Clive Cussler by The Adventures of Vin Fiz

at the Wright school, soloing after only ninety minutes of instruction. At home in the air, he flew public exhibitions and received pilot's license number 49 from the Aero Club of America. In 1911, Cal entered the race to be the first to fly the United States from coast to coast, spurred on by a fifty-thousand-dollar prize put up by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst that would be paid only if the flight took no more than thirty days.
Financially backed by the Armour Company, which was introducing a new grape-flavored soft drink called Vin Fiz, Rodgers began his epic flight after taking off from Sheepshead Bay, New York, on September 17, 1911. His flimsy airplane was painted bright yellow with green lettering advertising the soda pop.
Forty-nine days later, after numerous rough landings that wrecked the airplane, untold mechanical failures and bad weather, a patched-together Vin Fiz finally landed in Pasadena, California, the official destination for the flight. A few days later, on the way to Long Beach, where Cal wanted to land alongside the Pacific Ocean, he crashed. This time he was seriously hurt, and Vin Fiz was nearly destroyed.
Not one to give up, Rodgers, still walking on crutches from a broken ankle, took off again in his beloved airplane almost a month later—the Vin Fiz had been almost totally rebuilt. He landed to the cheers of thousands of people on a sandy beach as Vin Fiz rolled her wheels into the waters of the Pacific.
Tragically, during a flight in April 1912, Rodgers crashed into the surf and was killed. The exact cause was never determined. He was not flying Vin Fiz at the time of his death, and she survived through the years in the possession of Rodgers's mother. Little remained of the original plane that made the epic flight, and many years later, she was reconstructed and restored with parts used during the journey.
You can see Vin Fiz where she hangs today in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

About the Author
    CLIVE CUSSLER is the internationally best-selling author of the Dirk Pitt® novels for adults. He is also a true-life adventurer, having discovered more than sixty sunken ships with his crew of volunteers.
Mr. Cussler lives in Arizona.