Barbara's heart was in her mouth for a few minutes on the turn, but she loved it.
Paul was having as much fun as she was. "Don't worry... the airspeed disappears at the bottom of the dial, but the plane won't snap on you. The Cub was a very safe and effective plane for military observation purposes. Its stalling abilities are as safe as any airplane ever made."
"What kind of tricks did the barnstormers do in it?" "If you're game, we could do some spins and wing-overs."
She yelled out over the engine's roar. "I'm game!"
For the next few minutes, Paul took the plane into aerial acrobatics that nearly made Barbara dizzy, but never frightened her.
Paul became cautious then. "It's not safe to do more tricks. This is an older model Cub, with wooden spars. They can take spins and wing-overs, but it's not a good idea to do more. The wood can become a little creaky with age."
She was glad Paul was adventurous, but not fool-hardy. She thought he must be comfortable with his masculinity. He didn't have to prove anything to her by risking their lives. For a moment, she imagined Chet Armstrong at the controls and doing something dangerous to prove he was superior to her or any woman. Then the plane would go into a tail-spin and crash.
They flew for another quarter hour, with Paul teaching Barbara more tricks the Cub could do, but safely. All too soon, he began its descent.
"The landing approach in a Cub is best done at higher speed than necessary. There's no aerodynamic reason for this. Just that if you try gliding in at its natural speed, you're likely to have other planes weaving and dodging and backing up and over-shooting behind you."
From the back seat, Barbara could not see much straight ahead as her instructor began to land the plane.
"A crosswind helps in landing. Then you can look around the side of the nose. And you know what they say..."
"No, what do they say?"
"'If you can land a Cub smoothly, you can land anything!'"
Her instructor's landing was impressively smooth. Barbara made a silent vow to achieve that finesse with the plane when she would solo and land it. If she could only learn how to do all the things she had just been shown.
"Well, what do you think?" Paul asked after they climbed back out of the plane and took off their goggles and parachutes.
"I think I'm in love."