Landings in America

Automotive journalist Peter Egan is probably best known for his many years of columns and feature stories about cars and motorcycles in Road & Track and Cycle World magazines, but in the early 1980s he finally gave in to his lifelong fascination with classic airplanes and managed to pursue the third branch of his addiction to romantic modes of travel - namely, flying. While living in Southern California, Peter and his wife Barbara both earned their pilot''s licenses, saved up six weeks'' vacation from their respective jobs, and took off on a seven-thousand-mile trip around the US in their yellow 1945 J-3 Piper Cub. Flying low and slow, they crossed the deserts of the Southwest and sneaked through the Rocky Mountains to visit friends in Texas, then down through the bayou country of Louisiana and around the Gulf to visit Peter''s father in south Florida. From there, they flew up the Atlantic Coast to Kitty Hawk, across the battlefields of the Civil War to the old Piper factory in Pennsylvania, and back to their home state of Wisconsin. The return to California took them across the farmlands of the Midwest and ranches of the Great Plains, with another shot at the dreaded mountain passes of the Rockies. The story is partly travel adventure, with occasional camping under the wing and a survey of the nation''s small towns and budget motels (with the rare surrender to luxury and self-indulgence), but also a memoir of the post-Vietnam era of 1980s America, with personal reflections triggered by the places and names along their route. And always in the background of their trip is the unspoken search for a new place to live, far away from urban sprawl and crowded freeways, a possible rehearsal for someday flying home.