Immersion Playground
Book #3: Flight to Paradise
Chapter 9
Kate's eyes open as she stretches with a deep groan of contentment, a yawn escaping her as she does. She listens for Mac, for any noise indicating his location, before the smell of breakfast cooking reaches her. She smiles and stretches again before tumbling out of the bed and looking for something to put on. Their clothes were no longer on the floor, so she digs for a moment in the clothes hamper. She'll shower and clean up later.
"Good morning," she yawns as she enters the kitchen, Mac standing at the stove preparing breakfast, two slices of thick bread browning in a pan.
"Good morning to you, sunshine," he says with a grin. She's wearing his shirt from last night like a sleep shirt. The shirt swallows her, but she still looks sexy as hell, in a rumbled sort way. "Sleep well?"
"Very well," she says, propping on the counter. He's clean, pressed, and ready for the day. She hadn't even noticed when he got up. "How long have you been up?"
He checks the time. "About two hours. I got up, got in my exercise, cleaned up, and then started breakfast. I was going to bring it to you in bed, but..." He trails off as he flips the French toast in the pan.
"But what?"
"But you're here now, so I guess breakfast in bed will have to wait for another time," he says abandoning the toast to brown so he can plant a quick kiss on her.
"Your problem is you get up too damned early," she protests. "No man in his right mind gets up at six-thirty on a Sunday morning. Well, actually, the getting up isn't so bad. It's the getting out of bed that's the problem." She smiles when she grins at her, obviously taking her meaning.
He slides the two slices of toast out of the pan onto a plate, adding a couple of sausage links before handing the plate to her. "Would you like maple syrup—I have some of the real stuff—confectioner sugar, or some of that strawberry jam on your toast?" he asks, returning to the task of preparing two more slices of toast by dunking them in a thick, yellow concoction.
"What's confectioner sugar?"
"The white powdered sugar, like you find on doughnuts and such."
"Oh! That. Uhh... I'll have some of the jam."
He points to the freezer with the spatula. "Help yourself."
She opens the freezer and after a bit of searching turns up the jam. "Don't you drink coffee?" she asks, realizing there isn't any being made.
"No, not normally. I have some zapper coffee though, if you want that. It's in there too, somewhere."
She rummages in the freezer for a moment longer before turning up the coffee. Setting the jam aside, she pops the coffee in the zapper and pushes start. The timer jumps to three minutes and begins to count down as the machine starts to hum. "I'm having coffee, but what are you drinking?"
"I'll have milk. Does the body good, you know," he says with a grin, sliding the two pieces of toast out onto a second plate. "Go sit down. I'll be out in a moment to join you."
She takes their plates to the table and sits down. Mac places the jam in front of her and a glass of milk beside his plate. Moments later he's back with two more glasses of juice, a small one for her and a larger one for himself. A third trip to the kitchen produces butter and a large cup of steaming coffee for Kate. He makes a final round trip to the kitchen for silverware and a small server of milk and sugar for her coffee.
"Why didn't you say something? I could have helped carry some of this," she protests. She still isn't used to having such a large spread for breakfast. If she keeps eating like this, she'll have to start joining him on the exercise equipment.
"It's fine," he says with a smile. "You don't know where everything is."
"I could have still helped."
"Eat," he says waving at her plate with a grin, "before the toast gets cold and gummy." She smiles then begins to spread the jam on her toast before offering it to Mac, who declines. As they eat, they talk about the day. "I have a surprise planned for you after breakfast," he says noncommittally, not looking at her.
"Oh?" she queries with a grin. "And what would that be?" she asks, though she has a pretty good idea of what his surprise is, and she's looking for to it.
"I thought we'd take the
Beauty
out and log a few miles before filling it with gas for tomorrow."
"Really?" she asks in excitement. She thought he was going to try to bed her, but this is even better!
"If you want to. If you don't, we can hop to the airport tomorrow before we leave for LA."
"No, I'd love to go. Are you sure you don't mind?" she asks trying to contain her enthusiasm.
He snorts a chuckle. "No, I don't mind. Any excuse to fly."
***
"That's the lever. Pull it down," Mac calls from the wing of the
Beauty.
He watches as Kate pulls the lever down, causing the hose in his hand to jerk and spasms as the pump fills the hose with fuel. The flight from LA to Paradise approaches the limit the Goose can fly without a refueling stop. A good stiff headwind the entire way and it becomes pucker inducing close. So, while the
Beauty
has plenty of fuel for the short hop to the Oroville airport, he wants to put a couple hundred pounds of fuel in so they'll have some time to sightsee along the way.
"If you have gas here, why don't you just fill the plane here?" she asks as she watches.
"Because I only have enough fuel on site for one fill-up, and the fuel is cheaper, faster, and easier at the airport. Normally I just fly into the airport when I fly home, gas and go, then top off when I get home if I need to," he explains as the plane fuels. "And the tank is half empty already, so I don't have enough to fill it anyway. They'll deliver the fuel on a Sunday, but trust me, you don't want to pay the delivery charge," he says with a grin, pinging the airport for a delivery of fuel for next week while he's thinking of it.
She grunts in understanding. Flying may be fun, but she's getting the notion that owning an airplane is a lot more complicated than owning a car.
"Okay. That's enough," he says after twenty minutes. She pushes the lever up. "This is why I fuel at the airport," he says climbing down. "I only put four-hundred pounds in. I could have put in the entire fifteen hundred pounds in the same amount of time at the airport." He flips a switch on the pump control panel, runs the pump for a moment, and then turns the pump off again before returning the switch to its original position. "Draining the hose," he says as he begins to roll the hose up.
She helps him ease the plane out of the hanger, driving the tug after he connects the tow bar first to the plane, then the blue and white tug. Once the plane is clear of the hanger doors, he waves for her to stop then disconnects the bar from the plane, freeing her to run the tug back into the hanger and park it.
As she walks out of the hanger, she sees him looking at her expectantly. "What?" she asks walking up.
"I'm waiting on you to help pre-flight the plane."
They walk around the plane, Mac showing Kate what to check, and how. He keeps the
Beauty
in pristine condition, so no problems are expected or found. He had quite enough risk taking while in the Army, so he's careful and meticulous in checking over the plane. Unlike a car, a minor problem in an airplane won't just leave you standing on the side of the road, especially in the surrounding mountains.
Pre-flight over, he turns to her, Kate looking every bit the part of a pilot in her new sunglasses. "You ready to fly?"
She tries to play it like the cool aviator chick she feels like, but she can't suppress the huge smile that split her face. "Yes, Captain, I am."
He chuckles at her enthusiasm. "Very well, First Officer. Please board the aircraft." He boosts her into the plane without bothering with the steps then gracefully hops aboard himself. By the time he has the hatch secured, and he makes his way to the front of the plane, she's already strapping in, her movements sure, obviously having retained what she learned on the flight out.
"What's this?" she asks as he hands her a laminated sheet of paper.
"Pre-flight checklist. You read it out, I check to make sure it's done."
"Don't you have this memorized by now?" she asks as she scans the twenty-two items on the list, and then flips it over to find a similar, post-flight list, on the back.
"Probably, but if I go down the list, I don't forget anything. So, number one?"
"Number one," she begins, "Battery power to on." Less than two minutes later they've completed all but the final item on the checklist. "Item twenty-two, engine start."
"Engine start," he repeats, pushing a button in the overhead console.
She can hear the whining wheeze of the right engine turning over and she looks out her side windows to watch the prop slowing turning until with a sputtering roar the engine erupts to live. He waits a moment then pushes another button while watching out of his window until she can hear the left—no, not left, port he calls it—engine roar into life. He flips the button covers closed and grins at her. "Ready to get wet?"
"I think I'm already wet," she replies with a grin causing him to laugh as he pushes the throttles forward, easing the aircraft toward the lake.
With the engines just above idle to allow them to warm, the Goose wades into the water. Mac waits until the
Beauty
is floating before asking Kate to raise the landing gear, pointing to the lever when she hesitates.
"Gear up and... locked," she says as
Gear Up - Locked
appears on the display.
"Watch for debris," he says as the plane bobs in the water. Keeping the revs low, he taxies the plane down the lake as they look for logs or other floating items that can damage the plane. She notices that the plane is bobbing more now than when they landed Friday and the windsock at Mac's house has considerably more life.
"Water is rougher today than Friday," she says. He seemed totally unperturbed by the waves, but she's still anxious.
"Yeah. It's going to be a little rough until we get up on plane," he says, looking at her and sensing her worry. "Don't worry. We can take a hell of a lot more than this." Reaching the end of his taxi he turns into the wind. "Hang on," he says pointing to the control wheel. "It's going to get a little rough."
She watches as he shoves both throttles forward, the twin engines roaring in fury, as the plane seems to wallow in the water, slowly picking up speed, much slower than when they took off from John Wayne Friday afternoon. As the plane accelerates, slowly at first, the waves on the lake hamming into the hull of the aircraft, makes the entire plane thrum and vibrate, but as the speed increases the hammering became less and less until with a leap, the plane flings itself into the air.
"Not too bad," he says as the Goose claws for altitude, Mac turning the plane in a long climbing arc, allowing her to look back at the lake as he slowly retracts the flaps.
As the plane settles into the cruise, he begins to throttle the engines back and trimming the plane. "How long until the airport?" she asks.
"If we were going straight there, about five minutes. But I thought you might like to see some of the countryside first," he responds banking the plane to follow the terrain.
