She tried to make radio contact with the ship, but was unsuccessful. She then tried radio station KPO in San Francisco and this time established contact. She asked for the position of President Pierce and was told that the ship was 300 miles out from San Francisco. Amelia checked her map and grinned: that was exactly where the ship was supposed to be. Settling back in her seat, AE cruised at 1,500 feet and made straight for the coast.
She strained her eyes for sight of land. The clouds overhead played tricks on her: their shadows on the water looked exactly like islands. Amelia now wondered if real land would look like cloud shadows.
She climbed to 1,800 feet. Dead ahead on course she saw an undulating outline of what she hoped were the coastal hills of northern California. As she approached, they were unmistakable. She looked up for the tops, then noticed a valley between them. She added throttle and nosed over the hills. Squinting ahead as far as she could see, she saw at last the familiar notch of land and water that could only be San Francisco Bay. Directly below, San Mateo rolled into view.
In the next six minutes she crossed over the bay, then sighted Oakland, and finally the airport. She had made it back home. Elated with her victory, she felt a new tide of energy surge within her, flooding out the ache and soreness of tired muscles. As she had done so many times before at Oakland, she made her approach and landed.
As she started to taxi from the end of the runway, she noticed great crowds waiting at the ramp. Then the barriers broke and thousands of people ran toward her plane. Amelia chopped the throttle, cut the engine switch, and locked her brakes. She opened the hatch and stood on the seat, and as she shook her mop of hair from out of her helmet, a deafening roar assailed her ears.
Amelia climbed down from the Vega and dropped to the ground. Her knees felt weak; her face, as if it were drained. “I feel swell,” she said, stroking her hair with a quick sweep of the hand. She held a stray lock between her fingers. “I always look this way,” she explained. “I’m a little tired—you will have to excuse me.” She was driven away in a waiting car.
17. Solo from California to Mexico
For the next few weeks after the Pacific flight Amelia rested at her home near Toluca Lake and luxuriated in the warm California sun. She spread a blanket on the wide lawn and took sun baths. She stretched her long, straight legs over the soft wool of the blanket, closed her eyes against the glare of the sun; then, as if she were preparing maps and charts for a long flight, she surveyed her past accomplishments and her future plans.
The Friendship flight and its sudden catapulting to fame of an unknown social worker. The year before that when she had read in the Boston newspapers about Charles Lindbergh and his sensational solo conquest of the Atlantic: how she had thrilled to his victory. The “Lady Lindy” tag the press had given her because she looked like him: how it made for difficulty in trying to be herself and making her own flights. The Atlantic solo: she had to do it to deserve the fame that the Friendship flight had heaped upon her. The hop from Hawaii was free and clear: it involved no debt that had to be paid. And so would the rest of her flying be. Women could fly as well as men; she had proved it and would prove it. Then when she reached forty, that fortieth year which followed July 24 in 1937, she would quit—give up long-distance flying and retire to short jaunts for pleasure. Each thought had unfolded before her scrutiny, like new stretches of countryside beneath the wing of her Vega. Amelia turned over on the blanket and tanned her back. She was not yet thirty-seven.
Not for long after the Pacific flight, therefore, did she stay on the ground or remain confined in her attractive California cage. The year 1935 became one for record-making and record-breaking. On April 19 she flew 1,700 miles from Burbank, California, to Mexico City; then on May 8, from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey. The first flight she made because of an invitation from the president of Mexico; the second, because Wiley Post told her not to do it.