was now getting dark, with no cell service and not anyone or anything in sight. An hour later a highway patrol officer drove up to the gate and helped us climb over the 10-foot fence, telling us we wouldn't believe how hard it was to find this place back in the boondocks, through three different gates. As we walked to the top of a hill a sheriff's deputy handed me a phone with a FAA representative on the other end anxious to know if we were all right and all the details. A local sheriff's deputy put us in the back seat of his car and took us to a town 18 miles away to get something to eat and a hotel room for the night. The next morning my awesome aircraft mechanic drove three hours from Wichita Falls and found a gasket had come unglued from the air intake box and got sucked into the carburetor, stopping airflow and killing the engine. A 50-cent rubber gasket had brought down our airplane. We thanked God for getting us down safely and for giving me instructors who surprised me in the past by reaching over and pulling the power during flight, and made me uncomfortable by demonstrating how to perform a rapid-descent slip. I'm also thankful my wife talked me into calling ahead and splurging on the extra 20 cents a gallon to have the airplane ready. If we had taken the 20 extra minutes to fill the airplane ourselves all this would have happened after dark and had a very different outcome. I keyed the mic. " Two souls on board turning west towards a ranch but I'm showing we don't have altitude to make it. " I looked back down at the moving map on my iPad and saw the name of the strip was " Devil's Finger. " A few things I'm taking away from this experience: 1. Fly much higher at night. We were at 6,500 feet because of best tailwind altitude. I don't care anymore. 2. Don't fly " Direct To " over sparsely populated areas at night. Fly airport to airport. 3. Don't think of the ForeFlight Glide Advisor as a barrier I can't get past. 4. Tell all my fellow Cessna owner/pilots to check the airbox gasket the next time the lower cowling is off. Tom Hildebrant is a pharmacist and private pilot living in Ringling, Oklahoma. 101 FREEDOM IS THE ULTIMATE RETURN ON INVESTMENT The NXCub brings an entirely new level of access and performance to backcountry aviation. Free yourself-fly the NXCub. CUBCRAFTERS.COMhttp://www.CUBCRAFTERS.COM