Page:The Fun of It.pdf/187

Rh which greeted the derby at the prearranged stops along the route were women. They came to see what the powder puffers themselves looked like and after that what kind of airplanes they had. Some were so interested in these they poked umbrellas through the fabric on the wings to discover what was inside. Since then I have maintained that women’s hesitancy in accepting air travel is simply because they are uninformed about it. What peo­ple don’t understand, they usually fear.

Funny and serious situations continuously arose behind the scenes on the race. Blanche Noyes dis­covered fire in the baggage compartment of her plane and had to come down on a mesquite covered section of western Texas to put it out. No one knows how she managed to land without damaging the plane nor how she took off again from such a place.

Now and then some of the inexperienced pilots got lost, some ran out of gasoline, some were forced down by motor trouble. During the course of the race, more than one had to pick out the best spot available and make an unscheduled descent. Of course, when a pilot finds it necessary to land away from an established airport he—or she—heads for a good big pasture if one is around. One day one of the girls had to seek a pasture for some reason and the best one she saw had animals in it. Never­theless she landed safely and then to her consterna­tion watched the creatures solemnly walk toward her. Her version of the story is that she promptly