SOLO TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD: Gus McLeod's Daring Record Flight

McLeod was crazy about airplanes as a kid growing up in the 1960s. When he couldn't find a job flying for the airlines or the military, he started his own, nonaviation-related business, raised a family and flew as a hobby. At 40, he bought a Boeing Stearman, a two-seat open cockpit biplane designed in the 1920s as a military trainer. Then, in a fit of hangar bravado, he boasted he could fly the antique thing to the North Pole if he had to—something never before done in an open cockpit plane. His friends called his bluff. Suddenly, he had a challenge on his hands. Despite flat, unsophisticated prose and an awkward structure, McLeod's enthusiasm for the sky is contagious, and occasionally the writing breaks through the clouds into eloquent clarity. He writes, for example, of looking down at a herd of caribou spooked at the sound of his old airplane: "The herd kept running, until four caribou remained. Soon three dropped out. The last caribou continued on until he could run no longer. Then it too stood and with dignity prepared to face what it feared was death. Will forces us on, but it is courage that gives us the strength to suffer the inevitable with honor." The story of the journey itself contains a good amount of white-knuckle flying and Arctic hardship. On another level, McLeod struggles with the pain his risk taking inflicts on his family and the special disappointment that comes at the end of a successful adventure. 31 color photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)