Everybody, Always

slowed to a stop, and I cut the engine and unpeeled my hands from the
controls.
Adam and I sat silently for a couple of seconds, staring out the front
of the plane. Then we looked at each other and huge grins ripped across
both of our faces.
“We did it! We landed in the lake!” We yelled into the silence as we
high-fived in the cockpit. After all those years of looking and wondering
if it could be done, we now had the answer.
But that was only half the equation. We still needed the answer to the
other half. Was there enough lake for us to get out? I could see Adam’s
mind grinding out the possibilities and what he would do. So I turned to
look at him.
“Okay, Adam, you fly us out of here.”
He shook his head violently, like a Labrador retriever with water in its
ears.
“No way.” He had a stern look to him, like he meant business. But I
did too.
While he was protesting, I unbuckled myself, got out of the pilot’s
seat, and moved to a back passenger seat to make way for the new pilot.
There was only one other place to sit, so Adam snapped into the pilot’s
seat, gripped the controls, and just stared. It was game on.
Adam taxied the plane all the way back to the weeds at the far end of
the lake. He was setting up the plane like a sprinter putting his feet into
the starting blocks.
A Beaver needs to be going fifty-two miles an hour before it will lift
off the water. If you try to take off when you’re going only forty-eight
miles an hour, the pontoon floats will dig into the water and slow you
down, and you’ll run out of lake and hit the trees. If you wait until you’re
going seventy miles per hour, you’ll run out of lake and hit the trees.
Adam knew the stakes, and I reminded him to keep his eye on the speed
because what he did would determine where we’d be spending the next
few days.