Chapter Six

Thursday, June 29th.

Flying and ranting..

Today I was able to get through the Appalachian Mountains. There was a break in the weather for about eight hours so I had time to scoot out of the floods and head West. About every ten minutes I found myself breaking out in spontaneous laughter. Loud laughter. I was laughing at what I was seeing and doing.

Yes, this week we officially made it to three hundred million people in the USA . The country is still mostly empty.

I landed at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This is the place of the famous "Johnstown Flood". The weather went very bad right after I arrived so I'm down for the night.

Flying is somewhat of a miracle.  It's about having an ability not common to most.  Being "able" to this. Being allowed to do this. I'm not talking skill. Skill is a whole different thing. I'm still working on the skill.

Flying is a miracle. It's the gift of being alive at a particular place and time. At no time in the 10,000 years of recorded human history and in no other nation on earth has this open privilege been available to people like me.  I like history and find it astounding that I, and people like me, have this freedom, this privilege available to us now. I wish I could personally thank all my ancestors for setting it up so I arrived on this planet at this time. I also would like to thank the dweeb that programmed spell checker and made it available just when I needed it most. Now where's the grammar guy? Ya think Bill Gates is holding him in reserve?

I fear that our government is going to be so frightened by the terrorists that they will take this flying freedom from us when it really isn't necessary. I'm not frightened by terrorists. Yes they killed nearly three thousand of us. It was shocking and tragic. There's only three hundred million of us left. I'm not trying to make light of that awful event. I'm just trying to put some perspective on it. We've been punched in the face before. Many times since 1776. We have survived and I must say done well afterwards. We should do well again.

Friday June 30th.

Yow, I made it to Fostoria, Ohio. Three and a half hours of air time. I had no idea flying an open cockpit biplane was so abusive. I'm bushed. I greased the rocker arms, all ten of them, with four pumps each. I have to do an oil change in the next ten hours and clean out the old grease so I can start all over again. I stopped somewhere and one of the line guys looked at the ground under my engine and said, "Hmmmm,  Not much oil dripping on the ground. Sure you have some in there?" His buddy said, "Fill the oil and check the gas." Old radial engines have a reputation. My flying clothes are a mess. I look homeless when I'm away from the airports.

Two years before my plane was built Lindbergh flew his Ryan across the Atlantic. I used to be impressed. Now I'm astounded.

Aviation sectionals are just large maps. I always have one strapped to my right thigh. I unfold it and refold it as I travel along so I can be sure where I am. Today I folded it wrong before I started so I had to try to refold it in flight. I've had trouble with folding maps before but today was nuts. I got it partially open and the wind took it. It unfolded like an accordion to its full three foot length. My cockpit is only as wide as I am. I found myself in combat with a paper monster in an eighty mile an hour wind. It was "fly the plane" and fold the map. I ended up with a huge paper wad about the size of a soccer ball that I had to stuff inside my shirt. When I landed and got out of the plane I looked like an out of season Santa Clause. I borrowed a pair of scissors and cut the map into pages that I could tear off and toss out as I go along. Tomorrow is litter from the sky day in Ohio. The Post Office might make it an official holiday and take the day off from now on.

The picture of the little open hatch is my baggage compartment. It will only hold twenty pounds. It's right behind my head when I'm flying. It contains four quarts of oil, a screw driver, pliers, the magical grease gun, two rags and the engine log where I keep track of greasings and oilings. I store my gas gage there over night. The cork can't sit in the gas as it would soak up gas and sink. It's kinda like having a brand new gas gage every day. It's about the simple things.

Saturday, July 1st.

See the video “Farms”. I’m seeing hours and hours of this open country. It seems that from the Midwest to the East Coast there is a haze that keeps visibility down to less than ten miles. It’s there all summer long. No horizon. I wonder if it was like this in 1906? I think it was. I don’t think it is pollution. I think it’s humidity. I could be wrong.

I made it to Fort Wayne Indiana.

Let me tell you a little about how I'm doing this. Seattle is a long way down the road. It's impossible to schedule airport to airport with Seattle being the last stop. The good news is that there are twenty thousand  airports in the USA. I just get out my trusty map and look for an airport that is about two hundred miles to the West. It's a daily thing. I'm flying by the code of Alcoholics Anonymous. One day at a time.

Today I spoke with the Aviation weather service and they said there was a warm front heading East and it was backed up by a cold front about half a day behind it. Leading the warm front was some high winds. I can fly in high winds, I just can't land in high winds. It's a simple problem. Fly to somewhere just ahead of the front and land and wait for the front to blow by. Today I'm waiting for two fronts but after they go it looks like a few days of "scoot along quickly" for me.