TRAVEL. USA. KANSAS.

The Kansas Town — A Pilot’s Travel Log

A Cop Pulled Over My Captain & other adventures in small town Kansas

I was co-piloting a Cessna Caravan to its new owner, and had to lay over in a small Kansas town.

Maybe a country is like a person. It can get a new style, grow up, go through things, and come under layers of influences, but there are still original parts inside both a country and a younger person. You can get to know these parts.

I’m reminded of something sweet in this Kansas town I think I saw in American Christmas movies as a child. Something about how this country is, or was, or wishes to be.

The captain and I (the co-pilot) landed here in Coffey County, Kansas, just before midnight. We came in a Cessna Caravan. We’re delivering it somewhere far away to its new owner.

My colleague is in his 70s. He has piloted himself across the Pacific over 400 times and is angry about people kneeling in sports. He has a son with a master’s degree from Harvard, and as a horse rancher, he knows that every time a horse passes away, it’s like losing a child. These are some of the things I’ve learned about him in the 6-hour flight we just completed in this aircraft with no restroom.

“Watch for eyes on the side of the road,” he tells me from behind the wheel of the small airport’s courtesy van. They left the keys in…