You Should Have Been There

You should have been there!
You should have been here yesterday!
You should have flown two hours ago!
You should have...
These are variations of a statement that I am loath to hear from fellow pilots. Goading remarks, sometimes unintentional, that tell me I missed the best flying because I wasn't "here" or "there" to take advantage of an exceptional window of opportunity for soaring. Usually spoken by those who are fortunate enough to devote all their free time to a favorite site for hours on end, day after day, awaiting good conditions. Or by those who have the knack (read: luck) to encounter great soaring just about anywhere they go. For us poor working stiffs who have homes to maintain, family responsibilities, or other interests that compete for our limited time, seldom comes the moment when we can say the "you should have" phrase. But that's what I'm about to do. It seems so rare that I have a chance to utter these words that I'll just proclaim them in writing. This way I don't have to repeat it umpteen times for all you other pilots and friends who have so often started the slow burn by saying that dreaded sentence.
Paul Southerland and I decided to go down early for the Tillamook Dairy Air Fly-in on the Oregon coast. We mainly wanted at least one uncrowded day to fly, so we chose Friday, the day prior to the weekend event. After enduring grey skies and pounding rain along much of the drive through Washington, we were delighted to encounter a sunny spring morning in Portland upon our arrival. Our first destination was the home of Steve Roti and Tina Pavelic, two of the main organizers of the event. Steve obtained the latest weather forecasts, which were somewhat ambiguous, and soon we were following him westward into the coastal mountains. Grey skies and rain returned, persisting all the way to land's end. Steve gave us a tour of the three main flying sites (Sollie Smith, Oceanside and Andersons Viewpoint), all of which were too wet at the time to fly. Afterward we set up camp at Cape Lookout State Park.
Before long the grey skies lightened, the drizzle stopped, and by mid-afternoon we were driving to Oceanside, where some Oregon pilots were flying sled rides. From the take off knoll, we looked down upon the picturesque town and beyond to the ocean, where several whales were blowing spray and feeding just offshore. A few hundred feet from these leviathans were dozens of brown, cigar-shaped bodies belonging to sea lions dozing on the rocks.