Really neat that you got a ride in the aircraft.
There can't be many left flying, although a wood-winged rag and tube aircraft is a pretty reasonable restoration proposition.
The engine would be the biggest hurdle.
Travel Air was an unsustainable consortium of Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Steamrman
Cessna's future plans included a single wing mounted on top of the fuselage, which resulted in the C-165 Airmaster while Beech was fine with the biplane design but thought it needed a cabin, so the Beech Model 17, or Staggerwing came to be. Stearman liked open cockpit biplanes and went on to design more of them, the most noted of which was the Stearman Model 75, better known as the PT-17 or Kaydet, most of which were built by Boeing, which by then owned Stearman.
Is this Travel Air soloed from the front cockpit or the rear one?