title: A Drive in the Clouds: The Story of the Aerocar
author: Jake Schultz
description: Jake Schultz Currently a Technical Analyst for Boeing on the 787 Dreamliner program, Jake Schultz has a diverse background and series of interests. The roots of his lifelong involvement in aviation can be traced back to building and flying model airplanes when he was young. Jake recently took a two year break from New Airplane Development during which time he coordinated public programs at Seattle's Museum of Flight. This gave him an opportunity to arrange public events centering around the accomplishments of early aviation and space pioneers. In addition to his professional career, Jake is a trustee on the board of the Olympic Park Institute, a private pilot, former officer in several national aviation organizations, an advisor to numerous non-profit foundations, and serves on the board for a magazine publisher. Travel, exploring out-of-the-way antiques shops, model-building, and woodworking are some of his other passions. The author can be contacted via: jake.schultz@att.net
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  ………Robin Cook 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  PROLOGUE 
   
   
   
   
   
  January 9th 
   
   
  The sky was an immense, inverted bowl of gray clouds that arched from 
  one flat horizon to the other. It was the kind of sky that hovered over 
  the American Midwest. In the summer the ground would be awash in a 
  sea of corn and soybeans. But now in the depths of winter it was a 
  frozen stubble with patches of dirty snow and a few lonely, leafless, 
  skeletonized trees. 
  The leaden clouds had excreted a lazy drizzle all day—more of a mist 
  than a rain. But by two o’clock the precipitation had abated and the 
  single functioning windshield wiper of the aged, recycled UPS delivery 
  van was no longer necessary as the vehicle negotiated a rutted dirt 
  road. 
  “What did old man Oakly say?” Bart Winslow asked. Bart was the driver 
  of the van. He and his partner, Willy Brown, sitting in the passenger 
  
  seat, were in their fifties and could have been mistaken for brothers. 
  Their creased, leather faces bore wi