02 Golf
By John Purner
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About this ebook
This is the story of what happens when the life you might have lived and the things you could have done come knocking at your door one last time. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take the controls of your own airplane and travel the world on your schedule? What would you see, who would you meet, how would you change, could you really do it? Come along with a Silicon Valley escapee as he accepts the challenege of flight and does so with an inexpenisve used aircraft purchased for less than the cost of a cheap car. Let your imagination take you along as he makes his first long cross country flight in this small, frail airplane. Meet the people he meets and live the experience through the eyes of someone just like you, a person who decided to grab the brass ring of opportuntity today and to travel on his own terms. This is the story of a everyone's childhood passion finally come to life. You will be inspired to make it your journey as well.
John Purner
John Purner is an avid pilot, golfer, publisher, website developer and writer. For more than two decades, his $100 Hamburger (www.100dollarhamburger.com) website has been the world’s most popular information source for recreational flying. John’s first work of fiction, 02 Golf has been an aviation category Best Seller since publication in 2011.The following is a list of other John Purner books you may enjoy. They are available at Amazon.com and booksellers worldwide.The $100 Hamburger - 2014/15The $100 Hamburger Guide to Buying & Selling Aircraft02 GOLF6 Weeks to Winning Weekend GolfBUYcycle: The Best Kept Secrets of Amazingly Successful Salespeople15 BEST Airport Restaurants plus 2,347 Runner-Ups!The $100 Hamburger – A Guide to Pilots’ favorite FlyIn Restaurants 3rd Edition101 Best Aviation AttractionsThe $100 Hamburger – A Guide to Pilots’ favorite FlyIn Restaurants 2nd EditionThe $500 Round of Golf: A Guide to Pilot-Friendly Golf CoursesThe $100 Hamburger – A Guide to Pilots’ favorite FlyIn Restaurants
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02 Golf - John Purner
02 GOLF
The Long Cross Country
By
John Purner
John Purner
PO Box 915441
Longwood, FL 32791-5441
Internet: www.100dollarhamburger.com
Email: jpurner@100dollarhamburger.com
ISBN-13: 978-1468021554
ISBN-10: 1468021559
First Printing: December 2011
2nd Edition: December 2014
Copyright © 2011 by John Purner
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without express written permission from John Purner
Table of Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Epilogue
C-150 Specifications
About the Author
Chapter I
Retirement and the pursuit of leisure to the exclusion of all other things works best when you are older than 72 not 42. I did not understand that before I took the leap, within a year I did! Too much leisure will drive you nuts!
In November of 1989, I left California and the computer business and returned to Houston, Texas, the city of my birth. Once there I bought a set of golf clubs immediately and a Cessna 150 eventually. They provided answers to the nagging question my friends constantly threw at me, What are you going to do?
It was a fair question. No one had seen my retirement coming; lest of all me! Come it did for I sorely needed a change. It was at once the best and the worst decision I ever made.
The BEST because I had broken life’s simplest code, time is the only non-replenishable asset. We can get more money and even more friends but the hourglass of our earthly moment is a sealed container, when the final grain of sand falls so do we.
The WORST, because knowing that time was precious I had not figured out what to do with mine. Living the dream works only if you have one.
In high school, I had started pilot training but stopped before I got my license. College and money initially and later career pressures prevented me from staying in the left seat of an airplane for many, many years. My story is probably similar to yours and many, many others. Flight is a gift you have to buy.
That was all in my past. Within four months of starting my second ascent I had my license and was itching to use it on a long cross-country to San Diego where I kept a Cal 25 berthed just across the road from Lindbergh Field. A month of living on the boat and sailing everyday seemed right. The 150 was still in my hanger as I had not moved up and could not really decide which plane I wanted or raked together the cash to buy it. Therefore, I loaded up the 150 and headed west.
GPS was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye at this point and I did not yet have my instrument rating. The flight would be VFR using the ship’s ancient Escort 110 NavCom for VOR guidance, that and a fresh stack of charts and a good roadmap.
Allowing three days for the journey, I launched without a schedule. I would get there when I got there! For a pilot flying west in a 150 that is the prescribed attitude. The winds are tough and right on your nose! Wish I had thought more about that!
Late in the morning of the first day, I stopped in Junction, Texas for fuel and decided to fly on to Sonora for lunch. That was a good call. The Sutton County Steakhouse is an easy walk from the Sonora airport’s ramp. The food was awesome! I had a steak and decided over lunch that I would create the $100 Hamburger website. I needed to know where all of the GREAT airport restaurants were and I figured that every other pilot did too. I have been wrong about a great many things but not about this one.
God is good! www.100dollarhamburger.com was an immediate success.
I paid the check, ambled back to my ship, cranked it up, put the throttle to the firewall and headed towards Ft. Stockton where I planned to spend the night. Being a rookie at this long cross-country business, my thoughts were to put the plane and pilot to bed long before the sun was chased from the sky.
Truck traffic on I-10 was beating me at an increasing rate. Either they were well over the speed limit or I was hitting a wind much higher than the morning forecast had envisioned. It seemed that I was just sort of hanging in the air like an old Piper Cub. Therefore, I went higher, all the way to 11,000 feet. The winds got progressively worse. After a very long time with Ft. Stockton nowhere in sight and the fuel gauges racing for the bottom I became concerned and needed to make a decision. Back to Sonora where I foolishly decided not to buy fuel thinking I had plenty or find a nearby alternate.
The chart revealed a small airport just a few miles north of my route of flight, Iraan. The question was did they sell fuel? I looked in the green FAA Airport Guidebook. It said they did so I confidently diverted.
The runway was 4,000 feet of concrete in good condition. I taxied to the office, which is where I expected to find the ‘push water’ pump. No one was home. It would not have helped if they had been. The fuel tank had been dug out of the ground and was now resting next to the big hole where it used to live.
NO FUEL.
I climbed up on the struts of my craft and stuck both tanks hoping that the gauges were lying. They were not.
Off in the distance I spotted something that looked like it might be a store of some kind. It was in the opposite direction of the airport gate. I crawled over the fence and began what I thought would be a three or four mile hike to an oasis that hopefully had gas and gas cans for sale and someone willing to drive me back to the ‘port.
I made it about three hundred yards when a Texas Highway Patrol cruiser pulled up behind me. It was staffed by not one but two of Texas’ finest. They asked me what was going on and why I had hopped the airport fence. I explained.
They took pity and squeezed me into the rear seat of their Boss 302 Mustang high-speed cruiser and off we went in search of gas cans. They allowed that the town angler must have some for his boat. Please understand that the nearest body of water was 200 miles away, so the fact that this town had an angler was really quite something. We went straight to his house and borrowed four, five-gallon cans from his wife. He was away fishing!
Then it was off to the gas station to fill ‘em up. The owner gave me the fuel saying he would not charge a stranded pilot. He had been a flyer in WWII.
We raced back to the airport.
The 302 really moved! The Highway Department had bought them so the West Texas based Troopers would stand a reasonable chance against the local oil barons who liked to race their Ferraris on those really long, straight stretches of desert pavement at speeds a Cessna 150 pilot could only imagine.
As I stood fueling the plane, they starred at the cockpit from a respectful distance. Then one of them asked, Why do you have a radar detector on your dash board?
I said I did not and pointed out that there was no use for one in the air as there were no speed limits up there. He said, OK, but if that ain’t a radar detector on your dash, what is it?
His attention focused on the rearview mirror that sits atop the panel of many Commuter models of the venerable Cessna 150 fleet. I explained that it was a rear view mirror. Naturally, he wanted to know why an airplane would need a rearview mirror. It ain’t like you gotta’ look before changing lanes!
I explained that it helped new pilots stay lined up on the runway centerline during the initial climb-out phase of flight so they would not drift into the flight path of a parallel runway. He half bought that concept but not entirely.
We said good-bye and promised to stay in touch. We did not but we did make a memory that day.
Iraan (pronounced - Ira Ann) is an All-American town, a place where we all long to live. A place where people matter to people and a helping hand is always offered even to a stranger who will likely never be seen again.
Chapter II
Very few planes hit the classified section of the Houston Chronicle. On Wednesday, December 20, 1989, there were