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INTRODUCTION

The following is a study in the sidearm throw of the Aerobie® Orbiter™. This high-performance boomerang is manufactured in the United States by Aerobie, Inc. Imagine three twelve-inch plastic rulers fused equilaterally to form “the triangle,” a thin, rigid flight toy that harbors a secret. When thrown overhand, as intended by the manufacturer, like the quarterback in American football, it behaves like a traditional boomerang: taking a low, circular flight path, and ultimately returning to its thrower. However, when thrown sidearm, the triangle does something radical!

The sidearm motion is an atypical way of throwing a boomerang. It travels flat for a brief moment then dramatically spikes upward into the sky. Reaching an abnormally high apex, it then blends swiftly into a speedy and equally dramatic death spiral. Capping off its ascension, the flight stalls at one hundred, sometimes one hundred twenty feet in the air. The Aerobie® Orbiter™ is a windstorm, fanning broadly from left to right, entering a death spiral by way of centripetal whorl back to Earth. The fall is a downward corkscrew with coils measuring fifty to sixty feet in diameter.

Unorthodox and swift, the sidearm-thrown boomerang appears erratic upon first glance. Subsequent throws, how- ever, quickly reveal a constant production of the same repetitive flight path. This course of throw and this pattern of flight become so predictable that a human’s natural instinct yearns to catch a seemingly uncatchable boomerang…and so begins the story of Spike the Triangle.