As the sunset bled down into the western horizon, the
sand grew cool underneath my back. The stars overhead seemed to drift across
the sky like satellites, though it was the thin veil of cloud underneath them
that created the illusion of motion.
I set my alarm for 5:00 but woke up on my own at 4:45. The
air was barely cool, almost that same perfect temperature that lulled me to
sleep. I slipped out of my sleeping bag and stole barefoot across the sand
further into the open to where I could watch the distant clouds begin to glow
with the first full day of my journey.
The Mite sat with full tanks ready to go astride the
runway. After washing up at the FBO (fixed base operator) and making myself some oatmeal with a
portable water heater, I spread my maps out on the wing and tried to figure out
how I was going to get to Eureka. Miles and miles of restricted airspace
encircle Fallon from the north, south, and east like a giant crescent. I was
able to get a hold of someone on the phone who said they didn’t really activate
those restricted areas until 8:00, so I was lucky I still had time to get
through.
The sun just began to beam brightly when I took off, and
all of Nevada sprawled out beneath me. That flight reminded me how wonderfully
vast our country is. It seems so small now that we can hop on an airliner and
end up on the other side in just a few hours. Miles below, there is so much we
miss. But I saw everything, even wild herds of horses grazing in meadows
surrounded by forest on top of mountains thousands and thousands of feet high.
I was cruising at 9,500 feet, and they were not far below me. There is still
all the adventure and discovery and wonder a soul can hope to find.
At Eureka an older man topped off my tanks. He said he
remembered seeing my Mite a very long time ago in Reno. That’s how it is when
you own a Mite. They have their own social lives, and they make friends even
when you’re not around. I asked him for some advice on getting to Denver. I was
22, and though I’d grown up flying in the Sierra Nevadas, crossing the Rockies
was a whole different ballgame. He recommended going up north through Salt
Lake, so took his advice.
After climbing out of Eureka into a smooth, quiet sky I
plugged my headset into my MP3 player and started listening to an audio book I’d
brought called At the Back of the North Wind. In the book, the north
wind comes and whispers through a crack to a boy who sleeps in the hay loft of
his family’s stable. He opens the window, and night after night she takes him
on her back to fly over the cities and oceans of the world. The author paints the
sights and sensations in vivid detail. The book was written by George MacDonald
in 1871, 25 years before the Wright brothers even began dabbling with unmanned
gliders. I found myself choked up as the narrator described uncannily exactly
what I was feeling and thinking as I myself rode the wind over mountains and
valleys and little towns. Someone knew just what it would be like before anyone
had ever seen an airplane fly.
Wendover made for a nice stop half way. Having never been
there before, the WWII museum offered a fascinating couple hours’ break from
the flying, and quite a contrast from where my mind had been during the
previous flight. The Wendover Air Force base was where the B-29 unit trained
that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Another hour and I was in Ogden, where I had a late lunch
at the airport café. Avgas there in 2006 was $3.90 a gallon, which meant I was
paying a few dollars an hour of flying, or about a dollar every 25 miles to see
the country from an open cockpit with the wind in my hair (not including the
price of oatmeal). I called 1-800-WXBRIEF
1-800-WXBRIEF to check the weather again and see
how much farther I could go before the afternoon thunderstorms took their turn
to rule the sky. It looked like I could squeeze in one more flight if it was
short.
East of Ogden, a wall of mountains shot up to over 9,500
feet, so I had to meander up to the nearest pass and goad the Mite up and up to
a safe altitude over the rugged mountain forest. The wide, low desert of Nevada
and Utah were behind me. The rest of the journey to Denver would be high,
rugged, and completely new to me.
I settled down for the evening at the small airport in
Evanston, WY at 7,138’, about the altitude of the highest mountains around my
hometown of Quincy. A muscular phalanx of thunderstorms shut off the way to the
east. The guys at the FBO were really friendly and didn’t mind me camping out
there for the night.
Almost every small airport has an old dog with a name
like “Radar” who hangs out on a large, battered couch. Evanston had two dogs,
who both became very jealous of my attention when I arrived and began to rough
each other up to see who could win the right. But the couch belonged to the
biggest cat I’d ever seen, who solicited a good pat and then fell asleep with
his enormous head on my lap.
I felt a little tired myself after a good five hours of
flying. At first I wondered what I could possibly do for the rest of the
afternoon, but remembered right away that that was the whole reason I had left.
I needed time and space that didn’t have to be filled, that could exist for
their own sake and remind me that life, like the pages of the books in my
backpack, has margins.
I lay out on the lawn for a few hours and read a book
about the Arthurian knights who rode about the country sleeping in forests and
glens looking for adventure and wrongs to put right. When the light faded, I
wandered up to the top of the hill behind the airport. A deer startled and
bounded out of the sagebrush, which was greener than Nevada’s. I heated up some
clam chowder on my camp stove and drank in the view from my perch—nothing but
freedom in all directions. The wide open space was full of birds singing. There’s
a song Glen Phillips sings that says, “I’ve got a roof over my head, or sky if
I choose.”
With the thunderstorms still rolling around, I zipped
into my bivy sack and draped the poncho over my backpack rather than using it
as a ground cloth. I woke up to rain falling and flashes of lightning. Suddenly
being on top of the tallest hill around seemed like a dumb idea, but the storm
wasn’t quite bad enough to make me willing to get all wet by moving somewhere
else. The bivy sack covered my face with only mesh, so I had to roll onto my
stomach for the rest of the night to keep dry. The flashes of lightning lit up
the darkness of my little cocoon through the fabric, but the rain rolled off
into the sand.
The sunrise heralded clearer skies. I made my oatmeal on
the camp stove while my poncho dried out on the sagebrush. My sleeping bag was
only wet from the condensation on the inside of the bivy, and that dried
quickly too.
The density altitude at Rock Springs, my first stop, was
8,800 feet, but the Mite performed admirably climbing out. I could certainly
feel the difference at higher airports, but I had yet to experience any real
problems reaching a cruise altitude comfortably above the terrain.
I had several friends who lived in Denver, so I pushed
quickly through Rawlins, Laramie, and Fort Collins Downtown (3V5) to Erie
Municipal just north of the city. One friend turned out to be out of the
country, and the other couldn’t get away from work. That’s the way it goes when
you’re making it up as you go. It was too late to make it down to Durango where
some other friends of mine lived, so I turned back north to Fort Collins, which
turned out to be my favorite airport of the whole trip.
I don’t remember the Fort Collins airport dog’s name, but
he was a brownish black mutt-looking dog. I’d been curious to check out the
town, which was about a three-mile walk from the airport. A Dixieland band was
just finishing a great music set at Avogadro’s Number, where I had dinner.
Posters on the walls advertised shows by some of my favorite bluegrass bands. I
was sorry to miss them. Not far away was the New Belgium Brewing Company,
another tempting stop, but I just explored the town and wound up topping off
the day with Dutch chocolate and Reese’s peanut butter cups from a local
creamery.
My feet got pretty tired on the way back to the airport,
so I caved in and took a cab the last couple miles. Chris, the cab driver, peppered
me with questions when he found out I was flying and camping around the western
states. He asked if I could sleep in my plane. I laughed and said there was no
way to sleep in a Mooney Mite, though one certainly could in larger planes. That
reminded me that I hadn’t figured out where I actually was going to sleep that
night. Unlike all the previous airports, Fort Collins was in a suburban
neighborhood, and the relatively well-lit ramp didn’t leave many places I could
hide away without being visible and looking suspicious. The FBO was locked,
otherwise I might have slept on the large battered couch.
After looking around for a while I still had no good ideas,
but I pulled my pack out of the baggage space behind the folding seat to get
out my sleeping bag and camp pad. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. What a
breakthrough it would be to figure out a way to sleep in a Mite! I climbed in
feet toward the tail. It was no good. My feet were too scrunched up against the
aft bulkhead, and my head hit the stick. And yet there was so much more room
down toward the rudder pedals if only I could remove the stick. But that was
impossible.
I gave it a few minutes’ deep thought. This had to be
done. To be able to sleep in a Mite would make it the ultimate travel craft. It’s
a small enough airplane just to sit in. Some people are too big for even that.
The luggage area, while relatively spacious, housed the battery, which
protruded from the floor in a big metal box. Then inspiration struck. All I had
to do was lay something down around the battery to make the floor level, and I could
lie with my head back there and my feet down against one of the rudder pedals. That
would let me utilize the full length of the available space.
I pulled some clothes and stuff out of my pack and made
the luggage space as level as possible, then I laid my camp pad down on top of
that and the seat, with my sleeping bag over the pad. The trick was getting in.
I couldn’t scrunch up small enough in the cockpit to be able to get my head
back into the luggage space. The only way to do it was to go head first. Not
wanting to bump any of the instruments or knobs on the panel with my legs, I
slithered slowly, inch by inch, twisting sideways as I went so as to end up on
my back. My torso just barely fit into the space, but fit it did. Before
climbing in I’d stashed my pack under the plane so it wouldn’t get wet if it
rained, which looked very likely. Stretching out my feet, I smiled with
satisfaction and happily ate my words that there is no way to sleep in a Mite.
Of course I had to get the canopy closed, and there was
no way I could reach it with my hands, but it was easy enough to catch the rim
of it with my toes and slide it shut. Fitting so snugly into the fuselage also
blocked out the annoying airport lights. I had a perfect, cozy little space to
sleep cleverly disguised as an airplane. Suddenly no airport, no matter how
urban, was off limits for camping. I’d always have a place to stay. In the
following years I made a regular habit of sleeping in the Mite. Once at an
airport in Oregon I heard a couple guys wandering around the plane early in the
morning marveling at its design. They must have stared right at my sleeping bag
in the cockpit and never even suspected there was a person inside it.
Listening to the rain patter on the fuselage that night
at Fort Collins as I lay snug and dry was one of the best feelings I
experienced on the journey. Not a drop got inside, and I slept like a baby.
I was rained in
the next day, and since there was nowhere I really had to be, I let myself sleep
in. When I eventually did emerge from my cocoon, I wandered into the FBO to
make some oatmeal and take a sink shower. I spent the morning reading, then was
invited to join the guys for lunch for an awesome feast of burgers and sausage
from the grill.
They were all nice guys, and knew I slept in the plane
overnight. They told me the airport was being shut down soon, something to do
with the city I guess. It’s a very common story for little airports, which
usually predate the neighborhoods around them. People build their houses next
to a runway and then complain about the noise. If there are enough of them
complaining, it gets shut down. One of the guys named Steve had been flying
there since the 1960s and got to be the first one to take off on the runway.
Pat gave me a stack of postcards that showed an aerial view of the airport,
with the mountains in the background. He said nobody would miss them. Knowing I
was kind of stuck there till the weather improved, he also gave me the keys to
the courtesy car to have overnight. He said he’d get in trouble if Sharon the
boss found out, but that I could give them back discretely to Brian in the
morning. Steve offered to let me stay at his place, but I was happy just
hanging out, and the Mite really was surprisingly comfortable.
There was a gardener who came occasionally to mow the
lawn and tidy things up, who just loved dogs. He talked a mile a minute about
them. He had a dog that was 17 years old, and she had a brain tumor. She walked
around awkwardly staring at the ground while he trimmed the hedges. She
squatted to go to the bathroom but seemed to be having trouble, so he went over
and held her by the sides so she could get the task done properly. “Well, that’s
one part of her that still works,” he said.
When the guys had closed up the FBO and gone home, I took
the courtesy car into town and journaled for a while at Starry Night Coffee.
While I was in town, I ran into Chris the taxi driver. He had several people in
the back but stopped to chat. “I see you’re still in town,” he shouted out his window, grinning ear-to-ear. I told him I was leaving in the morning, and he
said to have a safe flight. It’s funny how quickly strangers can become
friends. I find that to be particularly true when you’re doing something sort
of interesting to people. They open up about their own lives and dreams.
Inspiration is like warmth. It draws us together out of the cold to share
whatever we have to share, and we leave filled up and recharged.
The rain beat heavily on the fuselage all that night, and
was still going strong when I awoke in the morning. I was able to squeeze down
into the cockpit without opening the canopy. The inside was a little fogged
from my body heat, and droplets of water streamed down the outside. I rubbed
the sleep from my eyes and managed to pull my jacket on before clambering out
into the rain.
It was a Sunday, and Brian was the only one manning the
FBO. I thought about checking out a church in town, but decided to just hang
out with Brian, who was all alone, save the dog, who belonged to him. Hardly
anyone came in because the weather was so bad. He made us a pot of coffee, and
we sat out under the eaves and mulled over life and the universe and God while
he smoked a cigarette. He was from Texas originally, but had moved up to Fort
Collins to get his a & p. The rain droned on and on. I tried to learn Bach’s
Prelude to Suite Number 1 in G Major on my mandolin, with limited success. Brian
and I talked periodically, but mostly just killed the time.
At 6:00, he was allowed close things up and go home. He
told me he was going to leave a door unlocked, implying I could sleep on one of
the couches if I wanted to. He said it might be cold that night, but that I
shouldn’t get caught inside when people came to open up in the morning, or he
would get fired. He would never normally do that for someone he’d just met, he
said, but that I seemed like a cool guy. I really didn’t want or need to sleep
inside, but I was touched by his trust in me, and I thanked him and said I
would be sure not to let him get in trouble. Before he left, he came out to see
my plane. The rain had let up, and I was sitting by the wing cooking some beans
and rice for dinner on my camp stove. He really liked the Mite. He wasn’t a
pilot yet, but really wanted to learn to fly. He shook my hand and said it was
really nice meeting me.
Like Pat had done, Brian also left me the keys to the
courtesy car, which I drove back to Starry Night and bought a half pound of
coffee to thank the guys for letting me hang out. Steve had given me his card
and said to call him any time, day or night, if I ever needed a place to stay
or anything else. I journaled over a cup
of hot chocolate, and decided to head north to Driggs, ID the next day to visit
my uncle and his family. That night in the Mite I discovered that the wooden
rib that ran along the wall of the fuselage made a perfect little shelf on
which to set my cell phone. The lateral brace above me was a perfect place to
hang my headlamp to light up the whole compartment so I could read or do
whatever required being able to see.
The weather was clear that night and the next morning, but
the flight to Driggs was only about 350 nautical miles, so I didn’t need to hurry.
I let myself sleep in till 8:00. When I wandered into the FBO again, Steve
joked that he thought I was going to sleep forever. I was just on the line with
the weather briefer when I saw that my brother was calling. He told me I was an
uncle, which I couldn’t believe. It was ahead of schedule, but I couldn’t very
well argue with him, since he knew much better whether I should be an uncle
that week or the next. My nephew’s name was Kennon, the same name as my dad.
“Hey guys, I’m an uncle!” I shouted. They all
congratulated me. I bought Phoenix and Los Angeles sectional charts and hastily
planned out a route to San Diego, where Kennon was waiting to meet me.
