by Glenn Daly

If we taxied all the way to the end of the runway," said Tailspin Tommy, "by the time we reached the other end, this flight would qualify as a cross country." This came in response to my question about a request for an intersection takeoff. "Don't worry," he continued, "We'll still have plenty of runway left after we're in the air." We stopped on the taxiway and he checked the mags and carb heat, then obtained a takeoff clearance. He nudged the throttle forward and the seven cylinder radial throbbed to full decibel life, the noise muffled by my Snoopy flying helmet, and the high-speed patois of the tower controller crackling through the earphones. By the time we hit the runway center line, we were airborne. Two hundred feet off the deck, still with a couple thousand feet of runway ahead of us, he said words I had not expected to hear: "It's your airplane, if you want it."

"How 'bout we wait one, on that," I said. "I can't see over the cowl and that controller makes my ears ache. Maybe when we're over water, okay?"

"Whatever you say," came Tommy's reply.

Sure, I wanted to fly, but it had been ten years since I had last piloted an airplane and, more specifically, I didn't want to be found lacking in my piloting skills by someone I admired.

We climbed to a thousand feet, the breeze not nearly the factor I thought it would be - the windscreen above the fuselage tempering the force of the slipstream in my face. A peek-a-boo cloud deck teased with the blue sky above, the day not warm, nor too cool, with calm air and a light onshore breeze.

We banked left and headed south along the coast, beyond the airport traffic area, and Tommy again gave me the chance to take the stick. "Not yet," I said, still too nervous, or stupid, or constipated. We talked about a flight I had made earlier in the week, hanging inverted from the straps of a Grob 103 glider, and I had described my lack of communion with my aerobatics brothers. Tommy said, "We can't do loops or rolls in this, FAA won't allow it. The most we can do are Lazy 8's, some tight turns about a point, a slip or two - nothing spectacular, nothing gut wrenching." A pause, then those words, again: "It's your airplane, if you want it."

I took a breath. Now or never. "Okay," I said, sounding like Mickey when he first met Minny. I caressed the stick, rested my feet on the rudder pedals. "I've got it," I said.

"You've got it."

There came no cataclysmic, earth shattering, sky opening phenomenon. Travel Air NC674H barely noticed the neophyte at it's controls. It just kept flying, like it had for the past 67 years: for the detective who had transported his bloodhounds in the front cockpit, where I now sat; for the guy who had hitchhiked five days to buy it, then got held up for an extra $25 because the airplane's owner knew he had no other way home; for the guy who was cited for low-flying, then lost his license doing aerobatics over houses, and busted again for flying under the influence. The airplane was built to be in the air, and no out-of-current, low-time, ex-Yankee pilot was gonna keep it from it's birthright.

The thing about a Travel Air is that it was built to fly - all that wing, all that lift - it literally leaps into the air, and hates like hell to come down. It doesn't fly fast, 80 knots is all it'll cruise at, no matter how much power you hang on its snout. It's hard to start if it's cold, and, if you don't wear helmet or headphones, you'll need to invest in a hearing aid - but all it wants to do is fly. Customers who emerge from that front cockpit, after their first ride, all have the same wistful look that betrays a thought I had: "My God, that was the most fun I've ever had in my life." And then: "Now, what?"

"I lied when I told you it was dangerous," says Barnstorming Adventures, Ltd.'s owner, Kate Lister, after Tommy had forward slipped it back onto the runway, kicking it out over the numbers and flaring onto 24 at Carlsbad's McClellan-Palomar Airport. "It's dangerous to your pocketbook, because, once you've been up, you want to go up again. And again." And again.

It had happened to her. Kate had been a Philly banker, then a corporate finance consultant, her world defined by ledgers and formulae, and guys in pinstripes who wore bifocals and thought a big night out was comparing notes on failed audits. She did a consulting job for Tom Harnish, who, in another life, had been a computer geek - after a 9 year Navy career flying A-6's and EA-6B's, for a while aboard the Constellation, at Yankee Station, "somewhere off the coast of North Vietnam". Tom had left the Navy, taught flying at Ohio State, got involved in CD-ROM and bought a '24 Travel Air to keep his hand in and his time up.

After the consulting gig, Tom asked Kate to go for a spin in his biplane. She returned the next day and signed up for lessons. In six months, she had bought Travel Air NC674H, had a brand new pilot's license, a business plan and the contacts to get the financing - and she and Tom were reincarnated: 'Cash Register Kate', the money lady and 'Tailspin Tommy', her chief pilot. In two years, they introduced four thousand people to the exhilaration of open cockpit flight. For a while, they had a C-45 and would fly low level missions over Philadelphia - with WWII costumes, a pointer, a briefing room, lots of 'roger's' and 'wilco's' and a post-mission dinner at the 94th Aero Squadron near North Philly Airport.

Why would a successful business person, a banker with a world of connections, lecture opportunities and consulting jobs, quit her high flying financial world and become a barnstormer?

"Pantyhose," says Kate. "Probably the entire reason for this business is pantyhose." And on winter Monday mornings after rained-out weekends when she's calculating their slim receipts and contemplating a 'real job', it's the thought of pantyhose that keeps Kate motivated.

They decided to leave the East Coast for a warmer clime, where January rides wouldn't require the Pillsbury Doughboy look popularized by Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the cover of _North to the Orient_. Tom and Kate chuckle when they recall their trip west, in February '94, o.a.t., 16 degrees, New Garden Airport, Chester County, south of Philly.

"There were already several inches of snow on the ground," says Kate. "We had to chip the hangar door open to get the airplane out of it. We had the oil pre-heated the night before to try to keep the engine warm and it still wouldn't start. We finally got it started by blowing hot air on it for about an hour and a half. I had on long underwear, two flight suits, a ski suit, a down jacket, a neoprene face mask, a head sock, styrofoam boots with those discs in them to make them warm, and two pairs of gloves. I dropped my chart at one point and I just looked down at it and cried, because I couldn't reach it," she says, with a chuckle, now. "It took us ten days to get out here and it didn't get above thirty [degrees fahrenheit] until Texas. It was just a brutal, brutal trip."

Tom adds, "The plane will fly for three hours on a tank of gas - but we couldn't stand the cold for more than two."

Says Kate, "There were a couple times where the winds were so bad that ... two hours were gone and we weren't even half way through our route, so we wound up having to turn back to the airport we'd left, earlier, in freezing temperatures."

They arrived, however, safely, and set up their business. They found money for another Travel Air and a Piper Cub through Peninsula Bank, by following principles they had taken from a book they co-wrote, published last year by John Wiley and Sons, called "Finding Money: The Small Business Guide to Financing".

What they offer are trips back in time, when airplanes cruised at 80 knots, when you could still smell flowers in bloom, from the cockpit - as you still can when the Carlsbad flower season begins in March.

Another favorite time is whale watching season, December through early March, when the California gray whales migrate along the coast. "It is spectacular," says Tom, "You can see the whole whale, not just the tail, not just the spout, the whole thing, under the water."

Kate says, "I screamed so loud the first time I saw one that I hurt my voice. We came back and landed and I went running up to the restaurant over here, and I said, 'Ohhhh, you've gotta see it ... there's a whale out there.' I would have taken people up for free." The whale weary denizens of the airport restaurant were unimpressed.

Prices are cheap, considering that there are only 30 Travel Airs still flying. Rides begin at $98 for two people and twenty minutes 'around the patch', or can be tailored to your needs. Their Red Baron Thrill Ride includes mock bombing runs on haystacks, with Lazy-8's and mild aerobatics maneuvers, but no spins, loops, barrel rolls or hammerhead stalls. There's a romantic 'Sunset Snuggler', too, one full hour in the air and as many sunsets as you can stand, for $298.

Kate says, "We don't have any predetermined routes - we've got places that people tend to like to go ... usually out over the coast, but if somebody wants to go see their house or something, we're happy to go do that." Operating under Part 91 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, their flights are limited to a range of twenty-five miles and must depart from and return to the same field.

If you're by yourself and want to fly, one of the Travel Airs has a removable stick. Tailspin Tommy has over six thousand hours in the air and is as positive and relaxed an instructor as I've ever found. The airplane itself is a dream - at 2800 lbs, with all those wings and wires and struts, and that huge radial, you'd think it would fly like a truck, but it handles like a sport car, with an extra dimension. Tom draws a similar analogy. "It's like riding in a convertible in the sky," he says.

Next time you're feeling good about yourself, or need a break from whatever joy-sucking gig you've fallen into, dial 1 800 SKY-LOOP and make a reservation. And, after you land, you'll display that pole-axed look that all of your predecessors will instantly recognize. "Now what?" you'll think. You'll probably arrive at the same conclusion the rest of us have: "Go up and do it again," of course. Tailspin Tommy and Cash Register Kate will take good care of you.