Our first stop was at Rawlins, Wyoming, where the highest field on the transcontinental air mail route is located. We refilled at Rawlins and made Evanston that night.
At Evanston we were starting the engine preparatory to taxi-ing over and tying down for the night, when our carburetor caught fire. In the haste to get started we had neither put a fire screen on the intake, nor a drain pipe down from the bowl. The engine was covered with oil and the gasoline overflowing from the bowl carried the flames down around it. Soon the entire nose of the ship was ablaze and although we shovelled earth over the motor, it appeared that the wings would soon catch fire. If the fabric began to burn, the ship was gone. I had just finished removing all loose equipment from the cockpit when a small hand extinguisher arrived and with its aid the fire was soon put out.
All of the ignition wire insulation was burned off but otherwise very little damage had been done.
We were delayed twenty-four hours rewiring the engine and cleaning out the dirt shovelled on in the attempt to put out the fire.
After Rawlins we stopped at Salt Lake City, and from there we flew over the Great Salt Lake Desert to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we spent the night.
We took off from Battle Mountain with full gas tanks and after following the passes until part of the fuel was consumed, and the load correspondingly lightened, we passed over the Sierra Nevada Range at eight thousand five hundred feet, and landed at Oakland, California. The same evening, without refilling, we flew over San Francisco Bay to Crissey Field.
The following day we took-off from Crissey Field on the start of our race to New York. One of the rules of the contest was that each plane should carry a log with the starting point and number of passengers carried attested to by two witnesses. By the time we had made out the log and serviced our plane, it was afternoon and darkness overtook us at Lovelocks, Nevada.
The next night was spent in Rawlins, Wyoming, after a stop at Salt Lake City for fuel.
We arrived in Rawlins with a valve blowing badly and were delayed a day in pulling the bank and grinding in another valve.
We were far behind our schedule due to the late start from Denver; the delay at Evanston, and again at Rawlins; but without further trouble we would still be able to reach New York on time. Another valve began blowing, however, soon after leaving Rawlins, and when we took-off from our next stop at Sidney, Nebraska, the motor had lost a number of revolutions.