The longest route to
Oshkosh
By Barbara A. Schmitz
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Mike Buser with his
Pelican he flew from Brazil.
Photo by Phil Weston |
Mike Buser didn’t take
the straightest route to Oshkosh, but it might have been the most
beautiful one.
Buser left Ubatuba,
Brazil, on July 1, flying his Pelican with its 100-hp Rotax engine and
100-knot cruising speed. About 11,000 miles later, he arrived at EAA
AirVenture 2006 on July 23. He’s staying throughout the week and will
begin his flight back to Brazil next week.
His trip has taken him
across the Amazon, around Venezuela, up the Caribbean to Florida, across
to Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountains, diagonally to Calgary, and to
Dawson City and Inuvik in the Polar Circle. Definitely not the
straightest route to get to AirVenture.
He flew with a friend,
Rual Fernandez, of Chili, until reaching Calgary, and later Fernandez
flew commercially to AirVenture to join Buser for a few days here. Buser
will make the trip home solo.
Buser, who owns two small
hotels in Brazil, flew up to eight hours a day with good weather, and
said some of the most beautiful scenery he encountered was in the
Rockies and the Canadian forests where "it’s just lakes, streams
and trees and a few cities in between. It’s a place filled with
nature."
Buser said he began
flying four years ago and does it for the feeling of freedom it gives
him. In fact, it was that freedom that made him decide to fly himself,
rather than go on a commercial airline as he did once before when coming
to Oshkosh.
His only problem was a
little turbulence one day near Venezuela. "It made me a little
anxious."
He isn’t sure what
route he’ll take home yet, back over the Caribbean or through Central
America "I need to study the maps yet and see where airports are
that I can find fuel. But it would be nice to be able to take a
different route than the one I came here with."
While he had no trouble
on the way here, he’s a little better prepared for emergencies on the
way back.
While at AirVenture, he
bought a personal locator beacon. "I hope I don’t have to use it,
but if I go down in the Amazon or parts of Canada, no one will be able
to see me with all the trees."
He’s also hoping the trip back will be
just as smooth as it was out. "The world is great and there is so
much more that I’d like to see. Maybe I’ll go to Africa or Europe
next year."
