Water smooth as rippled glass. Sky reflected in undulating sheets of blue for miles all around us. As if visiting from a forgotten dream a young pelican glides by, nothing moving except an inquisitive eye. Unseen to us but as familiar to the pelican as a spare tire on a baja roadster is a cushion of compressed air between its seven-foot wings and the water's surface. When a plane, or a bird, flies less than half its wing span above a "solid" surface (water will suffice) it benefits from what human pilots call the ground effect...basically a free ride until the inertia runs out. A few well-timed flaps lift the pelican several tens of feet above the water; it orients in the direction it wants to go and then slides down into the free zone again and glides towards its destination with minimal effort, wing tips almost touching the water. Only a pelican, yes, but a master of the unseen forces of friction.