We Take a Little Trip: 1920s Biplane Adventure

Imagine a time when hopping across the country in an airplane wasn’t about reclining seats or inflight entertainment but was instead a thrilling, unpredictable adventure. Picture boarding a “cloud Pullman” for a business trip not knowing if you’d actually reach your destination without detours, blizzards, or makeshift landings. In 1928, C.R. Borkland chronicled a remarkable journey across America, flying through snowstorms and scaling mountain passes, all to demonstrate the transformative power of air travel. 

This tale isn’t just a historical recount; it’s a lens into the early days of aviation—an era of courageous pilots, daring passengers, and the growing pains of an industry that would one day shrink the world. 

Join me as I delve into Borkland’s daring escapade, and get ready for a vivid snapshot of how far we’ve come in aviation. Stick around; you won’t want to miss these glimpses into the incredible history of flight!

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We Take a Little Trip by C.R. Borkland, published in Popular Aviation, May, 1928.

The public has been fed up a little with accounts of nice easy, fast trips, and it may be that a little account of a trip taken under about all the difficulties possible will give some people an idea of what the transport companies are doing to overcome them. 

This trip was undertaken for purely business reasons, and business dictated taking the air. From a purely dollars and cents standpoint it paid. Figure the cost of transportation from Chicago to San Francisco, from the Golden Gate City to Los Angeles, then to San Diego, back to Los Angeles, from there to Salt Lake City, Denver, Wichita and back to Chicago. 

Figure the expense of berths, meals, tips and all the other little extras you never can remember and have to lump on the swindle sheet as “misc.” Then put a conservative value on your wasted time, the time you spend reading magazines on the train, looking out of the window, trying to sleep nights, trying to stay awake daytimes so you can sleep nights. 

It actually figured a clear gain in money, and it also permitted me to travel on Sundays, nights and other times out of business hours. 

Let me say right here that you do not meet with any misrepresentation when you apply for passage with the air transport companies. You are told that you may be delayed for weather reasons, that portions of the trip may be uncomfortable, and that you may not particularly care for it. Quotas of passengers are not hard to fill; in fact, on many of the lines you cannot fly when you please, unless you take the precaution of booking in advance. 

These cloud Pullmans are apt to be as crowded as any of the rail variety. In fact, the only difference that I can see is that the air transport companies have no upper berths to push you into. Boeing tells me that the first of June they will put on two twelve passenger busses in place of the two place and pilot jobs now used. At first only for the week end runs, but later for the daily runs. 

That ought to help the crowding some, for then the passengers won’t have to nurse mail sacks part of the way. Anyway, I’m getting away from the point. 

J. E. Leopold, who was in charge of the hangar at Chicago Municipal Flying Field took my $200 and introduced me to Billy Rose, the song writer, who was to be my fellow passenger. Rose was trying to get out to the coast to see Fanny Brice’s new act open on Monday at Los Angeles. It was Saturday night. He made it. 

Not being a successful song writer, but a poor drummer boy who earns his salt by telling folks how good his wares are, I figured that by leaving Saturday night I would be able to go to work in San Francisco Monday morning with no loss of time. I made it, too. 

That morning it was only eight below zero in Chicago, and try as I might I couldn’t keep my mind fixed on sunny California. Somehow or other my feet kept reminding me that I was in the Windy City with the Bomby Climate. Fortunately my trunk yielded up a lot of old flying togs and I felt I would not suffer from the cold. 

The weather reports from points along the line were not so encouraging. Ralph Johnson, our pilot, decided to wait a while. It had warmed up a little, a few degrees, and was snowing. We loafed, swapped lies and nodded until 3:27 A.M. in Boeing’s warm hangar. By that time Billy Rose had decided that we could reach the Pacific Coast quicker by walking. 

Johnson started and pushed us over Illinois at about 130 miles per hour, in what was as interesting a night ride as anyone could ask for—if they stayed awake. But not worrying about the Illinois terrain, as I have had the pleasure of seeing it from that angle, and many others, many times for many years, I let old man Snooze take charge, and Rose and myself were soon asleep. 

The drone of the engine ceased and I woke up by the reverse alarm clock method at 5:05 A.M. We were pulling into Iowa City. Ten minutes were not enough to see the city, so we stayed in while the plane was gassed up. We left at 5:15. 

More rest. Rose may be a regular song writer, but he never could write words to fit his snore, and make a hit out of it. I woke again with a start—it was 8:19 and we were in Omaha. 

Doc Coomer announced that we could stretch our legs. Doc and C.A. Sluder told us that the water had frozen, but they had secured a breakfast for us. That was welcome, but we had to eat it in the ship, as we only waited twenty minutes while they changed the mail from one ship to another. 

There was no loafing after getting started, but the start was a long pull. This time the weather was clear. It was 7:39 A.M. Talk about air travel being fast, here we are leaving a city forty minutes before we arrive there. L.L. Bowen, the pilot for this section, tells us to set our watches back an hour. 

The country west of Omaha is flat and uninteresting. We are flying low. At 10:00 A.M. we arrive at North Platte, and stay only ten minutes. We leave in the same ship with Bowen still piloting. 

More flat country and we reach Cheyenne at 11:20. H.B. Shaver is in charge of the field here, and is as pretty a field as you could ask for. About thirty miles off the mountains rise right up off the plains. 

Neither Rose nor myself are so keen about the nice lunch they had for us. Henry Boonstra is flying us. We take off right for the mountains straight at Sherman Hill, which has the highest beacon in the world on it. If they call these things hills, how high are their mountains? 

It was just noon when we left Cheyenne and in about three quarters of an hour it started in to snow. Snow—it was a blizzard. I never saw anything like the way it swirled around us. We had been flying up a valley, mountains on both sides, and when this snow shut in you couldn’t see them. Boonstra went right down to within a couple of hundred feet of the ground. He was looking for a field where he had made a forced landing two years before. 

How he found it I don’t know, because he certainly couldn’t see it. It must be the same sort of instinct that brings migrating birds back to the same place year after year. We started circling around. No chance to tell which way the wind was blowing. Snow whirled all around us. Once in a while we could catch a glimpse of a man on the ground. He caught the idea presently for he extended both arms and then waved the windward arm forward, something like the crawl stroke in swimming. 

The field was plenty long enough, but there was a snow covered haystack at one end. It looked as high as the Wrigley Building, but might have been a few feet shorter. The trouble was that it was a disappearing haystack. One minute you could see it and the next minute it was gone. Never mind, with the exhibition of flying that Boonstra had already given us, neither of us had any doubts about the landing. 

Down we went, and a good landing on the property of Arthur J. Cheeseborough, who seems to own most of the country around here. It is called Elk Mountain. Mr. Cheeseborough fed us and warmed us until the snow was over. 

By 3:00 P.M. it was clear and a crowd had gathered, about all the inhabitants of Elk Mountain, as you can judge by the photograph. 

Off we jumped, over more mountains and then a stretch of fairly flat country. Boonstra was trying to save time and make up some of the time lost in the Elk Mountain landing, so he decided to land at Cherokee for gas. There is an emergency field there and we landed at 3:30. We helped the old caretaker and his wife gas up the ship and took off twenty minutes later. Cold, and windy? you never felt anything like it. We would have liked to stay and visit for a while. Sometimes these emergency field caretakers do not see anyone for weeks on end.

At 7:00 P.M. we arrived at Salt Lake City. There are no beacons on the line west of here so they do not fly at night. Boonstra took us to the hotel and we certainly put in a good night’s rest. The only trouble is leaving so early in the morning. 

The field manager called for us before seven o’clock in his model T (ground style-not air) and at 7:05 we took off, with Bob Ellis piloting. 

We held another hill-hopping contest for two hours and landed at Elko, Nevada. We had passed over the Great Salt Lake Desert, which is nothing but a bunch of muddy ground blown clean. 

In ten minutes we were ready to leave and arrived at Reno at 10:40. Twenty minutes later, with C.K. Vance as pilot, we left Reno for what is the most beautiful part of the trip. Mountains, wind-blown clouds, deep valleys, hills, and that gem of a lake, Lake Tahoe. 

Then over the last of the hills, and over the green flats, and it’s warm, with some real sun. No, it’s hot. This is the real estate man’s Paradise. The only place where they do not have to lie- much. 

Vance has a phone rigged up with the cabin. It’s a one way affair, he can talk to you, but you can’t call him back. He tells his passengers about the country as you fly over it. 

At Sacramento, at 12:05 we dropped the mail and then were off down the river, past more flats and a few mere knolls, comparing them with the hills around Cheyenne. 

Here’s Oakland Airport at 12:35, and it is some airport. Well, here I am, better than two thousand miles away from Chicago, ready to go to work, and I have lost only a half a day. In spite of the forced landing and the consequent loss of time, the bad weather and all of that, I’m certainly ahead of the time game right here. 

You might make fifty such trips and never run into the combination of circumstances that made me late. But if you did, you would come out of it with the same idea. Every one of the pilots is a real flyer, and there is only one thing that he thinks more of than getting the mail through on time-and that is the safety and comfort of his passengers. 

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As we disembark from this exhilarating journey, it’s clear that early air travel was more than just getting from A to B—it was about grit, adventure, and the pioneering spirit. C.R. Borkland’s narrative reminds us of a time when even business trips were extraordinary endeavors, with pilots like Ralph Johnson and Boonstra forging paths through the unknown. These pioneers laid the foundation for the smooth, efficient travel we often take for granted today. If stories like these captivate you, keep following my channel. There’s a treasure trove of aviation history waiting to be uncovered, and each tale promises to transport you to a world where the sky was, quite literally, the limit.

Thanks again, and I’ll see you in the next one!