Chap 11

In July 1934 Amelia and Putnam went to Wyoming for a two week
vacation.
After returning to Rye, she said to Putnam that she wanted to fly
across the Pacific Ocean and finally she decided to fly from
Honolulu to California.
Putnam called Amelia to say that in the fire of their house her
childhood letters got burned.
During her Christmas vacation, Amelia wrote to her mother to tell
her about her flight from Honolulu to Oakland and to Washington.
After their arrival to Honolulu they stayed on Waikiki beach at Chris
Holmes’s house.
Amelia received 10000$ from a group of Hawaiian sugar growers to
sponsor them in her articles.
Amelia modified her plane with 520 gallons of fuel, 35 gallons of oil
and two long distance radios and phones.
She wrote to the navy that she would not hold the military
response if anything happened to her and she wrote to G.P. that if
she didn’t do a good job it wouldn’t be because the plane and the
motor weren’t excellent nor because women couldn't fly.
She planned to take off on January 11th 1935. The weather wasn’t
good in the islands but the ocean was well.
Amelia passed the half waypoint and not long after she flew on
Diamond Head. In the cockpit there were three clocks, two showing
Honolulu and one San Francisco, two local radios reported her
progress, she made a radio call every half hour, before midnight she
spotted a ship.
During the night the stars enchanted her, seeming “to rise from the
sea and hang outside my cockpit window near enough to touch”.
She enjoyed “the most memorable cup of hot chocolate I have ever
had”.
The most uncomfortable part of the flight occurred when a
ventilation cover blew off causing an intense stream of air to blow
directly into her eye making it sore and watery.
When she arrived at Oakland airport after eighteen hours and forty
minutes and 2,408 air miles, she didn’t continue to Washington
because she was too tired.