Chapter Fourteen

The End of the trip.

Flying and Crying and Laughing

Sunday July 16, 2006

I’m up at four in the morning. I have changed time zones from Missoula and the sun comes up an hour earlier here in Coeur d’Alene. I did a pre-flight on the plane yesterday so it is really a simple walk around today. I check fuel to make sure it’s still there. At nearly five dollars a gallon I carry two hundred dollars in one tank. The thieves are out there folks. Someone stole the copper roof off a building in our friend’s town of Tegernsee, Germany last month. The price of Copper and Zink is so high it costs more than a penny to make a penny. Pennies will be a memory soon.

I called the weather service and identified myself with my airplane’s tail number. The weather briefer said, “You’re the guy flying that biplane, aren’t you?” I said that I am. He ended his briefing with. “It looks severe clear. Glad you made it”. I guess the weather briefers have been talking to each other as I go along.

I love this plane. It is so smooth and easy. It flies like I tell it to. No tricks. The plane flies well, it’s the pilot I have issues with. Most people think I am in constant combat with this plane, that I have to whip it into submission. That’s far from the truth. It flies smooth as silk.

See the video “Reality”. This is only a few seconds long video with a small hand held camera. The camera is about the size of a deck of playing cards. I flew two hours just like this. Smoooooth.

I believe in crop circles. Here is a picture of them. This isn’t a doctored picture. This is the real deal. If any of you would like to release my real pictures of real crop circles to the newspapers please feel free to use my name. I probably have some comment to make about real crop circles never making the news but phony ones… you get the idea.

Just as I start the engine I see my own shadow on the instrument panel. The sun is up. I’m off the ground at five thirty.

Once I get pointed West and get up to four thousand feet I can see the backside of the Cascades. They are one hundred and sixty miles away. I no longer need the GPS. I pick out a peak and head for it. My next fuel stop is two hours away, right at the base of the Cascades.

I’ve made it. I’ve actually done this. I start laughing and crying at the same time. I actually did this. I’m really proud that I did this. I’m a success. I didn’t have to bring the plane home in a bag. I flew it all the way. Coast to Coast. A friggin’ 1929 Bird biplane. It is nearly an eighty-year-old wood and fabric airplane. What was I thinking? Where did this idea come from? I stopped smoking that stuff years ago. I’m so happy and proud and sad all at the same time. What a combination of emotions all blurred together. Laughing and crying.

In Spokane I fly over my first large residential area since leaving New Jersey. Folks, I have to tell ya, this country is empty, really, really empty. Humans are herd animals. Look how we drive in packs on the freeway. Look how we live. We think it’s too crowded. It’s only the cities that are crowded. The nation is really empty. Even with three hundred million of us, it’s empty.

Flood

Just West of Spokane I see something I have read about but never seen. It’s the evidence of a great flood. At the end of the last Ice Age there was a large ice dam that plugged the neck of a large valley. The dam held the ice and water back until there was finally a scouring of the gravel under the dam. It let go and dumped millions of millions of acre-feet of water/ice slurry into Eastern Washington in a day. I read one estimate at more than five hundred cubic miles of water. You can see part of where it ran in this picture.

I land at Wenatchee, Washington. I’m so early they aren’t open yet. It’s seven thirty in the morning. No wind. I get fuel and grease the rocker arms. The grease gun and I have a weird relationship. I like this thing but it’s only a dispensing tool. I don’t really understand how I feel about it. It is a strong feeling though.

I’m in love with the engine. In all my writing I have never mentioned any one’s last name. Al Ball built my engine. He has built many Kinner engines. I’ve never met him and he’s not on the net. He doesn’t have a computer. I don’t think he even has a cell phone.

I think I love him though. The engine was never a thought for me. Al’s reputation is what I was flying, not the engine. At least three times on my trip someone came up to my plane and said, “Is that an Al Ball engine”?

Most of you think I’m flying with some ancient engine on the front of my plane. Not true. This isn’t the engine that came with the plane. This is a Kinner R-55. It’s a modern engine compared to the plane and it’s original engine. This engine was probably certified around 1934 or 1935. See? I’m not stupid. You thought I was risking my ass on some 1929 technology.

The Cascades are new mountains. Look at the top of the peaks. They are sharp and pointy. They haven’t weathered down. Sometimes when I see a huge sharp peak ten or eleven thousand feet above sea level I think, “I’m really glad I wasn’t there when that happened”.

Rainier

Mount Rainier is fifteen thousand feet above sea level and the sea is about thirty-five miles from the base of the mountain over in Tacoma, Washington. You all have seen the footage of the side falling off Mount Saint Helens. Look at Rainier. It did it too. Volcanoes (ask Mr. Gates about that spelling) up here have a huge acid content to their fumes and when mixed with water it dissolves the rock and makes it weak. It collapses under all the weight and makes a monstrous rock/mud/tree slurry that eats everything in its path. Mt. Rainier is about fifty miles from me when I took this picture.

Mt. Adams is about a hundred miles away.

I have to loose some altitude in order to fly across the Puget Sound. I went under Sea/Tac airspace on the South side of the airport and over the Tacoma Narrows Airport. My house is about five miles ahead. I know my wife Helen is going to hear me and come out on the deck while I buzz the house.

She took good pictures.

I bought a biplane and flew it all the way across the continent. It is two thousand four hundred and eighty two miles GPS direct. I went crooked. My guess is I went two thousand seven hundred miles. I had so many stops I can’t count them. I didn’t keep exact records of the stops as they were an hour-by-hour decision. Sometimes I’d make the decision to go to an alternate airport while in flight. I landed, bought fuel and went on to the next one after that. I’ll never know exactly where I went. Life is like that too.

I realize that an antique biplane isn’t in most people’s interest. I also realize that everyone has their own version of a biplane. I’m sixty-two. How old are you? Get your version of a biplane. Write your own story. Do it now.

I love you all,

Sam Dodge