NO FREE BREAKFAST

Dan of “Dan’s Taxi” picked us up at the motel promptly at five minutes before 6:00am. He drove us past several large parking lots filled with big rigs and sleeping truckers. He remarked that Fort Stockton was a popular stop for truckers as it was halfway between San Antonio and El Paso. As we left the motel before their restaurant opened, we could not use our complementary breakfast passes. Dan asked if he could have our unused passes for his Sunday breakfast. I felt guilty that I had left the passes in the room—not thinking about him—and apologized sincerely.

We arrived at the airport before sunrise. The wind was strong, chilly and smelled stale. I stumbled around still half asleep even tripping over a tie down rope. Fortunately, Bruce was excited and had his head about him. The songbirds were out in force. The horses from the horseshow across from the airport whinnied into the wind. The airport was still deserted, but for the county truck that rushed through to make the required daily inspection of the airstrip.

We took off just as the red-orange sun poked over the horizon. As we flew east over the cloud layer of the low sluggish storm, I had the sun in my eyes and only clouds to see. I turned the “Roady” to news for Bruce, threw my jacket over my face to block the sun and fell asleep. I remember waking up at some point. Bruce wanted to talk so much that he proposed an interesting topic that could occupy us for a long time. I told him, “not right now,” and went back to sleep. (Not very social of me, I admit.)

Later, I woke as we crossed over the Mississippi river. The river was wide, twisted and muddy. With broken clouds I could see the farms, swamps, and forests of Mississippi below us. It was hot in the plane. Ready for a fuel stop, Bruce was glad to have some help landing.

OXFORD - MISSISSIPPI - NOT ENGLAND

We first stopped at a closed airport with a broken fuel pump. Then, we landed just a few miles away in Oxford, Mississippi (KUOX). The airport was hopping. They had a Citation jet at the FBO, a helicopter down the tarmac, and construction trucks at work on a new taxi way. The noise from the small jet, warming up to leave, was deafening as I walked by. The FBO filled the plane while Bruce filed an ADIS flight plan. Due to increased security after 9-11, we needed to file our route and get a squawk code to avoid an F-14 escort in the Washington DC airspace. (And you get the bill for it too!)

Back in the air, the Cirrus full of fuel, a view of the land below us, I turned the “Roady” to classic rock and played “Name that Tune’s artist” with Bruce. He guessed correctly for just about every song. I got the one song by the “Beatles”, but that one was too easy.

“Meandering” described the Mississippi landscape below us. The land, shaped by water, had no straight lines. Each farm looked like a golf course complete with a water hazard and lush greens separated by small stands of woods. The forests appeared as dense hair bearding over the hills. The trees were still brown, without leaves and I suspected that these hills must be gorgeous with fall color.

From Tennessee through Kentucky and into Virginia, narrow valleys separated strips of tree-covered hills. Each valley had a farm or a small string of farms all green and lush with a river running from house to house. How beautiful - yet isolated - these small communities must be with others just on the other side of the ridge, but no roads connecting over the hills. Scattered clouds bumped up against the Smokies. As we passed over Virginia, the hills gave way to gently rolling land and subdivisions replaced the farms below us.

The east coast mountains seemed very ancient—beaten down to civility by the elements and carved up into natural farm tracts by water. Very different from the rustic peaks of California’s Sierras. (Because the Appalachian range is not much higher than the Sierra foothills, I have been calling them “hills” here—quite unintentionally, but it shows my bias.)

AVOIDING THE FIGHTER JETS

Bruce opened his flight plan to get us through the Washington DC airspace. Bruce maneuvered us through the most complex airspace in the country. The ADIS plan he had spent 45 minutes to file in Oxford was lost by ATC. The Washington DC ATC opened a new one for us during flight, so we did not need to land to file a new one. Clearances approved, we were relieved that no F-14’s followed us as we skirted the Bravo airspace around Dulles.

We landed at in Annapolis, Maryland at Lee (KANP) and parked next to the “Navy Flight School” Cessna. Navy officers started their flight training in Cessna 172’s. I left our information with the absent FBO at the “White House,” a small wood shack painted white. After a total of 14 hours of flying over two days, we made it to our destination on our first coast-to-coast flight.

WELCOME TO THE LAND OF POLITICS

“Yellow Checker Taxi” picked us up promptly. While Bruce finished up with the plane, our driver loaded our luggage. He had on a “D & D Trucking” t-shirt and our cab had Harley-Davidson floor mats. Within five minutes of our 45-minute ride to DC, our driver mentioned that he rode a Harley and drove an 18-wheeler big rig. (I feel bad that I did not get our driver’s name, as I know so much about him now, so I’m going to call him “Checkers”.)

To make conversation, Checkers asked, “Are you pro-Bush or anti-Bush people?” Bruce said that we were anti-Bush. Checkers thought that was shame because Bush had “Gonads” to fight back after 9-11. Bruce asked him if this type of political conversation was common in DC.

Checkers just kept on with his story. He told us that on 9-11, he gathered up his and his wife’s children, seven between them, and left town. After seeing the smoke rise from the Pentagon and the shaky trigger finger that the 17-year old guard held on his A-K-47 outside the military base near his trucking yard, Checkers told his boss that he was threw. He did not know how many more things would blow up that day. He picked up the kids at the high school and his wife gathered up the six-month old baby and the kids from the elementary school. They drove down to his sister-in-law’s place in the woods of South Carolina.

Checkers got us to our hotel straightaway and unloaded our luggage. We checked in quickly and rushed off to dinner without changing as we’d eaten little all day. Tired and famished, we had an excellent Italian dinner of mozzarella/basil/tomato salad, venison medallions and a bottle of red wine. The maître d' gave me the evil eye as he decanted our wine. I wore a cap inside—as my hair was a mess after wearing a headset all day in the hot plane; besides, I was tired, hungry and Bruce said I looked cute in the cap.

The guys at the table next to us thought decanting our wine was not "Italian.” As he could not help but overhear them, Bruce thought the guys sounded like lobbyists for the AFL-CIO. They commiserated over the loss of “real Italian restaurants” with red checker tablecloths and wine in jars.

Our waiter was friendly and the chef stopped by as he worked the room. He told us in a thick Italian accent that he made the mozzarella himself and added a little goat milk to make it soft. It was the best mozzarella we’d ever tasted. After a very good meal, I gave a toothy grin and a hearty “thank you” to the maître d' on our way out. Bruce and I walked back to the hotel and slept soundly.