The Spirit of Adventure - Michael McCafferty

Day 5: The Calm Before the Storm
Paris, France
Today's big accomplishment was the move to a new hotel at Charles de Gaulle
airport from our hotel of the same chain at Le Bourget airport. It was necessitated by the
fact that the rooms at the Le Bourget hotel were sold out (two years in advance). In fact,
everything around Le Bourget was sold-out. The Paris Air Show had gobbled up
everything for miles. Not only were the rooms not available, they were selling for four
times the normal rate. It seemed that the Law of Supply and Demand worked just as well
in France.
My room at de Gaulle was quite a bit nicer than the one at Le Bourget with a
window that opened to the fresh air (the other room didn't), and the best part was that it
looked directly down the departure end of what must have been Runway 26 Left. I was
guessing at the runway number, as I used the compass in my watch to determine the
runway direction.
The watch also contained a barometer (which could therefore calculate and display
the current elevation/altitude), an air temperature sensor, gauge (for determining
underwater depth), stopwatch, calendar, alarm, and memory, as well as graphing
capabilities for changes in altitude and temperature. Oh yes, it also told the time! I used
this watch as my backup instrument cluster in the event that I would lose all electrics in
the biplane causing my wet compass to go FUBAR. This event was not likely to ever
happen, but backup was good. Just before leaving for this trip, my Breitling self-winding
timepiece decided to become completely unreliable (compared to its normal characteristic
of being just somewhat unreliable), so I was now wearing a monster Casio.
Tomorrow we were to re-assemble the biplane. We needed to attach the wings, the
elevator, the wheel pants, reconnect fuel lines, antennae, electrics, then refuel and ground
test the engine and instruments. If we were lucky, Carl might even get to test fly it. If
everything went well, we would have a couple of days to go flying over the French
countryside, exploring some grass fields for landing practice. Oh boy, good fun at last!!
It has been WAY too long since my last flight. I needed to fly again soon or I
would surely explode. Only my pilot friends would understand this.
Tomorrow, I was off to try to find navigation charts of the local area, and to
discover the procedures for flying in and out of the very busy jet airport of Le Bourget.
Two days ago, as we were unloading the Waco from the truck, there was a French
jet fighter doing low level aerobatics directly over the field. The traffic would only
intensify over the next few days as planes of every conceivable description would arrive
from all over the world.
A low-pressure system was predicted to move across northern Europe later today
and tomorrow. A thunderstorm passed directly over the hotel, dumping enormous rain
showers and flashing lightning all around. The commercial airlines kept running in spite
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