As conditions were apparently good, I decided to make my trial flight shortly after ten o'clock. The machine was brought out, the engine given a preliminary run, and at half past ten I was in the air. Everything had looked good from the ground, but after the first turn of the course I began to pitch violently. This was caused by the heat waves rising and falling as the cooler air rushed in. The up and down motion was not at all pleasant and I confess that I eased off on the throttle several times on the first circuit. I had not then become accustomed to the feeling an aviator gets when the machine takes a sudden drop. On the second round I got my nerve back and pulled the throttle wide open and kept it open. This accounts for the fact that the second lap was made in faster time than the first. The two circuits were made safely and I crossed the finish line in seven minutes, fifty-five seconds, a new record for the course. Now was my chance! I felt that the time to make the start for the Cup was then, in spite of the boiling air conditions, which I had found existed all over the course and made flying difficult if not actually dangerous. We hurriedly refilled the gasoline tank, sent official notice to the judges, carefully tested the wiring of the machine by lifting it at the corners, spun the propeller, and the official trial was on. I climbed as high as I thought I might without protest, before crossing the starting line probably five hundred feet so that I might take advantage of a gradual descent throughout the race, and thus gain additional speed. The sun was hot and the air rough, but I had resolved to keep the throttle wide open. I cut the corner as close as I dared and banked the machine high on the turns. I remember I caused great commotion among a big flock of birds which did not seem to be able to get out of the wash of my propeller. In front of the tribunes the machine flew steadily, but when I got around on the back stretch, as we would call it, I found remarkable air conditions. There was no wind, but the air seemed fairly to boil. The machine pitched considerably, and when I passed above the "graveyard," where so many machines had gone down and were smashed during the previous days of the meet, the air seemed literally to drop from under me. It was so bad at one spot that I made up my mind that if I got over it safely I would avoid that particular spot thereafter.