But for all her sweet flying, the Standard wasn't altogether a lucky plane. Some nemesis of mischance seemed to dog her flights more often than not. Once when the two flyers had her out for a pleasure spin that took them hedgehopping over mountain tops and skimming the warm air softness of the desert edge, the false darkness of a windstorm swooped around them and sent them earthward for a forced landing. In the dimness they took to ground between the cactus and Spanish dagger covering old fields. And here they stayed the better part of a week. As they landed, a villain of a Spanish dagger plant had slashed through the front spar of a wing. It took half a day to patch the ten-inch gap in the spar and to sew up a dozen rips in the wing fabric. It took half a week of cutting sagebrush and cactus to clear enough space for a take-off runway.