I powered up, brakes on, checked the oil temperature and pressure, set the altimeter to 1250 feet, moved the stick back and forth, sideways, pushed the rudder pedals full right, full left, turned the key to right magneto, good, left magneto, good and backed the power down.

 
Big breath, quiet air today. It's early and crisp, alert.
 
I looked up and down the runway then into the air. No traffic except a buzzard, black hyphenated rip in the shameless blue sky.
 
"Coming up buddy," I smiled and pushed the red knob into the panel, all the way in.
 
My little kite hit thirty knots in as many yards, unstuck itself from the tarmac and smacked thirty-five degrees into six-thirty AM. The one hundred horse Rotax 912 chomped and bit into the air, pulling me and a smile, ear to ear.
 
There is nothing like it. Nothing.
 
I looked for the buzzard, found him hitching an updraft over South Mountain and hurried to follow.
 
Whack. An invisible elevator pistoned under the right wing. Stick right, rudder right, tight plunge into the cylinder of warm air rising against the sun baked flank of the mountain. The buzzard was already into his third spiral toward heaven. I chased him, clockwise corkscrews, tight.
 
Up and up and up, five times past noon o'clock. Ten thousand feet and rising, two thousand feet a minute. Tick, tock, twelve thousand feet.
 
Perfect. 
 
I pulled the red knob back and clicked the key twice to the left, engine, off.
 
Silence.
 
I slid off the up-column into an over-easy sunrise, golden morning silent gliding.
 
There is nothing like this. Almost.
 
Looking down and around, thousands of little orange and brown squares, homes, bright blue reflections, pools, white edged black grids, city streets, some curving, cul-de-sacs, smack in the middle of the desert, sprawling, mixing into the round, green circles of cotton fields, finally bleeding and dying into the desert sand horizon.
 
From up here, I look down and I see what is wrong with this picture but I also see what is right.
 
This is how the architect sees the world, from up above, looking down, in plan, plain sight and pattern.
 
I am flying when I design. I am designing while I fly.
 
My smile stretches, ear to ear. The horizon spreads from yesterday to tomorrow and right now, right now, I'm going to fly over a new client's house that wants to be and draw what I see.