Howdy. Welcome to another sunny day in Juneau. Actually it’s raining again. Still, rather. The word “again” would imply that at some point in the last week (or three) it had stopped. A sunny day would be nice, but I’m not letting the grayness get to me. Low clouds are a great excuse to fly low, which is a fantastic thrill. It’s so cool because up here, as long as you have enough visibility to avoid mountains, you can fly pretty low over the water and not have to worry about hitting cell phone towers, grain silos, and other obstacles that would preclude flying so low in, say, Kansas. The only trouble is that we are required to maintain enough altitude that, should the engine fail, we would be able to glide to shore (however unsuitable for an emergency landing that shore may be...). Most of our routes don’t require long water passages though, so we can get most places on most days.
Aside from getting to fly in the coolest place on Earth, I’m really enjoying the varied pace of the flying I’ve been doing. If I always had passengers on board, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the full performance envelope of the aircraft because I’d always have to be concerned with passengers’ comfort. If I were flying all cargo, I might miss having some human interaction during the course of the day.
In addition to the ever-present villagers and their groceries and beer (lots of beer), I’ve already carried a really fascinating variety of people and cargo. On Easter, I delivered a fair number of cellophane wrapped baskets full of furry stuffed idols sitting in candy laden plastic grass. Yesterday, I smelled fish every time I sipped my coffee. I’d just loaded buckets of hooligan into the back of the plane.
On one trip, I carried the owner of a flower shop. On another, construction workers turned seasonal diamond dealers en route from Lancaster, PA to Skagway, a popular cruise destination. Many of my passengers have never been in a small plane before. Some are thrilled, some terrified, and some ambivalent to the differences between being a passenger in a Cherokee Six and a Boeing 737.
My passenger load one day consisted of a reputed marijuana dealer and a Catholic Priest.
I had two legs of a trip to get acquainted with another member of the clergy associated with the Assembly of God. He had just concluded a Religious and Cultural Intolerance Tour of native villages in the interior of Alaska. In my opinion, I exercised near Christ-like self restraint when he inquired about my religious status and then asked me to describe “in a nutshell” my agnosticism. I said nothing about my view of religion as a destructive social virus at the root of many of humanity’s problems throughout history. I only mentioned that the process had been more of an acknowledgement of how I’d always felt than a sudden dramatic rejection of the faith. I mean, he seemed like a nice enough guy and I’m sure he’s brought comfort, however illusory, to many people through his ministry.
I’m also trying to quell my own religious intolerance.
I loaded a new Martin acoustic and an unidentified electric guitar for a guy who I was taking to Haines. On the way up the canal, he told me about how he’d initially come to Alaska to pan for gold and ended up using fiberglass skills, gained by making surfboards, on the oil pipeline construction project. He told me about being charged by a brown bear. Despite being backed up to a cliff and faced with “sharp teeth dripping with quarts of drool”, he evidently saved himself by throwing his backpack in the air, jumping, screaming and waving his arms.
We discovered we shared a similar taste in music, and I told him about the plateau I feel I’ve reached in my playing. I know a few right hand finger picking patterns, but everything’s starting to sound the same, and all I can really do with a flat pick is strum. He told me he remembered being in that place and thought he might be able to help me over the hump. He invited me to drop in sometime for a jam session, an invitation which I fully plan to keep.
Have I mentioned that I’m having the time of my life?
