Panhandle piloting: 3,000 miles in a Mooney Mite (Part 2)

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-WXBRIEF1-800-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.

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