The club for graying daredevils

In 1986, Dick Rutan flew with a co-pilot in a Rutan Model 76 Voyager, a custom-designed and -built aircraft, covering 26,000 air miles and taking nine days to circumnavigate the globe — unrefueled, nonstop.

After taking off from Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, the plane headed west, making two passes over the equator, avoiding a 600-mile-wide typhoon, and doubling back over inhospitable Libyan airspace. Rutan piloted the plane without a break for the first three days of the nine-day flight. When the plane finally landed, it had a damaged wing and 1.5 percent of the fuel with which it originally departed.

Rutan's Voyager aircraft now hangs in the Smithsonian, part of an exhibit celebrating human accomplishments in flight. Once in a great while, the tanned 76-year-old will share his story, but only for those select members of the Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles. The bylaws of the club, which caps membership at 200, make it very clear that only "those who have had an unusual adventure on land, at seas, or in the air hunting, trapping, exploring, flying, or those who have attained a distinctive reputation in the field of arts, music, or science are considered eligible."

North of downtown Los Angeles, just past Chinatown in Lincoln Heights, one can easily miss the building where the Adventurers' Club meets. Absent of signage or décor, the windowless, anachronistically beige structure sits opposite a 99-cent store.

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