KSMO - Santa Monica, CA, USA

World Heritage Sites Air Adventures: Comeback 2 USAmerica Air Tour
Flight Log #11 – October 12, 2025
Edition Title: Ramen, Missions, Bourbon, and the Brotherhood of Smoke
Log Entry by Mark Twain, Guest Co-Pilot
We slipped out of Miami under a moon fat as a preacher’s purse, the dogs bundled up in “Maui” and likely dreaming of navigating customs and illicit treats. Cropduster and I, left to our own schemes, stitched the night together with the kind of airstrips, stories, and coffee you don’t tell your physician about. In Tallahassee, we found breakfast fit to resurrect a mule and coffee sturdy enough to float a horseshoe—fuel for both souls and cylinders.

Skirting the Gulf, our journey took on a tempo between time zones and tall tales. Galveston delivered coffee salted by sea air and mischief, then westward to San Antonio, where those ancient missions baked in the sun—stone stacked with faith and history, waiting for the next century’s worth of sinners and saints. I tipped my hat as we circled, reminded there’s hard-won hope in anything built to last.

In San Antonio, we feasted on ramen that could stand trial in any Texas court: brisket thick as a hymnbook, noodles with more backbone than a brigade, and a broth that preached like old bourbon on a cold night. Carlsbad Caverns gaped beneath us, Roswell waved but offered only dry wind and wilder stories, then came Phoenix and Palm Springs where coffee grew sterner, and conversation looser, as the miles paid out.

Santa Monica waited on the far side of ten and a half hours—a kingdom of fog, neon, and the promise of something worth remembering. As the Pacific winked out yonder, I fished up a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23, rare enough to make a banker blush and silky as a gambler’s promise. Yet Cropduster trumped the pot, producing a secret stash of Cohiba Behike cigars—rarer than honesty at a poker table, sacred among souls who know the value of good smoke. I rolled that cigar like a river stone, struck a match, and let the smoke curl skyward as the stories unspooled and the laughter rang out sharper than a coyote chorus. For one night, time stood still—bound by coffee, brotherhood, ramen, bourbon, and cigars under a California sky so wide even regret seemed to take a holiday.

Tomorrow we break down the old Dragonfly and load her up for the ocean’s embrace. But tonight, find us here: glasses raised, smoke swirling, the world’s burdens held at arm’s length by friendship, strong spirits, and one final tale before Hawaii calls us onward.

Aloha oe

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