By Clyde Edgerton | Spring 2007 | Features

Johnny the Kid, and Me - Flying the Coast

Best-selling novelist Clyde Edgerton takes us on a wild ride into the blue younder, piloting a Cirrus SR-22 over the sand dunes at Kitty Hawk

January 21, 1991
1:40 p.m.:
My precious, old classic airplane, annabelle, lies upside down in a field. Totaled. After crawling out, I stand staring at it. I am shaken but okay. I never dreamed something like this would happen to me. My heart is broken, and somewhere inside me, in the room that houses my self-confidence, a lamp just went out.

I do not get back up on the horse like I'm supposed to. I quit flying . . . 

October 1, 2006
10:30 a.m.:
 . . . until today.

The dream of piloting an airplane again has haunted me for fifteen years. In about three hours I'll have my chance: an opportunity to fly up the east coast of North Carolina in a four-seat Cirrus SR-22. A pilot will take me from Wilmington, North Carolina, north to Kitty Hawk and on up to Newport News, Virginia, and then we'll fly back home.