rough draft of my book, "Have Goggles, Will Travel"

[AAC Cadet Leader]

The statistics: 199 pilots, in over 200 vintage aeroplanes, 330 flights, 29,117 miles through 48 states, 183 days, 9 marriage proposals. The best part: 1000 new friends.
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OCTOBER 23, 2009 - A FEW THREAD PREFACE NOTES:
i copied this whole, long thread, pasted it into this book section of the forum, re-named it and locked it so only i can add new posts to it. i'll be editing and weeding it of my own off-topic comments (the ones in all lowercase), and others' posts (sorry) in order to get this thread closer to being a rough draft to send to prospective publishers. the weeding may take me a few days, then will come yet another round of editing the whole thing - more weeks, then completing the last chapters and appendix sections - more months.

if you'd like to send a reply, please either PM me or publicly post your reply on my original thread found here: http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/no...ight-here.html

i appreciate all your feedback, including comments, questions, editorial suggestions, grammar and spelling mistakes, repeated or wrong words, etc. also, a referral to a great book publishers you may know would be greatly appreciated - note, i have absolutely no interest to self-publish this book. please forgive me in advance for giving short and/or delayed replies to your thoughtful correspondences. i read all of them, but it takes me considerably more time than i have available to respond as thoughtfully.

also, i have a slide presentation on this journey, and a second presentation on the subject of cole palen's old rhinebeck aerodrome in 1988. any invitations to present either or both of them for group events or banquets will be much appreciated. i can be contacted by PM or through my blog.

thanks in advance for reading my book draft. you're seeing it in its raw state before it goes into print and probably with more of my pictures than the printed version will have.

if you are looking for the posts related to WW1 aircraft within this thread, there are only a few of them, like pics of fred jungclaus' SE-5 and a few of cole palen's aeroplanes and a couple others. if you object to me posting it in this section, please PM me. thanks, martha

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OCTOBER 21. 2007
hi fellow antique aviation fans. a few of you here already know about my six-month-long aerial barnstorming hitchhike i made through the continental USA in 1988 and that i have been sporadically writing a comprehensive book about it ever since to be titled,

"Have Goggles, Will Travel!"
... a true story

i know, i know, i should have finished it long ago, but completing the endless details of that book has proven to be a much larger task for me than completing the remarkable feat of the journey, itself.

in an effort to get something into print before any more of my generous pilots leave earthly bounds (and don't return to land), i have a new sub-goal: to create a less comprehensive, much smaller book with photos and memories of then until now and how my epic aerial journey has influenced my life. my hope is to get this interim book into print within a few months, and at the same time reformat my 45 minute multi-media slide show/talk to dvd so that i may again be available to share the journey at aviation banquets and schools, etc in 2008. now that my two children are teenagers and quite independent, i feel i can leave them for a day or two at a time, whereas before now i wouldn't consider it.

writing is an incredibly lonely task, which is one of the reasons i have started and stopped the progress on my comprehensive book in the past. having this thread for the development of the new interim book and having some of you check in on me daily and offer occasional encouragement will help keep me accountable to my committment of writing @ 500 words a day, which may not be much for many of you, but for me with all of the other things i have to do, it can be a lot.

i don't have any idea really how i't will all come together or what all will be in it, so it should be interesting to see it unfold and compile right here on the aerodrome which has become my online home for the past few years. you'll be seeing the unedited version before a publisher gets their hands on it.

please feel free to offer occasional constructive critiques or questions you have, etc. please forgive that i won't attempt to answer you directly on thread as it takes me a lot of time, but i will read all posts. replying directly to posts might change the immediate flow of the writing which might not be where i was planning to go with it, but having your feedback and questions will help me plan what subjects within the entire text i should address.


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To begin, i’ll do my best to summarize my journey in four paragraphs:

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Summary

Much of the momentum and success for my journey was due to the fact that the press took immediate and continued attention for my romantic goal of traveling through all of the lower 48, living the part of and dressed as a 1920’s barnstormer with only pocket change, and getting rides onboard the wings of antique aeroplanes, piloted and hosted by their owners. Meeting and flying with different pilots every day hither and yon about the USA, criss-crossing my own path several times over the course of 183 days aboard some of the most beautiful open cockpit and vintage luxury cabin aeroplanes, held constant surprises and adventures, mostly excitingly romantic, sometimes exhausting, and on a few occasions - terrifying. The red carpet was rolled out for my arrival in many places and I was given royal treatment: TV cameras and newspaper reporters upon our arrivals and departures, fine dining and the finest hotel rooms and guest rooms in homes, the mayor’s keys to two cities, the right seats to the Spuce Goose and the Goodyear Blimp, the backseat of three P-51’s, the front seat of a 1918 Jenny, and a hundred other flights of fancy that most pilots in love with the days of aeroplanes & aviators only dream about.

In many other places, I was an unknown, and was dropped off by the last pilot and met with little or no fanfare nor notice. It was in those places that I was able to experience more of my vision of a true itinerant barnstormer of olde, unrolling my bedroll for the night under the wing of an aeroplane, in the backseat of an airport courtesy car, and on the couches of pilot’s lounges. The fare was equally rough in some cases. At times I subsisted on candy and chips from the airport vending machines – in one instance in rainy, cold Ypsilanti, Michigan for three days in a row, at night, I rolled out my sleeping bag on the dusty floor of the old, abandoned control tower on the airfield, while waiting for the weather to clear and a ride out.

My parents' home telephone and mailbox in Fairiew Park, Ohio was my base of operations and I made daily phone calls to Mom. This was before cell phones. I couldn't have done this journey without all of her enthusiastic assistance she feely gave, spending several hours each day, replying to letters sent to me, in care of her and my dad, and responding to phone call inquiries from pilots and news reporters. She took detailed longhand notes - eighty-seven pages in all - during calls I made to her from payphones around the USA. You'll see her "Mom's Log" notes inserted chronologically into my book pages. My dear old Dad passed away in 1995, seven years after my journey, and Mom's now in a nursing home (in October 2009) and is sadly losing many of her memories. Here's a photo of Mom & me in October 2009, 21 years since my journey.


My 199 pilots became my friends and my heroes, always dropping what they were doing and in some cases flying hundreds of miles to unfamiliar airfields to come get me, and to then take me further along my journey toward the next state that needed to be checked off on my map. Along the way they pointed out some of the most incredible hidden things from the air that I would’ve otherwise missed, and on a few occasions from low altitudes (usually by my encouragement,) we experienced some rare and privileged viewing angles of America’s iconic treasures: Mount Rushmore at eye-to-eye level with the Presidents; the Grand Canyon from a tiny plane; a steep turn over top of Niagra Falls; an encircling, slightly-above torch level view of the Statue of Liberty; a circuit around Mount Saint Helen’s still-smoking, ash peak and toothpick trees; beside red plateaus and huge natural, red rock formations of Sedona, Arizona and the snow-covered, black granite peaks of the Grand Tetons near Jackson, Wyoming. There were a few flights at very low altitudes, including: between a low-level thunderstorm and a Missouri highway; alongside a semi truck on a mostly-deserted Nevada highway (in a P-51); within the walls of a quarry in Georgia; and the lowest – beneath a bridge in North Carolina.

The statistics: 199 pilots, in over 200 vintage aeroplanes, 330 flights, 29,117 miles through 48 states, 183 days, 9 marriage proposals. The best part: 1000 new friends.
__________________________________________________

[AAC Cadet Leader]

thanks all. your comments, questions and encouragement are making me smile.

Originally Posted by Barrett

...and how many marriage proposals did you accept?

and barrett's made me laugh.

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Of the over one hundred newspaper and magazine articles written about my journey that people I met along the way sent to my mother, no one had a better grassroots flair for writing than Gordon Baxter. When I was in college at Kent State University, working on the flight line and learning to fly Cessna 150's, I used to buy FLYING Magazine just to flip to the last couple pages to read his monthly column, titled "Bax Seat."

I had the brainstorm nine months before the start of the journey, and I knew I'd need lots of help with publicizing my crazy dream. One of the first things I did was to write a letter to Gordon Baxter to ask him if he would write an article about my wish to find owners of old aeroplanes who would be willing to take me towards the next state needing to be crossed off on my map of the USA. He liked my idea. We had a couple of long phone conversations and he asked me to write him another letter and tell him about my background. His first article was published in the May 1988 issue, just in time for me to pack along with my special logbook I made just for the journey. Having that shiny magazine article handy was proof to the sceptics I met along the way that in fact I wasn't nuts, well, maybe, but anyway, at least Gordon Baxter thought I was alright.

Halfway through my journey, I met up with Gordon at the big EAA week at Oshkosh where he was giving his annual standing room only talk in one of the seminar tents. He introduced me to the crowd, and told them again what I was in the midst of accomplishing. Afterwards we had a sandwich at one of the picnic tables while watching the wingwalker on the Waco with the trailing smoke. Three and a half months later when I finally completed the journey, I wrote again to Gordon at his request and he generously wrote a second follow-up article. It made the May 1989 issue:





I met up briefly with Gordon again at Oshkosh in 1990 and in 1992 and these times I had my own seminar tent to show the slides and tell about my adventure, and I also was given the use of Theater in the Woods to present my show - pretty neat! When my son was born, Gordon sent him a handsome, hand-crafted wooden toy plane with his name on it. He was a dear man.

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Originally Posted by Barrett

barrett's made me laugh.

Well? C'mon, inquiring Forumites want to know!

i could give you a one sentence answer, but i'm considering your query as a good writing prompt for at least a page or two. it's a subject i’m always avoiding addressing, but one that's always asked. so, lemme take a deep gasp and ponder on what to type. perhaps sooner than later.

[AAC Cadet Leader]

well, i've been racking my brain all last night and this morning on trying to figure out how to start on that most personal subject matter that barrett asked about and i keep hitting the delete button every time i get a few words typed in. so, you're just gonna have to wait i guess til i get the courage or figure out how to give a thorough answer to that subject. in the meantime, the short answer to your question, barrett is:

"none of them."

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Warming up my Two Typing Fingers
As I said, I really have no idea how to organize this interim book, or what all to include in it, but I have boxes and boxes of material and photos to choose from that won't possibly fit into the big book, and I have to be at work in an hour from now, so I am going to post a scan of one of my notepad pages I came across this morning in one of my sealed-up boxes that I haven't opened in years.

And I hope you can read my handwriting. Sorry that a lot of it is crossed out and sloppy. Maybe this sheds light on my lack of organizational skills. These two handwritten pages were from fall 1987 (I think), shortly after or perhaps just before getting the brainstorm to try get a series of antique aeroplane rides through the lower 48:




(And by the way, I'm hereby publicly declaring that all of my words, photos and scans on this thread are owned and copyrighted by me (except for the Flying Mag article, which I was given permission to use in 1988), so don't nobody try to nab them or copy them to your computer or link them to some other website, etc and so forth, or else! You have been warned!)

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Originally Posted by spacecrow

Don't forget the movie rights!

yeah... the movie rights!

Reminds me of Richard Bach's Biplane.

funny you should say that - two of my pilots were bette bach-fineman, the mother of richard bach's six children, and her second husband, jon fineman.

Perhaps you could take it to a writer's workshop.

you guys are my writer's workshop.

[spacecrow]

Originally Posted by AAC Cadet Leader

yeah... the movie rights! funny you should say that - two of my pilots were bette bach-fineman, the mother of richard bach's six children, and her second husband, jon fineman.

you guys are my writer's workshop.

It was a good read. I read it back in the 1970's, right before Jonathan Seagull came out.

When he needed help, people came through for him.

Hi Martha,

Good to hear from you! Althought we had a short hop, Fort Smith, Arkansas to Tulsa, OK, you were my first passenger not to bail out! LOL! I hope you are still flying (and writing) as I would love to buy one of your books.

Wolf Grulkey, DZO
Skydive Skyranch

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Originally Posted by theloadarranger

Hi Martha,

Good to hear from you! Althought we had a short hop, Fort Smith, Arkansas to Tulsa, OK, you were my first passenger not to bail out! LOL! I hope you are still flying (and writing) as I would love to buy one of your books.

Wolf Grulkey, DZO
Skydive Skyranch

hey there, wolf!
so glad to have found you again just yesterday after 20 years. you know, wolf, you were my 13the pilot on my journey, buy i guess it was lucky for me that you didn't hand me one of those parachutes along the flight you and your red aeronca chief provided me from fort smith, arkansas to tulsa, oklahoma. hey, you know, you get the prize for the best steep slip made to a landing for the tv cameras of all my pilots. it was pretty radical as i recall and i made note of it in my logbook. did you ever get the news tape from channel 8 in tulsa?

i get your forum name connection with your skydiver hauling. 'at's a good one! but what does DZO stand for?
~martha

Hi Martha,

I never saw the footage from Tulsa, the Fort Smith station did a little on our preflight and take off at the end of the newscast as they were running the credits. It was nice. DZO stands for Drop Zone Owner/Operator, which in English means there is a plane or two in the hangar where all the money goes.

Are there excerpts of your book online? I would like to check it out if so.

Blue sky,
Wolf

[AAC Cadet Leader]

Originally Posted by theloadarranger

Hi Martha,

I never saw the footage from Tulsa, the Fort Smith station did a little on our preflight and take off at the end of the newscast as they were running the credits. It was nice. DZO stands for Drop Zone Owner/Operator, which in English means there is a plane or two in the hangar where all the money goes.

Are there excerpts of your book online? I would like to check it out if so.

Blue sky,
Wolf

my dear wolfey,
what kind of a zone do you own? this is it, man! how many more excerpts do you want? these 240+ posts already add up to a pretty thick first-half-of-the-book, so...perhaps i'm not sure what you mean. go back and read from the beginning of this thread, wolf. you'll see that i'm writing the book, right here - posting a bit more of it each day. you are seeing it in the 1st draft form, online. actually, it's about my 10th draft, but now it's becoming a whole new 1st draft again, since i'm starting fresh with some of the chapters and excerpts and adding some photos. as far as where you can see it online? you're lookin at it! this is the first place i've posted any of it online.

i'm saving the very best chapters and photos for the printed version so you'll want to buy a copy for yourself and five more for your best friends.

fort smith had us on the news, too? i'd forgotten they were there. did you get a tape of it?
~martha