Day 2 kicked off exactly the way any proper vintage flight should: with a fractured fuel line and the faint, romantic aroma of imminent catastrophe.
Luckily, some delightful internet friends appeared out of nowhere to say hello.
I genuinely wanted to ditch the tour and go crush a donut (again) with Eric and Chandra, but alas, the aviation gods demand a snackrifice.
For those of you who don't know, Commander’s facial hair precedes him by about three nautical miles.
We’ve been sauntering across airport aprons only to have total strangers freeze, squint, and inevitably blurt out, “Wait… aren't you the guy from Instagram?” (iPad babies anyone? iykyk)
Naturally, leveraging that magnificent mustache meant he had zero trouble knocking on hangar doors and sweet-talking locals out of the heavy machinery required to fix our line.
While Commander commenced his grease-monkey wizardry on the ramp, I did what any responsible show host does: I wandered off toward the shiniest object in sight, which happened to be a sleek black and red helicopter.
Anyone whose followed my social media shenanigans knows my shameless, unapologetic crush on rotorcraft - it started with Airwolf. But let’s be crystal clear about boundaries: I have zero desire to actually climb inside a glorified box of angry rocks that is actively attempting to vibrate its own bolts out of the sky.
(I must insert that our awesome San Diego friends, did take me and my dear friend Diana, up in their helo and showed me an engine out doesn't result in immediate death, so I might be swooned in the future). see - here's me actually in a helicopter that went up in the sky.
As luck would have it, she was a firefighting bird, and the crew treated me like an off-duty celebrity. They gave me a full VIP tour of the beast and even threw in some stickers—finally answering my lifelong, burning question of how helo-pilot nutjobs pull off those ninja-level swimming pool water heists without taking out someone’s deck furniture.
Meanwhile, a fantastic gaggle of Idaho State aircraft mechanic students spilled out onto the ramp to inspect Commander’s open-heart surgery on Scarlett, making our vintage breakdown feel like an impromptu vocational classroom.
We were airborne, I was trepidatious, thoroughly no longer trusting my aircraft- but Bear Lake always provides a last little gleam of beauty before Wyoming enters the chat. The photo at the bottom is not Bear Lake, it's another random lake, somewhere in Middle America.
Some pilots harbor a polite grudge against congested Class B airspace. I, on the other hand, have a blood feud with Rock Springs Airport (RKS).
I have officially renewed my vows of pure, unadulterated hatred for this patch of earth, primarily because I am convinced I have nearly met my maker every single time my wheels have touched it.
Between density altitudes that starve your wings, wind sheer peeling off the bluffs like a freight train, and turbulence engineered specifically to scramble your internal organs into an omelet, touching down there isn't flying—it’s the Cirque Du Soleil of aviation with worse odds.
True to its villainous reputation, Rock Springs demanded its pound of flesh. In the violent winds, our window jammed and welded itself aggressively, permanently wide open.
Commander performed some frantic, brilliant field-surgery to wedge it shut for the rest of the voyage.
The good news? It held.
The catastrophic news?
We had officially severed our connection to the Lycoming R680’s version of "free air conditioning," with the suffocating, swampy heat of the Midwest and South waiting gleefully right in our flight path. We are going to bake like artisanal sourdough.
Leaving the Rock Springs wind tunnel of doom in our dust, the skies finally offered an apology in the form of the day's true crown jewel: a massive, concrete arrow resting quietly in the dirt below.
For the uninitiated, long before magenta lines, GPS satellites, or radios that actually worked, 1920s airmail pilots navigated cross-country corridors using pure grit and eyeballs. The government literally poured giant, 50-foot yellow concrete arrows straight into the desert sagebrush and jagged ridges, pointing like roadside billboards toward the next lighted beacon tower.
The cosmic comedy hit me hard. Here we were flying an airplane that originally hauled wartime airmail across the frozen, unforgiving frontiers of Alaska, staring down at the prehistoric fossil of the Continental Air Mail route.
Decades later - Scarlett was humming right over the very bones of early aviation, still doing what she was born to do: delivering my books - a message of hope across an untamed continent.
Looking down at that hundred-year-old slab of weathered concrete, I smiled, I was right where I was supposed to be.
Those original airmail pilots were practically hanging by their suspenders out of open cockpits in howling, below-zero slipstreams, praying for a literal block of painted cement on a hill to confirm they weren't about to plow face-first into a granite ridgeline.
Meanwhile, we modern aviators cry like babies about our iPads (shout out to Commander's 3 day tail wheel endorsement for anyone who wants to be a real pilot).
It was a sharp, funny, and deeply humbling reminder: you don’t need the entire five-hundred-mile route paved in gold and glowing in the dark. You just need enough guidance to know you're on course.
Life has felt a lot like that for me lately.
The horizon looks turbulent, overwhelming, and slightly terrifying, but then I get just enough insight to know that I'm on track - and everything is going to be okay.
PS - Day 2 ended with horribly smelly armpits - just a quick note black lace tops and hot cockpits are not a good combo. I included an FBO bathroom shittay selfay (commander & I's OG claim to fame) for visual reference.
...oh and the literal worst meal of my life. So aparently, everything I told you yesterday about meals after a long day is bullhonkey.
And like a good Counting Crows song - we're official in the middle of 'merica (PolarSteps image of the whole tour at the bottom, because if you're like me, you need pictures)... catch you tomorrow for Day 3!
And if you want to grab the book that roped me into this airborne madness in the first place, it’s available right now on Amazon, Target, and waiting for you at airport bookstores nationwide. https://a.co/d/07uBUjVl