Kit thumbed the starter and those two hundred and eighty five horses burst to
life. Within four more seconds he had the radio master up, oil pressure checked, fuel
pump off and Ed saluted which Ed, of course, returned as Kit closed the door. Kitto
smiled over to his friend as he released the brakes and taxied away, then opened up
the cowl flaps, turned the transponder to "standby" and picked up the mike.
        "Luck Ground, Mooney five zero seven...niner Juliet hangar ramp to taxi
active, over."
        "Uh, roger, seven niner Juliet...clear taxi. Hold short two four, Tower one
twenty one point seven, altimeter two niner eight...eight."
        Kit rogered that and waggled the yoke all its directions, rechecking the
controls, then ran up the engine, though just to fourteen hundred revs, checking the
brakes a little as he rolled out the taxiway while checking the mags for RPM drops,
cycled the prop, checked engine instruments - vacuum, volts, amps and the rest,
brought power back to idle, dialed Tower and called as he coasted up to the hold
line.
        Tower told him to wait for the Lear on short final, so ole Kit checked
everything around the cockpit again. And when that jet flashed by in front of him, Tower
came over the speakers: "seven nine Julyet clear two four takeoff, caution the wake,
wind two one zero at...ten."
        "Nine July, roj'n adios," Kitster came back, throttled on up, turned the fuel
pump back on, turned at the runway numbers, slowly powered all the way up,
turned on the strobe lights, the transponder to "on", landing lights for safety, checked
engine and other instruments and tweaked some dials as his ship quickly picked up
speed. He held some left aileron for the crosswind, steered straight with the rudder
pedals, of course, and lifted off at about 7o knots.
        God, did he LOVE the feeling or what, he thought, as he pulled up the gear,
throttled back to 25 inches manifold pressure, then very gently "screwed" out the prop
control to 2,5oo RPM and made a 9o degree left turn at about 5oo feet above the
Earth, then a right 45 degree turn, checking the sky for traffic. He climbed straight
awhile, then turned to about a 28o degree heading, turned off the fuel pump,
punched in his route on the portable GPS he had gotten out of his flightcase and
turned off the landing lights. The weather was broken sky with scattered showers so
he leveled off at 6,5oo feet, above the cloud bases to stay out of the turbulence even
though he would have to sashay around the cumulus. He pulled the throttle and prop
back to 23 squared, closed the cowls and trimmed up to just under 2oo MPH as he
crossed the Brazos, North of Abilene.
        "Prettiest girl I've ever seen," he sang that line to that song as he thought of the
prettiest girl he had ever seen. That one who had been his inspiration for the ten
years since. He wondered about her. Thought about how to find her. And sang the
line again: "The prettiest girl..."
        He pulled Pute out of his case, said "hey", put a disk of his into him, plugged
P-ster into the radio stack, dialed in flight service, and ole Pute started picking up
real-time weather and showed it on screen: cloud cover was on its way to Truchas.
        "Super duper," Kit approved outloud. Then his mind drifted into
remembrances of flying past, taking him back through thirty years. He felt born to
fly. A natural seat-of-the-pants aviator he was, shaking off the rust of five years
without. One of man's greatest creations, he remembered thinking: flight. He
worshipped it.
        Some while later he passed North of Lubbock and started a climb to 8,5oo,
closing the turbo gate on the way up, picking up a little more speed with the
power boost and mentally noting to watch manny pressure for carb ice. Soon
enough, after dodging some more cloud and seeing a large gaggle of Geese below
on their way to Canada, he was sighting the Sangre de Christos. Out of Texas, he
was already, loving his speedy steed. Another third hour later he was climbing
over the Turkey Mountains, then flying through Mora Valley, then up the Sangre's
East slope, eyeing the peaks and, in minutes more, passing low over the ranch and
sighting Julian's truck through the pines and the guys putting in a fence post, seeing
them look up as he whizzed over, rocking Juli's wings.
        Kit smiled pretty broadly as he climbed on up to the crests, marveling at his ship's
power, rising right through the downdrafts from the wind he could feel roiling over
the peaks. He pushed her nose over at the top and started descent, hugging the West
slope, throttled back, and opened the waste gate. Every moment more confirmed
his judgement that he had the right airship.
        "God bless Mister Mooney, whomever he was," he said outloud, correctly.
        At the bottom, he began across the Rio Grande Valley North of Espanola,
then headed up the Chama Valley and straight on past Georgia O'Keefe's old
stomping grounds of Abiqu, climbed on up again and zoomed over the San Juans to the
mesas, flying over or around the buttes on the way. He zigged South of Shiprock and,
in what seemed just a few minutes more, there was Monument Valley spread out in
front of him. What a glorious sight, he remembers thinking. He had been there on the
ground before. But it was almighty - just downright almighty - from the sky. Like
Quetzalcoatl, the Thunderbird, he felt. He flew all around that wondrous, magnificent,
magical place of space, checking out sights for a stage and butte tops for landing
potential, then flew into Oljato for fuel.
        He struck up some converse with the Navajos sitting out in the shade of the
small porch there at the airport office, asking how things were for them, how they saw
things and such. There wasn't too much surprise in the responses - life is hard, choices
limited, fate of birth funny, ha ha. Kit really does pretty well with people, maybe moreso
since his political days of the early '70's. Before then he had been kind of bratty, well,
ignorant, at least, he recalls. His Democratic experience, though, had made him feel
guilty, at first, of his family wealth, what of it there was; and then he had become more
humble and got along with folks fairly well, it seems. Anyway, the Natives there
liked him all right. For a rich paleface with a plane.
        He talked a few of the braves into a short ride around the Valley, just to share
the wealth and pleasure some. That was good spirits all around. And one of the
chief-looking guys, who seemed somewhere around Kit's age, though especially
mystical looking, gave Kit an approving smile and nod, Kit said it had seemed.
        Well, there was about an hour of daylight left by the time he took off again, so
he confirmed up his choices of stagesight and butte tops, practiced barrel rolls and
loops and flew around and through the Valley of the Gods, then headed back East
to the hacienda, staying down on the deck.
        He had the transponder off. So as long as he stayed low, FAA - the Flying
Aggravation Agency, he lovingly calls it - radar should not have had him on screen,
thus on record. The sky was almost overcast, so he should only be showing on infra-
red from satellite coverage, he told us he thought then. That is, if they had it, had it
on and on that particular piece of sky. He got the cell phone out, which is illegal to use in
flight, though it was his understanding that it could only disrupt local cell calls and, out
where he was, and at his height, he figured he would not be too bad a boy, so dialed
up Julian as he crossed the peaks of the Juans again and started down.
        "Hool!...si, me...about 15 minutes out....Yeah, just a lantern in front of the barn
door....Si!....right, Motel 6. See ya soon. 'Gras', 'meeg," and turned off the phone.
        The sky by then was completely overcast and he was keeping far enough away
from buildings or people on the ground, not many at all in that part of the great wide
open; so, most probably, no one had spotted him. He was getting awful hungry,
though, he remembers, and filled up some on the water he had bought back at
Oljato. Good for the muscles and nerves, better for the landing, his body was telling
him.
        Dark was minutes away, so he pulled out the night vision goggles - the ones
Julian had gotten for him about a year earlier from the guy with a "junk yard" in Los
Alamos - put them on, and his world lit up in green. He kept all his outside lights off,
though the beacon and nav lights were legally required, and night came. He might be
heard from the ground and maybe tracked by infra-red, but that was it, he thought,
steering away from the lights of homesteads, ranch and farmsteads, villages and
vehicles as he crossed the Rio Grande Valley again, even making a 36o to see if any
planes were following him (pretty paranoic, he recalls). He was soon reclimbing the
Christos, turboing back up and opening the cowls and, in minutes more, passing just
North of the Truchas peaks with the clouds just above him.
        He turned South and ran into a snow shower, but saw the light up ahead, pulled
the power, opened the speed brakes, closed the cowls, put the gear down, heard the
"thunks" and saw the three green lights on the panel, put the flaps down full, turned on
the fuel pump, pushed the prop control full in, tested the brakes on the toes of his
rudder pedals, pegged the airspeed at 75 knots, a little extra for the lower air density
at the high altitude, lined up on the lantern, though seeing enough through the gogs
despite the snow, came in over the trees and touched down near the end of their
snow-covered dirt and rock road - recently smoothed - going uphill. He raised the
flaps to get the weight on the gear, reopened the cowls to keep the temps coming
down, tapped the brakes lightly to not skid too much and rolled to a stop in front of
the barn, pivoting around on the right main before stopping, turned off the fuel pump,
reclosed the cowls, closed the speedbrakes, turned off all the electrics, pulled out the
mix control, switched off the mags and master, took off the goggles and opened the
door to the four amazed smiling faces. Then he scooted out onto the wing and
stepped off onto the ground.


Next Page