Sunshine! It feels so foreign, so exotic, and so wonderful! I know that you are comfortably ensconced in the warm embrace of summer, but back here in late April, the upper Midwest is just now escaping the clutches of a memorably brutal winter. My home airport, Airlake, is bursting to life from its sleepy state of semihibernation. A few dirty, withering snow mounds linger between the hangars, but the happy denizens of the field pay them little attention as they throw open their bifold doors, sweep the cobwebs from their wings, and prepare to return to the air. It’s not that you can’t fly in the winter in Minnesota; it’s just such an uncomfortable pain in the ass that many don’t bother. Our club’s 1946 Piper Cub here, for example, has a rather marginal heater and is a bear to get started (by hand, of course) below 20 degrees. There’s a reason I’m the only one who’s flown it since November, and only a few times at that. Now I’m preflighting it comfortably in short sleeves. We could almost even fly with the door open!
As I run my hand down the left fuselage, drumming it softly, my wife, Dawn, is busy in the cockpit connecting headsets and checking the radio battery. She’s as eager for this flight as I am. Besides the splendid weather and the jovial atmosphere around the airport, we are headed to one of our favorite places around: Stanton Airfield. It’s not that we dislike Airlake, mind you; it’s a vibrant airport with an active EAA chapter, a busy FBO, a lively light-sport aircraft scene and several flying clubs. But it also has modern niceties like pavement, lighting and an ILS. Stanton, however, exists in a permanent time warp, in another age, as the Cub does. I’ve written before that this Cub is a time machine, and nowhere is that truer than at Stanton.
