Farewell Alaska
Man, it’s good to be alive. We’re sitting in Juneau airport with a few hours to kill before our connecting flight to Seattle.
Our journey back from Haines was aboard a Piper Cherokee Six, basically a 6 seater Mini Cooper with wings. We flew at 2000ft with a 50 knot tailwind, which took about 15 minutes off our journey and about 15 years off our lives. Man that thing got kicked around. Our pilot Ben told us afterwards that that was pretty much par for the course round here. I guess we were lucky when we flew out yesterday; we barely had a bump the whole way. To put things in perspective, in one of his rougher flights Ben hit his head off the ceiling of the cockpit 6 times and started seeing stars.
This trip was rough enough for us though. Peter put it most eloquently in the arrivals hall: “Excuse me while I go urinate on something other than myself.”
We’ve been saying it all trip, you have to be absolutely insane to live here. Speaking of which, thanks to Mike Hayes, Maura Brenin of The Old Town Bed And Breakfast & Liz Diament, Mike McCormick & Katy Spangler of Whistling Swan Productions, Mark Gager & “Poodle Pool” Jim at the Tonsina River Lodge, The Anchorage Snow Machine Club, Alice Orlich, John Murphy, The College Coffee House, Willis Fireball, Nancy & Pam at Latitude 62, Bill, Angie and Sandra at Talkeetna Air Taxi, Mary and Yin Yin, Patrick McCormick, Jonathan “Hold ‘em King” Kingham & Ryan (how was the Polar Bear Plunge?), Tom & Liz Heywood and finally, Rob and Ben, our Piper pilots.
Peter would like to add thanks to Bernoulli and Da Vinci and all the other gods of aviation. And Damian “Wait here” Power.
Me, I’d like to thank Peter for keeping me endlessly entertained this whole trip, and for urinating on himself instead of me.
Sunday 25 February 2007
