I had broken my record. I was going *at least* at 100 m/s.
I don't have statistics, but I guess it was a pretty good speed for a newbie falcon during a dive. After all, I had barely accumulated ten hours of flight time in the last three days!
100 m/s.
Even now, I couldn't believe how fast I was. I mean, I knew peregrines falcons were incredibly fast. I knew they were capable of reaching speed that allowed them to cover, in a mere second, the distance covered in nearly 10 seconds by the fastest Homo sapiens. I knew it could go more than twice faster than a Piper Cub.
I knew it was fast.
But I never felt it. I had never felt how fast the ground was approaching. I had never felt the excitation of seeing the ground approaching so fast you would think Earth was trying to hit you.
But now I did.
Unfortunately, a fast dive meant a short one.
My terrain altitude was already below 150 meters, which meant I had a second and a half to recover from my dive.
One second and a half to convert all my vertical speed into horizontal speed.
Which meant I had to flare and stop my insanely fast dive.

I woke up and took a look at the alarm clock.
6:34 AM.
It was sooner than I planned but, unfortunately, not soon enough to justify trying to sleep again for a bit.

What a strange dream.
It felt, at the same time, real and false.
It felt, to a certain extent, like being in a full motion flight simulator; just like those few I had the chance to try when my father was working as a flight teacher.
When I was in those simulators, it was obvious I wasn't really flying: although the motion was extremely realistic and you really felt like the plane was accelerating, you could tell in mere seconds you were in a simulator.
Just like the simulator, my dream felt extremely realistic: I had felt the wind on my body and the thrill of being in free fall during the first seconds of my dive. I had felt the excitement of flying.
But, sadly, it wasn't real.

Before being completely awake, I lazily stood up and walked toward my small refrigerator to make myself a small breakfast.
I had the choice between some eggs, some bacon and some pasta I cooked yesterday.
I opted for the pasta. The eggs didn't attract me very much and the bacon was too precious to be wasted by overcooking them, which was bound to happen with the amount of tiredness I had.
I started to think about my dream once again, probably because my brain was too tired to think about something else than whatever it had just created.

Even now, I still felt the pleasure of the dive. I still felt the satisfaction of breaking my non-existent record. I still enjoyed the feeling I had as the air rushed at my streamlined body.
I couldn't help but smile at the irony of that dream.
Remember the field trip to the Gardens I talked about? Remember how I told I would try to see the poor injured falcon?
Well, guess what, today was the day.
Today was the day I would go there, hopefully, meets him and I had dreamed about being a peregrine falcon. The only way it could be more ironic was if I had managed to crash, hurt myself and somehow crawl in a hole on a construction site.

I took the pasta out of the refrigerator, put them in the microwave and set it to 59 seconds. There were no particular reasons to that. I just wanted to use the "nine" for once. Somehow, using this rarely used number on microwaves made me smile.
I guess the whole craziness episode had boosted my stress level to the point where using a number on the microwave was funny to me just because the number wasn't used very often.
Hopefully, that episode of craziness ended last Tuesday.

While the pasta was reheated, I went toward the pile of clothes I had lazily dumped on my desk after washing them last Thursday (being too lazy to place them in the closet) and began to dress myself.
I had just taken off my shirt when I noticed it.
A lot of tattooed features were drawn on my chest; the way they were arranged made me look like some kind of a mix between a homos-sapiens and a bird.
If I had noticed them just a day or two before I would have suspected a drunken tattoo: it would not have been surprising, back then, to wake-up and learn I had drunk too much vodka and made myself these tattoos in some small tattoo parlor.
But, since then, I had made a promise I could not break. I knew I would never get drunk enough, at least not willingly. I couldn't know what these features were, but I could know they weren't drunken tattoos.
Unlike the day where I had (re)discovered the Path, I didn't stay in shock for a long time and immediately ran to my bathroom to have a better look at them.
Immediately after entering the bathroom, I turned on the lights and waited anxiously for the fluorescent lamps to reach a sufficient level of brightness and, as much as I hate to use an overly used cliché, the few seconds the lamp took to reach the required brightness felt like hours.
False alarm.
There was nothing on my chest.
I guess the right moment to look if you have tattoos of features on yourself is not when you just dreamt about being a bird and you're so sleepy that putting a plate of pasta in the microwave is the most complex thing you can do.
I should buy some coffee after the Garden. It might prevent me from having weird hallucinations next morning.

As I ate my plate of pasta, I planned every single details of my visit and my request to see the bird: I wanted to make sure I could see him.
I wanted to look like I would get the idea of seeing him after visiting the Gardens: if they discovered I was only visiting to check the falcon, they would probably refuse.
So, to achieve that, I planned my whole visit as to make me look like any random visitor while guaranteeing me to "accidentally" meet a veterinary on my way out. I planned what and when I would look at which animals, how long I would look at them and which questions I would ask to a staff who, by pure "luck", happened to be right next to me when the question would "suddenly" pop in my mind.

"If I may ask, what were you doing in an abandoned construction site in the middle of the night?"

My plan had worked without any problems and convincing one of the two veterinary working there was easier than I planned.

"I don't really want to talk about it. It's no big deal, but that night was probably the worse night I of my life as far as I remember."

We were in some sort of barn in which a numerous amount of cages and animals were present; the falcon was at the back in a small 3 by 3 by 3 feet cage and looked, at the same time, depressed and happy at the same time; although I was most probably just projecting my own emotions on him: as far as I know, it's hard to see how a bird feel like.

"So… Any way I could be of any help? Since I must be disturbing you, I think that's the least I could do.
-Hmm…. Actually, yeah, can you bring that bag of rat over there for the falcon you discovered?
- Rats? I thought peregrine falcons fed on birds?
-Oh yes, they do, but we don't have any bird to give him but any meat will do."

I grabbed the bag, which containing about ten rats, and walked toward what looked like to be the avian area of the barn.

"-Hey, if you want to feed it, feel free to do so; just be careful not to let it escape.
-oookay… Thank you, I guess? How many rats must I give him?
-Just one, he's not flying at all these days so we mustn't let it become too fat."

I approached the falcon I saved less than a week ago. As I opened the rat bag to fetch one of these rodents, he jerked his head toward me and looked at me. Even if I was, once again, projecting my own emotion on him, I could swear he looked curious. He looked like if he knew he already saw me before but couldn't exactly remember where, when and in which circumstances.

"So, I just open the door and toss the rat inside?
-Basically, yes. Be careful not to open it too much: this falcon seems quite motivated and capable of escaping before being fully healed."

After opening the door, leaving just enough space to put the rat in the cage, I slowly approached my hand trying while trying not to look like a threat. Exactly like what I did last Monday, except, this time, I had a rat.
And, exactly like Monday, he bit me, although the bite was significantly smaller than the first one. I couldn't help but smile at the irony: if I were here, it was because he had bitten me less than a week ago.

"Oh…uuh… I guess I should have asked sooner, but how bad are his injuries?"

Fortunately, no one except the falcon and I had noticed the bite. I knew I could deal with it myself and, frankly, I was becoming quite tired and I wanted to get back home and relax in my bed.

"He has a broken wing and some missing tail features, but apart that, nothing much. He may fly in a week or two at worse.
-Cool!"
There was a short awkward silence.

"Well, mm… thank you for allowing me to see the falcon. Somehow, it's quite relieving to know he's going to fly again.
-Yeah, no problem."

Be part of something bigger!

Join the Sharing!

Ugh….
It was the third time I received that kind of pamphlet. They were all about becoming part of something bigger, finding a family, a new community, doing something helpful for the other and other stuff like that. Basically, they were like any normal "community group" , except they were a lot more insistent in their recruitment method.
Seriously, I was starting to think each member received a commission based on the number of recruit they made each week.

I took the pamphlet and, just like the others, threw it in my trashcan. If they thought harassing me with their promises could make me join them, they were wrong: the more pamphlets they sent me, the least I wanted to join them and the more I wanted to buy another mailbox on which I would write "ads and other promotional letters" for the sole purpose of hiding a shredder inside and get rid of that Sharing spam faster.
Anyway.

That would be something to solve later. It was 19h00(7 PM), which meant most of the stores, would be closed and, more importantly, it was dinnertime.
The problem of choosing what to eat was quickly resolved after I opened the fridge and noticed I had nothing I could use to make a (decent) meal; I would just order some chicken from the restaurant nearby.

After calling the restaurant to make the order, I quickly grew claustrophobic in my tiny apartment. There was only one exit! What if a fire broke out and blocked it? What if someone wanted to rob my house? The robber would block my one and only exit! What if I stayed too long in here? Would I die because of the amount of CO2 I would expel?
I had to create another exit point!
There!
The window!
I had to open it for the night! It would create a good exit point if I had to evacuate! It would create a perfect opening if I wanted to fly out of this tiny nest! Quick! The more I waited, the more I was taking risk!

Feeling the refreshing breeze on my face seemed like the most relaxing thing I ever experienced in the 18 years that constituted my life. It felt like I could, on a whim, spread my arms, takeoff in the blue sky and travel everywhere in town by hopping from a thermal to another at 1500 meters above the ground.
Maybe I should try some paragliding next week. I guess it's the closest thing to flying I could have.