Minute 045: Big Gopher

The Rocketeer Minute Podcast

Guest Host: Stefano Paris

Stefano Paris, Chief Engineer of JetPack Aviation, is a real-life Rocketeer. Listen to this episode and be amazed.

Check out videos of JetPack Aviation’s technology breakthroughs on their YouTube channel.

Also, take a look at JetPack Aviation’s website.

Summary

Cliff is station-keeping with the Ford Tri-Motor, high in the skies over Chaplin Field. Passengers on the plane are pointing and staring at him. One passenger takes a picture with their Kodak Brownie camera. A stewardess stares open-mouthed at him.

Cliff responds by saluting the stewardess, forgetting that by pressing his glove to his helmet, the actuator shut down the rocket engine. Cliff plummets from the sky. “Ohh noooo!” shouts Cliff.

Meanwhile, Peevy is chasing Cliff’s flight in his Ford pickup truck. He sees Cliff’s fall in the distance.

Cliff, screaming, plunges toward a farm. Just before the likely impact, the rocket engines reignite, hurtling Cliff over the farmland. He flies through a clothesline full of laundry, carrying several sheets and pillowcases along for the ride. A woman hanging laundry on the line watches him pass. Covered by a bedsheet, Cliff is completely blind to the orange grove he passes. He knocks over a ladder and several fruit pickers on his trajectory.

Finally out of the orange grove, he sheds the bed sheet, only to find himself flying through a wheat field. Straw splinters and scatters in his wake.

Two farmers watch the goings-on in the wheat field.

“Big gopher,” says the shorter farmer. The taller farmer says nothing, but watches.

Out of the wheat field, Cliff passes Peevy on a dirt road, going in the opposite direction. Peevy brakes hard, and Cliff flies over the truck. Cliff turns a corner, and loses altitude over a lake. He skips three times, like a flat rock, on the water’s surface, then skims across the water, before coming to a halt in a mound of cattails.

Peevy pulls his truck up next to the lake, then gets out of the truck.

In This Minute

Alan Arkin as Peevy
Bill Campbell as Cliff Secord
Bret Culpepper as Startled Passenger
Lila Finn as Clothesline Lady
Perry Cook as Farmer
Tiny Ron as Other Farmer
Taylor Gilbert as Stewardess