Part 2
For four months, the challenger dozed in its temporary home of Roosterville. We made the cold February drive up to Kansas City, over the ten hours of drive time we saw temperatures ranging from 75f(MS) to 28f(MO). Staging at a old friend's house, we schemed and plotted our plan of action. The course we came up with covered 2 full sectional maps , front and back! We were to go 0N0-LXT-EOS-H35-SUZ-CRT-VKS. I woke up early, and prepared my things, Pillow? check. Ipod? check. Blanket? check. Clean clothes? Well, you would like it better if I stretch the truth and say check. By and by, everyone else woke up. One excellent breakfast later, and my belly was full, but The morning was creeping along, wasting time. On the weather channel, we learned that it would not be a flying day. We were delayed.
The next day, the weather had somewhat improved, at least to the point of being flyable. In a matter of hours we had woke up, gotten ready, and prepped the plane. I climbed into the front seat after a quick photo, and my dad started the engine. Waiting for the engine to warm up, I finalized my mental preparations. After all, I hadn't flown the challenger in 5 months! I had grown unaccustomed to its attributes. "Throttle forward, stick to the left, pull back at 40, accelerate, and climb" I thought as the plane leaped off the ground in the dense cold air. The controls didn't feel quite right. I refocused, and climbed out. Up over the field, up over the cows, up over the trees. By the time I was at pattern altitude, I was already well into the downwind leg. Although I felt extremely rusty We hadn't crashed yet. glancing at my kneeboard I saw our destination, reviewed the landmarks to get there, and turned east.
As I flew from airstrip to airstrip, My skills improved immensely, soon they were on par with where I had left off, the extremely choppy air made sure of that. My landing at Neosho (EOS) was spot on, though landing on a goat trail of a runway during my training at springs east makes landing on a 100' wide runway a breeze, even when there is a strong breeze. Further along the journey, as I flew over a road, I noticed that the small puffy clouds below me were expanding. not 10 min later they had nearly formed a perfect blanket. a little voice in the back of my head said "this seems not right" But Upon closer examination I spotted the same thing my dad had, The edge of the clouds was not far. By and by we crossed the high terrain between us and the Arkansas river valley. it was spectacular. The last leg of the first day was spent lazily following the river. The second day passed in a whirl, and soon enough I spied the plume of steam coming from the familiar nuclear power plant (which we gave a wide berth to). I landed at Vicksburg with a smile on my face, I had made it.