Tangental notes from the airfield

By the time you feel sunburn, it's already too late. Drink more water than you think you need, and use sunscreen.

Flying down the Alcan is easier than flying up, and faster. The pattern of storm fronts sweeps down from the north, so if you go down just behind a front, you'll usually get several days of beautiful weather. If you're coming up, expect at least one weather delay while a front passes over.

Heading to the west of the rockies, two good places to cross and deal with customs are Billings and Cut Bank.

No matter how averse to fruit or veggies men may claim to be, splitting a banana lengthwise, stuffing dark chocolate chunks inside, wrapping it in aluminum foil and tossing on the grill creates a treat that won't have any left over.

You always sound more inane on video than you think you will.

Before working on the underbelly of a plane, make sure all hair is well-controlled, and clothing unable to drag on the ground through oil or under the wheels of a creeper. Wear glasses so paint flecks, metal chips, and oil do not fall into your eyes.

Start backing out all the screws on inspection plates with a screwdriver. Sure, the cordless screwdriver can handle some of them, but if you just do it right the first time for all of them, it saves time, effort and stripped screws in the end.

If you can't control the outside temperature, or the room temperature, control the temperature of your sleeping bag or your bed. The warmer you are, the less stiff you'll be when you wake up.

Alaska is a very small town spread across a land mass one-third the size of the lower 48. I will always meet more people whom I know or know of than I think I will.

Nitrous oxide and full-length leading edge slats make a fantastic STOL machine... but skill will still beat modified gear hands-down.

These are all just opinions, but trust me on the water and sunscreen.

gathering parts

My credit card is now smoking gently, as I've bought trailing edge, PK #4 1/4" screws to hold the trailing edge on, leading edge material (even thick leading edge for where people tend to lean on the wing while putting gas in the tanks, as a dent-preventative measure), and the materials to cover the wings.

Also gotten almost everything moved from storage to the hangar, which is an interesting exercise in logistics in an econocar so tiny I can't even get my bicycle in without a bungee cord to keep the trunk lid semi-closed!

While I've been buying and moving things, I've also been spending time as unskilled labor on the last plane in the hangar that needs to be worked on before there is room for my wings. I can unscrew inspection plates - pretty straightforward, right? Except not really - they may have a cross-hatch pattern on top, but the screws are apex #2 heads, not phillips heads. Also, on this twin, the compass is out in the left wingtip - so working my way around, I had to stop and find a screwdriver without a magnetic head for the inspection covers nearby. After being under the wing and holding up the powered screwdriver at head height to take out the many, many screws there, my upper body is reminding me that I don't start with as much upper body strength as the average guy, and I certainly don't use those muscles often like mechanics do. Long hot showers and stretching carefully keep me from being curled in a fetal position!

But it's all wonderful, because I shall shortly take off to the Valdez May Day Fly-In!

The work begins again

With a few days until space would be available to work on my plane, I went down to the Alaska Airmen's Association and volunteered for the organization of the annual trade show. I've been volunteering time as office staff off and on for five years now, but this was the first year I actually worked the show itself as a volunteer (the prior couple years running, I worked as a vendor).

This introvert is thoroughly peopled-out. But it was a great show, good times, good to see the thousands upon thousands of pilots, current, former, and future. It was also nice to see the public come - those who took time away from the annual bike blessing or the beer festival downtown to trek out to the FedEx Hangar. It's hard to foist the untrue illusion that airplane owners are rich guys with million-dollar airplanes upon the public when they're surrounded by a sea of guys in well-worn carhartts and work boots!

It was also disconcerting at how many people remembered me and knew I'd left my job - but good, I guess, that they all had good memories of me helping them, and the solutions we'd found for their equipment needs were all working very well, months to years later. You see, sales is not about selling things to people - it's about helping people accomplish what they truly want by providing goods, information, and service. It's gratifying to see that my old boss still thinks well of me, and so do my old customers!

The aileron cove's compound curves are still proving annoying to fabricate, but today I should be able to start on rechecking the trammeling and possibly nailing the ribs. And the front yard is almost snow-free!

I'm Back

Just got back to Alaska. Ah, Home sweet no-longer-home with its two-foot drifts of dirty snow and roads where lanes are a community consensus due to studded tires. It's almost May, which means my friends who are graciously letting me crash in the guest room have windows full of seedlings straining toward the long daylight of breakup. Everybody is full of energy like pent-up floodwater behind a dam, waiting to burst into a hundred all-day-and-night projects of working hard and playing harder.

The next day, I woke up still stiff, groggy, jet-lagged, and wandered with a sheltie to the window. My sight wasn't that foggy - no, the houses and trees nearby were hard to see through the falling snow from the low gray sky.

I didn't miss winter.

Winter, it seems, didn't miss me either.

Plane budget

Once, as a student pilot, I walked out of the building with friends to find M standing by the flagpole, smoking. Another friend waved at him, and as we approached, he said "Man, how can you smoke those things?"

If you're expecting a self-righteous defense, or a long lecture about health, or any of the usual things, you're at the wrong place and time, wrong memory. R shook his head and continued. "I mean, they're what, like, a gallon of avgas a pack?" Everybody laughed, and M just grinned as he took another drag.

Years later, as I'm planning logistics, his crooked grin in response to the ribbing made me laugh as I catch myself laying out an exercise plan for gaining strength (sufficient to pull and push the airplane around when loaded in gravel) and losing weight... 'cause, you know, every six pounds I lose is one more gallon of avgas, or 20 minutes more flight reserve...

Happy Easter!

Christ is risen!

Two by Two Together

Do you prefer to fly alone, or with someone? I've looked at ultralights before, but ultimately came to the conclusion that it's just not as fun without a friend along. Sure, sometimes I hop in the car, or rent an airplane, and head out of town by myself - but it's always that much more fun when I have someone along to chat with, to swap driving or flying so one of us can spend more time looking out the window or puzzling out the directions, or looking for moose and bear on the ground below.

Other folks I know fly to get away from people, and are never so contented as when their campfire is the only evidence of humanity in the mountain-hemmed horizon. They enjoy solitude, whether fishing on a creek or working on a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Me, I prefer to be in a group of folks, some friends, some acquaintances, rambling along and enjoying whatever comes.

Last night, talking to a friend who I haven't seen since he moved down to the western lower 48, I learned he has free time this summer, in enough quantity that a 3-day trip down the Alcan in an old airplane will be perfectly fine if it turns into a week waiting out weather - so I'll have company at least part of the way from Anchorage to my new home. This fills me with happiness like sunshine breaking out under the low cloud deck and painting the land gold at the end of a dreary gray day. A second person brings increased safety so I won't be a lone female in strange towns, help pushing back and pulling the airplane out of tiedowns, and another person to take the controls for a spell or help with maps and GPS. Better than all of those, though, is the company of a friend.

This may mean, though, I'll have to ship more stuff down, as I won't be able to fill the second seat with assorted junk, like a college kid's car. Hmm. In the meantime, it's a fine beautiful sunny day. I think I need to drag my husband out for a road trip!