Clearing the way ahead, she made climbing turns to gain altitude. At 10,000 feet she looked down, then out to the left and right and to the back and front. The sky was clear for acrobatics.
Stalls, spins, loops, rolls, Immelmanns: she skillfully commanded the plane through each maneuver. She slipped and climbed and dived swinging and dancing the Avian along the reaches of the sunlit sky. The plane handled perfectly. After an hour of skylarking over the polo field she felt that she and the plane were ready for a long flight, one perhaps to California and the National Air Races.
Amelia knew that she needed much more experience in the air before she could consider herself a qualified pilot. The cross-country trip, she finally decided, should season her for all kinds of flying—over large cities, plains, and mountains. Although she had never made such a flight before, her preparations, considering the distances involved, were happy-go-lucky and without design. She bought navigation maps and made her flight plan: she would fly over railroads, rivers, and big cities whenever possible; once she arrived in the Far West and the Rockies, she would then determine what to do. Summarily she announced her plans to the Putnams, thanked them for their hospitality, and was off.
2. Vagabond of the Air
Once in the air and on her way 3,000 miles to the west, she surveyed the land below. It was a quilted patchwork of green and brown, and woven through it, now the thick and now the thin threads of light and dark rivers and tributaries. Even the mighty Hudson and the Palisades had seemed from 8,000 feet but the thickest thread and the deepest brown.
This was release from little things. Flat-topped beetled automobiles, toy houses, clustered beads of cities: such was the Lilliputian world of men. Cruising along over New York and New Jersey into Pennsylvania, she knew that she would have to do right by the little Avian. Lady Heath had flown it back and forth between London and Cape Town for a record 12,000 miles; now AE would have to add to that record some 6,000 miles of the United States.
She spread her map across her knees and noted the penciled circle in western Pennsylvania that marked Rogers Field in Pittsburgh, her first stop. She began her letdown from cruising altitude. The airport, she observed, had a grass runway.
Amelia dropped down for a closer look. She dragged the field, hoping to spot rocks, or holes, or ditches. The way seemed clear. She tipped up one wing in a tight turn and came around for a landing. She reduced throttle and glided in to what looked like the best part of the field. The plane started to settle; AE chopped the throttle, pulling back hard on the stick. At that moment the landing gear hit a shallow ditch hidden in the grass. The Avian swung up and over, the propeller cracked and splintered, the tail thumped to the ground. Amelia hung upside down on the safety belt. Calmly she felt along the instrument panel and cut the switch. She was unhurt.
The headlines in the morning papers, however, told a different story: “AMELIA EARHART NEAR DEATH IN CRASH.” AE read the front page, was irritated and mad. The accident of sex again. If the pilot had been a man, nothing would have been said about it, especially if he had walked away from his plane unharmed. Amelia folded the paper and slapped it against her leg. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? All this emotionalism about women fliers, as if a female neck were more important than a male neck.
Amelia went to the phone and called New York. Another plane, twin sister to the Avian, would be ferried in, so that parts from it could be used to repair her plane. The following day four mechanics worked around the clock for a day and a half until the Avian was repaired.