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Twenty years ago, when I lived in Southern California, I went to an air show at the Cable airport in Upland, California. All the hangars were open for the day, and I wandered into one that looked more like a museum than a hangar. There were airplanes hanging from the ceiling, memorabilia on all of the walls, and big flip-type poster displays of black and white aviation photos that dated back to the 1920s and 1930s.

Several of the photos were autographed, and when I looked closer, I noted, with a shock, that they were all made out to me. "To Lane — Best wishes, Tony LeVier." "To Lane — blue skies and tailwinds — Jimmy Dolittle." Wow. Had I had a previous life I'd somehow forgotten about?

Turns out the photos were made out not to me, but to the owner of the hangar — a retired airline pilot named Lane Leonard, who'd known all those luminaries way back when. Lane and I got to chatting, what with our shared monikers and all, and we hit it off well enough that when I left, he gave me a parting gift — a Xerox copy of the tower log from the Clover Field airport from August, 1929. A tower log whose entries therefore included signatures of Amelia Earhart, Blanche Noyes, Bobbi Trout, Louise Thaden and all the other women who participated in the first women's transcontinental air race, dubbed the "Powder Puff Derby." That first race started at Clover Field (now Santa Monica Airport) and finished, eight days later, in Cleveland, Ohio. And the participants had all signed the tower log before they'd departed.

So I've always had a bit of a warm spot in my place for that 1929 race, even without taking into account all the adventure it contained, or the doors it cracked a little further open for women in aviation. But I never really knew many details about how the race played out (aside from the fact that Louise Thaden won), or even about the lives of the women who participated.

Enter filmmaker Heather Taylor, who's answered a lot of those questions in a highly-rated documentary on the race that she's just completed. The documentary is called Breaking Through the Clouds, and it debuted to a five minute standing ovation at the end of this year's Air Race Classic last month.

Lucky for the rest of us, that's not the only place it's being shown. It's also the EAA AirVenture show in two weeks. So if you're headed to Oshkosh, and you're going to be around on Tuesday morning, I suggest starting the show with a little inspiration about why we do this flying thing in the first place — which this well-done documentary certainly provides. (for more information, see www.breakingthroughtheclouds.com)

The film is being shown Tuesday morning, July 27th, at 9:30 am, at the Skyscape Theatre in the EAA Museum. (It's also being shown August 14th at the College Park Air Museum in Maryland, if you're not going to be at the Air Venture show.)