Drive - A Memoir 105th Installment
getting
the feel of it. Then it was my turn, and I clambered into the small
canoe shaped body of the snow plane. The two rear skis were about
eight feet apart, and I could steer the front ski with a steering
wheel. The only other instruments were the on/off switch and the
throttle lever. I hooked my feet under the bar that held the steering
wheel and pulled the throttle half way, and wham, the belly tingle
was immediate. The power was thrilling, the sound sublime, and away I
went. At half throttle the speed picked up quickly, even in the
sticky wet snow and just kept increasing. Soon I was flying, well not
exactly flying; the skis were on the ground. It was the same
sensation as flying, I imagined, having never actually flown. As I
soared around the last turn and headed back, I realized there was no
braking built in; you had to throttle down or shut off the engine to
stop. I shut the engine off and coasted past Russell, then slid out
of the field and into the weeds. Tired, but exhilarated, we decided
to cover the engine and leave it there until we had more snow.
When
the snow was deeper and frozen and crusty on top, we drove the snow
plane up to great speeds always allowing enough room to turn and
circle until it came to a stop. The speed and power of the snow plane
was incredible. It probably weighed less than an airplane and without
wings had less wind drag. We knew that a prop plane had plenty of
power and could fly up to two hundred miles per hour. We wondered if
the snow plane could go the same speed or more on smooth crusty snow.
Russ and I took in out to the Twenty–five where there were long
straight runs, and we estimated our speed at about a hundred miles
per hour. In other words, it was a white knuckle, heart pounding,
short–of–breath speed.”
To
substantiate the claim, Russ drove Alfred’s motorcycle, a 250cc, to
a hundred and ten miles on the speedometer and said that the
sensation of speed was the same as in the snow plane.
The
time I shudder to think about was when I came into the yard too fast
and wasn’t going to be able to stop in time. Without throwing my
brain into gear, I leapt out of the cockpit and grabbed the nose of
the snow plane like a bulldogger would grab a steer and dug in my
heels. Wrestling the infernal machine, I slid to a stop with the
engine still idling. Later when I thought about what I had done, it
occurred to me that if I’d fallen or hadn’t been able to hang on
to the nose of the snow plane, even at an idle, the prop would have
chopped me up into unrecognizable pieces.
Chapter
30
One
evening when Russ and I went out to
500 more words tomorrow
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