"Hey Chip" I said, just about every day "didja get the engine yet?"
"Not yet" Chip would say. "Soon." One day I asked him and he said "Yep." It was the greatest day ever.
I made the necessary arrangements to go to his house to pick it up. Mainly that entailed donning a backpack and getting on my bike. Chips house was only a handful of miles from mine from a satellite perspective, but from behind the handlebars it was significantly longer. I had to take the dreaded "Wilson road" which was basically impassable for any vehicle not equipped with chains, and the result of every bike trip down it resulted in the tell-tale streak of mud, spattered in a speckly line up the back of whatever I happened to be wearing.
On the day the engine was ready, most of the mud hit the backpack. The rest of it hit the back of my head. I knew enough not to smear it around when it was still wet, it was easier just to just let it dry and then shake it out. To the untrained eye, however, I was a kid with a muddy head who didn't seem to mind it. Chip's brother Sean thought it was hilarious, but his mom wouldn't let me in the house that day.
I didn't blame her. I'm surprised she ever let me in the house at all, given my nearly perfect record of managing to wreak some sort of havoc every time I visited. I was a force of nature. Somehow I would end up in the brook and came back in the house completely soaked, or I'd get covered in pine-pitch, or I'd crash the dirt bike. Once, while being towed behind the snow-mobile on an inner tube by Chip, I'd been rocketed into a patch of trees and wound up with very little skin remaining on my left side. Another time, while flailing around in the throes of story-telling, I knocked a lit candle off the shelf and blasted hot wax all over her freshly-swept kitchen floor. Still, she kept letting me in the house. Michele, if you're reading this, thanks for that! You sure put up with a lot out of me over the years.
"Where's the engine?" I asked.
"We gotta get it out." Chip said.
"Out of where?"
"The lawnmower."
This sent up a few red flags, even for me, but that wasn't enough to stop us. The lawnmower was out in the shed, where lawnmowers belong. We set upon it with wrenches and hammers, but our operation was shut down prematurely by Chip's dad, who wasn't the least bit amused by the fact that we were attempting to unceremoniously gut his perfectly good lawnmower. We hadn't made much progress; it is remarkably difficult to remove a lawnmower engine without the appropriate tools. That's probably why we were allowed to continue being alive.
It was a major setback; our aircraft would remain grounded until we could come up with a new means of propulsion. Our brains, powered as they were by youthful enthusiasm, churned out idea after bad idea. Finally we settled on the most obvious solution: The craft was now a glider! Given the right wind conditions, we could sail around like autumn leaves on a gentle breeze.
All we had to do was launch it off the roof.
Previous: Part II
Next: Part IV
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