Howdy. A message to all concerned parties: No, I have not crashed into a glacier or been eaten by bears. I have been flying a whole lot. Almost 120 hours in May and I’m still loving it. I am, however, tiring of the disorganization of our dispatch department. It’d be really nice to know the schedule for the day before 5 minutes prior to liftoff (especially since we’re supposed to be a scheduled operator...) and happy passengers are much more fun to fly than those who have been waiting hours for a flight home. I’ve been doing my best to maintain a flexible positive attitude. “Just tell me what to put on my plane and where to go.” It’s difficult to maintain that attitude sometimes when I’m told to unload 700 pounds of mail that I’ve just shoved into an airplane in the rain because of dispatch’s poor planning.
Once I’m in the air, though, this is the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve been working 12 days and then having two off. I’m finding that I’m about as worn out after working a dozen 12 hour days here as I was after 5 days in an office and it’s great having two days off in a row instead of just one. I’ve been able to get out and do some hiking and camping in Skagway and Haines. I even made it up to Whitehorse, Canada where I met up with some new friends to drive from Whitehorse to Haines for the beer festival weekend. The scenery on that drive was unearthly and Haines in the summertime is about as close to paradise as I’ve ever seen. The pink and blue sunset silhouettes mountains to the west and infuses those to the east with luminous green and white splendor. Colorful wildflowers and even strawberries grow at the side of the roads and a breeze full of sweet pollen blows down from Mount Rapinski. It makes me think, “this is what all of those chemical engineers who make air freshener are trying so hard to emulate!”
I’ll try to write more often because I know I’m leaving out lots of important details here. Ha! Like the time my passengers introduced me to a guy in a hangar in Haines. He was in the process of gutting a giant brown bear in the back of his pickup truck. He lifted up its head which was even bigger than my brother’s, and said “This is the biggest bear anyone’s gotten around here in decades!!” I’ve learned that modesty is not a virtue of the prototypical Alaskan. If my life were a movie, this guy could have been played by none other than John Wayne, himself. When we were introduced, he stuck out his hand, paused to examine the entrails covering it, and then said, “Awww, yer a pilot!” and squish!!
