much. We didn't fly on really gusty days, and our kindergarten training area was well-protected. But the next year when I flew more out in the open, I came in for a downwind landing and got caught by a gust just before my hooves touched down, and I went tail over muzzle and crashed in an undignified lump. After that, the reason for what my flight instructors said stuck with me, and I knew that they wouldn't tell us something unless it was important, even if it wasn't obvious why it was important right away.

So I dutifully flew a downwind leg around campus and then landed upwind, dropping a bit more quickly than I'd planned when I saw the tops of the trees by the chapel bend. It turned out I was under the gust (the hill covered me), but I hadn't been sure.

I took a quick trot just around campus—there is Academy Street on one side, and right on the other side is Lovell Street. That's a one-way street, which means that you can only go uphill on it, unless you're a pedestrian in which case you have to go against the direction of traffic so that cars can't sneak up on you.

I got showered and breakfasted in plenty of time for poetry and remembered to get my poem about Nietzsche for Conrad. I didn't want to give it to him at the beginning of class because maybe he'd want to read it right away and delay the class, and then people would be mad at me. So instead I kept it folded neatly in my notebook for later.

He was reciting a poem when he came into class. 'One by one lights of a skyscraper,' he began as he walked through the door.

I wonder what he would do if anybody started reciting the poem with him? I think he would like that. But nobody spoke; we were all listening to his wonderful baritone voice until he finished the poem about the skyscraper and its mistress the night.

The poet was Carl Sandburg, and many of his poems were very short. They were about buildings or places or a new car. Where some of the terms in the older poems had confused me because they were in English that isn't used any more, some of Sandburg's poems were equally confusing because they were about things I knew nothing about. But, Conrad was really good at explaining—and then the poems made sense.

There were two he read us about railroads. One was about a caboose, who follows along behind the train and makes sure that everything stays together and gets where it needs to. And the other was short, and was about the little towns that the train goes through and doesn't stop.

I've always wondered about those little towns. Ponies live there, and to them it's the most important place in the world, because it's their home. When you're on the train, though, it's a little cluster of houses that zips by outside the windows. Sometimes you don't see the sign, so you don't even know the name of the town. It could be anywhere.

Plus it feels weird to be an interruption in their life. Sometimes I see ponies waiting to cross the tracks, and they're probably mad that the train came while they were on their way to wherever it is they were going. But sometimes they wave: on my last train trip I happened to look out the window as we passed through a little town and there were three colts standing in a garden, and the littlest one was eagerly waving at each car that passed him by.

It wasn't just towns, either. There were so many houses I passed by when I was taking a long trot through the neighborhood, or that I flew over, and I didn't know who lived in any of them. I could have been flying over Conrad's house every day, for all I knew.

I would like to see his house. I imagine that he has shelf upon shelf of poetry books.

Class ended too soon, and I gave Conrad my little poem. He read through it and laughed, and then asked if he could read it aloud to the class. I told him that he could—I was flattered that he asked.

In the afternoon, I got a computer letter from Gates that said he was done with editing the video and I could watch it on the link he sent, and then there were a bunch of blue letters that didn't spell any word I knew.

I asked Peggy, and she said it was a hyperlink. It didn't look very hyper to me, it was just sitting there being blue. When she put the pointer on it and clicked, it opened up a new page on the computer that was the video.

We both watched it together, and Peggy jerked back a little bit when I flew up to Olds Upton. The GoPro made it look closer than it had been.

It was interesting to see how I looked when I was in the air. Gates' camera on the ground showed some of my acrobatics really well. I could see a couple of problems with my form, and the GoPro showed that I moved my head a lot when I was flying, even though I'd tried not to.

I thought that next time we should put the camera right on my brisket. There wouldn't be as much movement there, I didn't think.

Peggy used my computer to send a hyperlink to her telephone so that she could show the video at dinner, and when she showed it, everyone liked it.  I was going to have to show it to Aric.  He also put music behind it, which made it that much more awesome.

Then after dinner, I went over to Meghan's and watched Harry Potter. Lisa wasn't there, but Becky came over and all three of us sat on Meghan's bed.

There weren't really wizards and witches on Earth, Meghan explained. That was all make-believe—everything in the movie was. There weren't any flying broomsticks, and drinking the blood of a unicorn wouldn't really save a mortally wounded person.

I told them that earth pony blood would and they just stared at me in wonderment until I started laughing and ruined the joke.

I could see why Cedric had said I ought to watch the movie.  Quidditch was something we could probably play--we’d have to come up with something different for the Golden Snitch, or get a unicorn to enchant something, but all the rest of it was totally do-able.  Hoops could be made out of clouds, and of course we wouldn’t need brooms.

And the audience would not be allowed to shoot the players with spells.

After we got done discussing it, Becky went back to her room, and Meghan asked if she could braid my tail.

She took her time, making sure that it was perfect. Also I was pretty sure she was just looking for an excuse to play with it because spa ponies don't spend nearly as long as she did. 

When she was done, I swished it a few times—it always feels heavier when it’s braided, even though I know it still weighs the exact same amount.  Then because she’d been so nice to me, I asked her if she wanted me to sleep with her, and her face got all red and she didn’t answer so I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

So I went back to my dorm room.  Peggy said that my tail looked really nice in a braid, and I told her how Meghan had done it after we watched Harry Potter, and we talked for a little bit, and then I went to bed.