“I can. Coming in loud and clear, sir.” She gave him a quick salute.
He started the plane’s engine, and the propeller began to spin. “Hang on. Here we go.”
The plane started rolling, continually picking up speed—faster and faster. She felt the vibration zip through her, and the plane lifted. “Oh my God. We’re in the air.”
“Are you okay?”
Even though she was still apprehensive, she nodded. “I just love this.”
“Look out the window, sweetheart. It’s a million-dollar view.”
Below she could see the fields of Strong Ranch. As the plane continued climbing, she could see farther and farther. The sky was bluer than she’d ever remembered seeing it before. The rivers and streams looked beautiful. “Do those mountains always have snow at the top in June?”
“Most years, yes,” Greg said. “When summer temperatures are unusually cool, like they have been this year, the snowcaps don’t recede much at all.”
She could feel the plane leveling off. “How high up are we, Greg?”
“Sixty-five hundred feet,” he said. “A little over a mile from the ground. That’s our cruising altitude for this leg of our trip.”
“Wow.” She shook her head, remembering going up in the Gateway Arch in St. Louis during a high school trip. It was just over six hundred feet tall, less than a tenth of the distance from the ground than they were now. “You said ‘trip.’ Are we going somewhere? I thought this was just a quick sightseeing plane ride.”
“It’s a surprise.” He yawned. “I’m getting terribly tired. It’s your turn to fly.”
“Not on your life, and it probably would be.”
He took his hand off the steering wheel. “Somebody better fly it.”
“Oh my God, Greg.” She grabbed the one in front of her with both hands and pulled back hard.
The plane’s nose went up, and they soared high into the clouds.
“Shit,” she yelled.
“It’s okay, just push back on the yoke.”
“What’s a yoke?”
“What you’re holding.”
“The steering wheel?”
He grinned. “Yes.”
With her heart beating like a hummingbird’s, she nodded and pushed it all the way forward. The plane dove, and she could see the ground headed their way. “Shit. Shit. Shit. What do I do? What do I do now?”
Greg laughed and grabbed the yoke in front of him. “I’ll help you. Trust me. It’s okay.” He straightened out the plane, explaining how to use the yoke.
She leaned back in her seat, smiling. “That was some rollercoaster ride. My stomach jumped up to my throat. Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”
He continued flying the plane. “This is the altimeter.”
“That clock thingy?”
He nodded. “Each of these numbers represents one thousand feet. The little hand is for the thousands and the big hand is for the entire dial, which is also a thousand feet. Understand?”
“I think so. The little hand is between the six and seven and the big hand is on the five. We’re flying at sixty-five hundred feet, right?”
“You’re a fast learner. Exactly right. That’s where we want to keep it. A pilot watches the altimeter and lightly pulls and pushes on the yoke to keep at that elevation. You can use the yoke to steer the plane. This is the altitude indicator. The blue is the sky and the brown is the ground. The thing floating in the middle represents the plane and our relationship to the horizon. You want to keep it level, right between the sky and ground.”