By Russ Niles
Newswriter, Editor
Copyright © 2003, Aviation Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Carol Ann Garratt is back home in Florida, wiser and poorer, after a 41,000-mile flight around the world in her Mooney M20. Garratt took off from Kissimmee in early February with two goals in mind: to raise money for research into Lou Gehrig's Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS) and to fly her father to a family reunion in New Zealand.

She doubted the wisdom of the adventure while flying through a tropical storm near Samoa but most of the trip was relatively uneventful, she said. Garratt flew west on the trip. Most round-the-world flyers go east to take advantage of prevailing winds.

She raised $12,000 for ALS but estimates the trip cost her $25,000. The trip took her through the South Seas, then north through Asia and Europe before she hopscotched across the Atlantic through Greenland and northern Canada and finally back to the U.S.

Garratt said she wiled away the time in the air e-mailing friends, listening to the radio and writing about her travels. She was greeted warmly most places she stopped but doesn't have much nice to say about Egypt. Officials there charged her $650 for putting her plane down.