Back Under the Southern Kite

I delayed a month and half, but have finally gotten back on the international travel circuit.
It seems I'm a bit rusty, as they nearly didn't let me board the plane in Charlotte due to visa issues. I was certain that I didn't need a visa and the gate agent disagreed. First, they argued that I couldn't land in Brazil without a visa, and then that I couldn't go to Argentina on a one way ticket. They eventually agreed to let me board, but not without looking me in the eye, giving a head shake, and saying, "This is BAD business."  Bad business? Like sub-prime mortgages or working for the mob? You'd think I was boarding the plane to Buenos Aires in Nuremberg, rather than North Carolina.
My language skills also need work. I learned most of my foreign language skills as an adult. Thus, rather than compartmentalizing each language and being able to switch back and forth fluidly, I just opened up a drawer in my brain and started shoveling foreign words in. So, when I am in a situation where I recognize the foreign language being spoken, I open up that drawer that is mashed full of German and Spanish. What comes out of my mouth is a mildly unintelligible thing I call 'Germ-ish'.  When I don't understand the language being spoken, what comes out of my mouth is just a high-pitched mumble/whine.  I mumbled/whined my way through 10 hours at the Potuguese-speaking Rio de Janeiro airport (can't leave the airport because I don't have a visa), but more than a day after I began, I arrived in Argentina.
My only plans are to meet up with Couchsurfing friends and see where the days take me. My credit card expires in March, so I guess I'll have to make my way back to Alaska by then.
A long day of travel is the small inconvenience we pay for the privilege of buying a one-way ticket, having limited language skills, being alone in a big city, watching strange buildings fly by, and picking out the tiny Southern Cross through the smog in the night sky. Feels so acutely like life.

Make it, or Die

I went into a strip mall coffee shop to have a cappucino while I waited for the liquor store to open. This says something about me, I guess... that I was at the liquor store so early on a Wednesday that it wasn't open. My shining moment was deciding to go into the coffee shop rather than just standing with my nose pressed against the glass staring at the bottles of vodka for 13 minutes... but who's counting?
Anyway, the barista was a good-looking, middle-aged guy, not on his best day. He cheerfully explained that he was hungover, over-worked, and still hadn't finished Christmas shopping for his teen-aged daughters.  Even though he was behind the counter at a coffee shop, he couldn't quite have enough cups to fully wake up. He was having a bad day at work.
I sat down with my coffee by the window where I could see the door of the liquor store. I looked at the twinkling Christmas lights and thought about bad days at work.
My worst days at my current job are burned into my memory. In the winter of 2007, I got caught in a fast-moving blizzard after picking up a skier. I had to ask my passenger to help me navigate safely home through the blinding snow and wind.  In the summer of 2008, I picked up a crew of fishermen in Bristol Bay, loaded to max with them, gear and fish. We were nearly forced to the ground by fog on the Alaska Peninsula and I had to scud over the tundra, navigating by valleys and the few weather reports of other pilots. Last summer, driving rain pushed the visibility and me down onto a remote lake in Katmai, where I taxied to shallow water, got out in my hip-waders and acted as a live mooring buoy for the plane, mostly so I wouldn't have to be in the cabin with barfing tourists.
Those days were my worst. I came very close to not making it. Just a little worse weather, or one wrong decision...  They were all Uncle Ole's imfamous: "Make it or die" days. But, halfway to fully caffieinated and mesmerized by the  blinking lights, I think I'd also count them as my best days. Because they weren't a little worse. And then the thought follows, how lucky am I, that I have a job where my worst days are also my best? Where just doing my job makes the lines a little clearer, and the sunset a little prettier, and the coffee taste a little better...  Or am I just a little crazy?
Not sure. But the liquor store's open.

Rejoining Forces

Steph and Anna linked back up in the Carolinas of all places. (Specifically, we were in both states, but it sounds more Northern to speak of them as if their differences are indiscernible.)

We ghost-toured in Charleston with a guide named Dan that wanted to be a golf pro. He gave us those sensors that the Ghostbusters carry. They are activated by electrical wires and by paranormal activity. They were going crazy on almost the whole walk.  We didn't see any ghosts, but we did see a cat, which Dan said was carrying either a witch or a demon. He has only been guiding these tours since July, so didn't have enough experience to ascertain the sex of the feline's passenger.

 Apparently a man from one of the many ghost tours photographed a ghost in the cemetery at St. Philip's church. Kodak, the FBI, and NASA could not explain it. St. Philips had to post a sign to clear things up. Anna, with 12 years of Catholic education under her belt, explained why the Church might be offended by the photographers claims: Ghosts do not officially exist. Unless they appear in the form of Mary, Jesus, or one of the Saints. Then they do. Why? Because an in-between place is not allotted for in Scripture--except in the above three forms, in which cases pilgrimage is called for.  The girl knows her spectral catechism.

The latest Wikileak

In the last week, I have spent 1300 miles on America's Interstate system which means that I know the words to every popular country song.  I also accidentally ran a half-marathon, and was spit up on twice.
I have visited with a diverse group of friends and family, and learned something that did not make it onto Wikileaks:  My dangerously single friends told me to watch out for "Trick Dates." Apparently, besides Internet dating, the great new way to ask someone out is to pretend you are not asking them out, but you are just arranging a meeting. Then when they show up at the appointed time and place, you go ahead with typical 'first date' behavior and see how it goes.  After witnessing one such event unfold at an adjacent table in Washington, DC, it seems that the warning should not go unheeded.
Also newly revealed in the Nation's capitol: another dimension. I refused to see a movie at a museum because it was advertised as "4-D." Does the Tea Party know about this? What's the fourth D anyway? A friend told me it was "time." Time? Isn't that inescapable? Wouldn't it be more interesting if they found a way to show a movie outside the time-space continuum?
There's lots to be learned schlepping around this seaboard, if you can handle repeat views of box stores and love multi-lane freeways. I have seen dozens of people who don't make it to Alaska often, and enjoyed spending time with them and meeting their new offspring.
In the in-between times, I rake. North Carolina has an infinite supply of leaves. Even though all the trees look bare, more appear on the ground every day. In my effort to corral them, I have broken two rakes. Replacing the first rake, a metal relic of a bygone era, I checked into everyone's favorite box store, Target. I was informed there that rakes are a seasonal item. Not this season. Not the season with the unending leaf deluge. No, no. It is snow shovel season at Target. I lived in North Carolina for four years and never saw a shovel-able piece of snow. Super secret documents have shown, the season of winter wonderland exists here, just only in the confines of your local Target store.
Because I have so much to learn from classified documents and classy friends, and because, right now, the leaves are winning,  I have made a decision. I am certain this decision was influenced by those country songs blaring out of my borrowed Volkswagen's radio as I barrel down I-85:
"You're gonna miss this! You're gonna want this back!"
I bought a ticket to South America, but I won't leave until December 27th. My grandmother is thrilled and the leaves are terrified that I am staying in the Southeast until Christmas.

Ages and Prices: Just Numbers

Grandmutti told me yesterday that she and my grandfather had been married for years before she found out his real birthday. Why? He lied. She was baking a cake for a birthday celebration and his sister commented, "I can't believe Ed is 40." He's not, Grandmutti replied, he's 37.  They argued, his sister was quite certain, and when grandpa came home from work, he had to fess up.
Laughing, I asked how long they had been married when she figured this out. Grandmutti replied she'd had two kids. But, she had a confession of her own. She stayed 21 for many years until her oldest son commented that he was 13 and it seemed unlikely that his mother only had 8 years on him. She then jumped to 39 and settled in there for a couple decades.
Great Aunt Myrt had to work 3 years past retirement age because she had lied about her age to seem young when applying for the job.
Age is just a number. I can't tell you what number, when it comes to my grandmother, as printing such a thing on the Internet would get me written out of the will, and I have had my eye on a set of Grandmutti's colored plastic plates since I was about 10. She said she would put them in my Hope Chest, but she might be losing hope, as she now says they're in her will.
In effort to stay in her good graces, I helped Grandmutti peel 10 pounds of potatoes. At Harris Teeter, a 4 lb bag of potatoes costs 99¢.  I think that is amazing. Potatoes are full of carbohydrates and have more vitamin C than oranges.... a virtual superfood. FOUR POUNDS of potatoes... for the change you could find under the seat of your car. I don't know whether to rejoice for how fortunate we are or weep for the fact the people anywhere are starving.
But the solution isn't buying the hungry world all the potatoes at Harris Teeter.  However, when the cash in your wallet could fill a kiddie pool with spuds, it's hard not to feel some conviction or take some responsibility. I don't know how that responsibility should manifest itself. For now, I think I'll just etch the price and availability of potatoes in my country into the side of my mind's storage compartment. Tomorrow, I'll hold hands with my family, give thanks, and help eat a pile of potatoes.

"Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you." -- Mark Twain

I'm in North Carolina, at my grandmother's house. She's wonderful: smart and sweet... unless you tell her you might not come for Christmas, then she's just smart.
She's the oldest of eight and one of her younger sisters took decades compiling the family's genealogy. There are some famous people hanging on the branches, way back in the 1400s and 1700s, but, last night we were examining those closer to our part of the trunk. Great Great Grandpa Jesse spend quite a bit of time in jail for being a 'Tippler'... which was the 1800s Kentucky Foothills word for 'Drunk'. Great Grandpa Harvey was a school teacher, but in his spare time he charmed warts. What? Yes, he charmed warts off of people. What a handy skill.
I asked Grandmutti (a name resulting from the only word my dad learned in high school German) about the other side of the family tree: Her husband's. She said Grandpa Ed looked into it once, but stopped when he got to a horse thief.
As expected, I come from quality stock. Apparently, what the British didn't send to Australia, the rest of Europe packed off to America.
Right now, Grandmutti is cheating at TV. She's borrowing every phone in sight to stuff the "Dancing with the Stars" ballot box. Not for Bristol Palin..."because she's not that good of a dancer, it's just that all the Tea Partiers are voting for her."
You can't blame Grandmutti for cheating, it's probably in her blood. It is comforting to know that my family bears transgressions and oddities well. Let's just hope they keep this spirit in mind as I negotiate going abroad for Christmas.

Broomball Global Championships 2010

We went all the way to Minnesota to learn that there is a "Mercy Rule" in broomball... who knew?
Duggans Pub Traveling Broomball Team is now officially either the worst team on the Globe, or the 4th best co-ed team on the Globe... glass empty or full-- you decide... as long as it's Grainbelt Premium.

Chili con Carnival Results

The 4th annual Chili Cookoff took place on an October Sunday in Kachemak City. The garage was packed with almost 100 connoisseurs ready to taste Crockpot creations.



As per usual, three judges were needed, but one of the highly trained regulars was not available. Chosen to join sitting judges, Wes and Terry, was Dana Stabenow, local author. 

 The judges selected a 1st place chili and awarded the golden Crockpot. For the second year in a row, it went to Jess and Frog for their "Stackfire Chili."

The masses democratically choose (via secret ballot in the shape of horse stickers) the People's Choice Golden Ladle, which this year went to Amber Nieber for her Spicy Green Chicken Chili. Amber also swept up the "Spiciest Chili" award.

Because I am not accused of great sportsmanship or humility, I nominated myself for the "Best Presentation" award for my in-phone-booth Tequila Booth. I'll never have a chance at the award next time Randy enters with homemade individual bread bowls, so I feel justified taking it now.






One of the biggest hits of the night was Jim Eschenhower with his "Beer Viewing" blind beer taste-off. The big winner was Sam Adams lager... over an Olde English 40 and 2 of Homer Brewings local growlers.

The Latest Project

I was so excited to put the plane on wheels. It was going to be a mechanical adventure with the new steed. A chance to learn how to best take care of her and a chance to get her ready for another chapter of life as an Alaska Bush Plane. I sold my four-wheeler to pay for a big bush wheel nose fork that I was told I could not fly without.

When the Landis nose fork arrived in Homer, the UPS man called me on my cell phone (I think when you live in a small town, the guys in brown have everyone’s cell phone number), “Steph, we’ve got something really expensive for you and don’t want to leave it anywhere you aren’t.” Usually they just drop stuff inside the garage or on the step at my work, but apparently UPS stickers boxes that cost more than people could really afford to pay.

After doing an excited inventory of my pricey delivery, I ran inside to pick out my best work clothes for the big project. Seriously? Like I am on the way to my first day of kindergarten? Well, just short of my mom braiding ribbons into my hair, that’s how I was acting. I chose faded Levis speckled with paint, a long sleeved t-shirt, a hoody splashed with the name of some sports team I’m on, and then stuffed a handkerchief in my pocket for good measure. A pair of gloves and rubber boots and I was ready for work.

I called the highly-recommended mechanic that I would assist with the gear change, and he was eating an omelet. He’d be ready in an hour “or so.”

I was anxiously waiting at the airport when he pulled up. Bob is his name, he’s probably in his late sixties, has a slight lisp, and has done gear changes on approximately one million planes since he became an A&P mechanic, which chronologically speaking was, “long before you had heard of Alaska, or had even been born, Missy.”  Bob estimated the floats-to-wheels transition would take us five hours, once we got the plane out of the water. Bob works on an hourly rate.

So, first step… get the plane out of Beluga Lake. We tried to hook up Mark’s trailer, only to find the hitch rusted beyond release. Bob knew where another float trailer was located, and we appropriated it under the “Ask Forgiveness, not Permission Act.”

Bob instructed me to back the trailer into the lake, but grew quickly frustrated with my backing skills, or lack thereof.  To his credit, last time I drove someone else’s trailer, I jackknifed it into that someone else’s truck.  Bob and I switched spots and I ran down the road to get the plane.

I unlashed the lines from the dock and started Beryl up.  As I taxied her down the lake for the last time this year, I resisted the temptation to take one last lap around the pattern, in my excitement to get to the project at hand, and because I figured Bob probably backed up trailers faster than I and had made it down the ramp before I even got in the plane.

Engine killed, I bumped the floats against the deck of the trailer and hopped out.

We stood in the water and muscled the aircraft back and forth to get her centered on the trailer, knowing that balance would be very important to keep her there on the drive over to the airport. The water felt like freeze up was only days away, even through my boots.  I emptied the floats of all the lines I keep stored there and we tied one to every possible point. I was trained in the “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot” school of knot tying, and probably got close to twenty knots in on my side of the aircraft alone.

“Are we ready to take her up the hill?” Bob asked. I looked at the steep bank between trees that was our path out of the lake and tied ten more knots.

Bob told me that he had never pulled a plane with wing extensions like Beryl has out of the lake. It might be tight. We started up the hill and I ran back and forth in front of the truck, pointing excitedly back and forth, directing him to dodge the wingtips around trees.

With my Subaru as the flag car, I pulled out into the road to stop any lakeshore traffic. We got the plane around the corner and found that large pine branches blocked the right wingtip. I climbed up the first pine tree, rubber boots kicking for purchase on the sappy truck and lunged for the offending branch. Swinging from the branch, my weight held the limb just low enough for the wing to pass by. I dropped to the ground and ran to the next tree. In this way, we made it up to FAA drive, the road to the airport.

The Dept of Transportation provided an escort for our merry parade to cross the runway and we parked the 206 in a red hanger on the south side of the field to get to work. My feet were still frozen from their time in the lake, but I was still thrilled: it was noon; in five hours I would have a plane on wheels to cruise around until spring.

We lashed Beryl to a chain hoist and raised her off the trailer, and then we set to work on the bolts that lashed on the floats. The floats hadn’t come off since the previous owner purchased them in 2006. Everything was really stiff. But two set of hands helped. I could just mimic what Bob was doing on the opposite side of the aircraft. One dry bolt held in place despite all our efforts though. No matter how we changed the gravity and weight of the plane, we couldn’t get the final lynchpin loose. So, at three o’clock we broke for lunch.

Hours later, the bolt was still stuck. Greasing, bashing, wing-rocking, and pleading used up, Bob drew out his secret weapon: cursing and throwing stuff. It worked. At seven PM, the floats were freed from the fuselage. I was freezing in the unheated hangar. Bob said we would finish up tomorrow morning.

I thought back to my days at Liberty Creek on my drive home: “Every project takes three times as long and costs twice as much as estimated.”  I had a couple more days of work in the cold hangar ahead. So, I recalled another Liberty Creek lesson: “Always dress like you have to walk out.”

On day two, I wore wool, which “Keeps you warm and dry, even when you’re cold and wet”(another liberty creek lesson). I managed to stay warm all morning. I learned some lessons about Bob. He works really slowly. He works even slower if you talk to him. So, in silence, I did my best as a mechanic’s helper. I usually was working too fast to stay continuously useful, and would use my waiting-for-Bob time to clean the airplane. When someone would wander down to the hangar to see what was going on, as people at airports do, Bob would stop working to talk to them. I would give them mean looks until they left or at least backed up out of earshot.

It wasn’t too hard to get the main gear in place (that’s the left and right tires). We bolted them in, checked the tension and moved to the real project: the nose gear.

My silent treatment policy didn’t work perfectly on Bob. While we were muscling the nose gear into place, he asked me: “Are you married?” No “Have a boyfriend?” No. “Kids?” No. “Ever been married?” No. He looked at me hopefully, “Any pets?” Still no. The hope turned to pity: “How old are you? 30? 32?” 31. Then Bob delivered his sage advice: “You only have about eight good years left.” He paused, looked at the nose gear, then back at me: “I have a pug you can have if you want.”

After offering me a small, ugly dog to solve my social life, Bob realized that we needed a machine shop to switch out the shaft for the new expensive nose fork.  This observation easily could have been made two days ago, but the other lesson I learned about Bob is that he doesn’t consider a problem until he is upon it.  I headed to Homer’s single machine shop before it closed and Bob began packing up his tools. Somehow the sun had snuck through the southern sky and we still had one whole wheel assembly to go. I was freezing cold.

On day three, I wore more wool, and long underwear, and flannel-lined Carhartts. I could hardly put my arms down as I waddled into the hangar and shimmied back under the plane. I worked all the tubes into the tires with the aide of baby powder, after Bob made a point of showing me, the old maid, how to use baby powder. I had all the tires together before the nose gear assembly was completed at the machine shop.  Bob still didn’t have the float brackets freed from where the nose gear needed to attach.

I refused to break for lunch; foolishly believing the end was in sight. When Bob put the wrong bracket up into the nose gear assembly first, and the whole thing became more tightly locked up than that float bolt on day one, I said, “I’ve gotta be somewhere at six-thirty.” He looked at me accusingly, “Well, if you have to leave, we are never going to get this done today.” It was six o’clock. Bob never works past the sun. We had one hour to overcome the trickiest Rubik’s cube we had seen all week. “We’re not going to finish today Bob even if some pixies show up and magically unstick the nose gear. I’ll see you in the morning.” I left for evening Nordic ski practice, only mildly chilled. The only obvious progress made all day was that the tires were inflated to their appropriate pressures.

Before I bundled up for Day Four, I cancelled a weekend trip to Tok, knowing that I couldn’t count on having the plane ready to go by tomorrow morning. I had already had to cancel a trip to Egegik on Day Three, because I had only allotted one extra day for getting this project done. Pity, as the weather all week was clear and beautiful.

Bob must have taken his time on his omelet because he figured we had so little left to do, there was no reason to get an early start. I was hovering at the hangar at eleven, waiting for this master mechanic to do his thing. He started swearing and throwing and eventually, he had the piece he had accidentally jammed into the nose gear assembly removed. It was afternoon.  We put together the nose wheel again, this time in the correct order, pumped the strut full of hydraulic fluid, and began reassembling the aircraft.

My cousin, Solveig, drove down from Anchorage at 4pm. I figured this would be a sign to Bob that we needed to hurry and finish up. Stupid me. It was a chance to talk. We finished the test flight after 6pm.  I was glad to see that I remembered how to land a wheel plane, as that is an important part of each flight.

When we pushed Beryl into the hangar, she looked great on her new wheels. I still had to find a water source to finish her end-of-the-season cleaning. But, luckily, I know the guy that runs the airport fire truck.

Bob had worked his presto-chango ‘millionth’ float change in a mere TWENTY-SEVEN hours. And that’s not counting paperwork. He gets to log the hours he spends signing off the weight and balance as well. I guess the Liberty Creek time/cost formula doesn’t work on airplanes. But at the end of day four, I was still warm. It only took four days for me to re-learn to dress for outdoor work in Alaska.

What Next?

I've had my wetsuit on twice this week and surfed none. I feel like a fish out of water. But that feeling might be a hold over from still floating from Oktoberfest beer. I do feel a bit out of my element. T minus 30 days until I leave Homer... I'm not sure where to or for how long.
On my last night in Munich, I sat with Rob and Marty and talked about Haiti. When I talk about it now, it is less detail and more philosophy because I've drawn some conclusions since then. I won't bother with them here. They are reserved for eye-contact conversations... preferably in evening beer gardens while Maroni shells fall on your head.
The one thing I will repeat in writing is that I am going back. Maybe not to Haiti, but to where ever I can find that God needs me to do something. And I'll do it. Hopefully soon.
Oktoberfest was all I could ask: a weekend with great friends where the beer could never hurt your head as much as the laughter hurt your stomach. We came by train, plane, autobahn and foot. And joined forces, linked arms, and had an international friend and family reunion.  Prior, I felt a little guilty wondering if it was worth crossing the world for. It was.
On this side of that (a place I always find myself), I must choose what to do next. The only for sure at the moment is I'll pack a small bag and my book. I'll play broomball and visit family and then do something else... Suggestions are encouraged.

"Living life like it is a line of coke..."

A friend used this phrase last night to describe his teenage daughter who just hitchhiked to Croatia. I think its really funny.   My dad would never say that about me. At least I don't think so, but Republicans probably talk about cocaine way more than I expect.
As far as I know, the girl in question is a sober kid, but rigorous about snatching up any opportunity or experience she can. Or, as her dad described, 'getting as much off the table as possible before its someone else's turn.' I'm not trying to promote ellicit drug use (at least not on this blog), but I think it sounds like a decent way to go about things.
As some of you may remember, I was in what should have been a fatal car wreck ten years ago. Coming millimeters from severing my spinal cord really ruined any shot I had at a sensible career and the 'normal life package.'  One would think that you don't need four months in a neck brace to realize that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, but it drove the point home for me. Since then, I haven't been able to leave things on the table, or say 'no', or stay put.
Yesterday, my EMT pager went off for a 'single car rollover' and the flashbacks were hard to get out of my head as I rushed to the scene of the accident. Five teenagers, one of them seriously hurt. The other four were already out of the vehicle, and on their smartphones, unimpressed.  I was most shocked that none of these sub-adults knew their addresses, but secondly, how can a similar experience have such an dissimilar effect on people? I'd bet these kids won't even remember this accident next week, let alone in a decade.
I don't claim a superior amount of acuity. In fact, lately I have been disappointed with my lack thereof. Disappointment and pain make up a great parts of the human experience, but it is pathetically disappointing how incapable I am at dealing with pain and still seeing the bigger picture. But, as far as I can tell, that is the normal human condition, with few nirvanic exceptions. When we're in pain, physical or emotional, we immediately shrink our world back to our own tiny size.
Lately I've been sad, and I've been reading Strength in what Remains which is about the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda.  Not exactly an 'upper'.  Reading about dogs carrying severed human heads in their mouths is hardly enough to break me away from feeling sorry for myself.  And it reiterates one of the protagonists points: when people are in pain or feel hopeless, they will do anything-- including genocide.

***Commercial break: I just read what I have written and am torn between 'delete' and attempting to bring this around to the original paragraph.... Hmmm... due to my short distribution list, I'll attempt the latter. Back to our program.***

 So, let me draw a self-centric parallel... not by killing anyone with a machete... but by admitting that I have let my world get too small. I have let my pain get between me and that proverbial line of coke. I have spent too many precious hours devoted to self-analysis and self-pity when there are places to go, and things to be done, and people to be loved.
Because whatever life we have been given, is to be lived, and love is to be given recklessly... especially when we are hurting. If we can do just this one thing: live a life abundant with compassion and forgiveness, regardless of our own situation, we are living perfectly. Any amount of pain makes that challenging, but so does paying taxes, and television, and distrust, and violence, and gossipy neighbors, and getting ripped off, and environmental tragedy, and bad drivers, and five dollar lattes, and stupid misunderstandings.
My life will only last a few minutes. I might crash into a tree tomorrow.  And, I might not.  I might have millions more experiences, and the personal test is this: what experiences do I choose to have, and what do I do with them? So line it up.

The end of a Season

The waves were small. Surfable, but small. And, when that is the case, you sit in your car for a while debating getting out into the 45 degree water. But, then you do. Because its the end of a season.
And, these are the first surfable waves you've seen when you've had a board and a wetsuit and not been in the fuel truck madly trying to make it back to work.
The sun is setting behind the volcanoes and a sea otter is creeping you out by bouncing up and down just beyond the break. You get to sit on your board with the cool water seeping into your booties and enjoy the not-so-coldness of Kachemak Bay.
First wavelettes of the coming surfing season and so excited, we both jumped on the first ride. Not that surprising that we crashed into eachother, but pretty funny that when I fell I landed on her board and it kept on cruisin, me, belly up like a turtle, in front of her feet. Rolled off, laughed at ourselves, and paddled back out. Frickin' crowded break.
Surfing makes me happy. Warm water more so, but only because it is really hard to get a wetsuit on and off. They just don't work like your Dungarees. But, even for a couple rides, the minor struggle is worth it. And bobbing on a board with the mountains in front of me and Beryl buzzing overhead eases a busy season artfully to a close.

Cold Beer on a Thursday Night

The pilots of Homer got together at Beluga Lake Lodge again last night. We've tried to make it a Thursday ritual. Considering we all compete with each other, there are some delightfully awkward schisms at the table, but overall we learn, and we have fun, and we brag some too... because really, we're pilots. ('How do you tell the pilot in the bar? You don't, he'll tell you.')
What no one mentioned last night: Terry Smith's crash (Terry was flying the plane that Ted Stevens died in... his name doesn't even appear until the very bottom of few news pieces about the crash). Smith's crash is certainly the highest profile in Alaska this summer, but only because of his manifest. Crashes can feel unlucky to talk about. It could have been any of us, right? This is the only Alaska plane crash that has really made national news this summer, but there have been lots. I fly in Katmai almost every day, and I know of at least 5 crashes there since June. Statistics say that 75% of summer plane crashes happen in August, so we're not in clear skies yet.
There haven't been clear skies all summer, in fact. Not in Southcentral Alaska. My most stressful day so far involved 2 unscheduled landings due to weather and an unscheduled refueling stop at a remote airport. Being forced by the weather to land on a lake in the remote center of the Alaska Peninsula to wait for an undetermined amount of time is even more exciting when half your passengers are vomiting.
The guy who operates across Beluga Lake from me was forced to wait on weather on a remote lake recently. For two days and two nights. With four people on board. You know how annoying it is when Delta makes you wait on the tarmac in Minneapolis for 2 hours? Imagine 2 days in a Cessna with the wind blowing at 50 knots outside and the rain hitting the windows sideways. The pilot is embarrassed about getting stuck for two days. I'd rather be embarrassed than dead. And if that's the choice you made, it is something to be proud of. Because nothing is that important. Not bears, not fishing, not photography, not survey work. Not even med-evacs are that important. As my EMT instructor said: "It's not your emergency... don't make it your emergency."
But, bush pilots try really hard to get there. They teach us about it in flight school: "get-there-itis" is the clever name they have, comparing it to a disease... and maybe its not much more. Punching through icy overcast layers, running over the ocean at 30 feet, testing soft, sticky landing spots, pushing along for hundreds of miles in zero visibility...these are the things discussed on Thursday nights, because these are the things Alaskan pilots do. Is it for pride, or is it because if you don't do it, someone else will, and they'll get that paycheck?
There is always pressure to go. Direct or indirect. More often the latter. Because if your competition launches into questionable weather, you sit on the ground and wonder, are they one step ahead of you, or five? And patting yourself on the back for safety won't stop an irate customer from pointing at the other guy's plane as the floats or wheels lift off, demanding "why can't we go?" And for the delicate trust of those Thursday nights, and for fear of those countless wrecks on the tundra, you don't critique another pilot's decision making. You don't try to explain how many planes have disappeared in Cook Inlet. Disappeared... and never made national news. Because no one 'important' was on them. Just some fisherman, or bear viewers. Oh, and a pilot, what was her name? She made a bad decision.
Piloting has gotten safer in the last few years. We've been dropped from #2 to #6 on America's most dangerous jobs, by people who count such things. The argument is for technology, something I have read about a lot in regards to Smith's crash. But, I place a lot of value on decision making. And experience. We don't all have to get the experience first hand. We can sit down, with a beer, and tell another pilot what mistakes we made. And maybe he won't have to make them.

Girls do NOT kick ass with their hair Down

I have seen a couple movies lately with cool heroines. However, Hollywood insists on laboring under the delusion that anyone could fight or labor successfully with their hair in their eyes.
I've had long hair since I was six and my mother issued some kind of biblical decree that I could not cut it. I tested this rule at sixteen and though I wasn't blinded and no coliseums fell on me, I did suffer the serious wrath of Cathy Anderson. So, for almost a quarter century, I have been employing different techniques to keep my hair out of my way. If you want to accomplish anything in life, I have discovered that while you need personal drive and a good marketing team, you also need your hair pulled back.
Hollywood likes to bend the truth for sales, and this isn't the first or last time this pet peeve will bug me. At least Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, is realistically representing women the world over.
Pet peeves wouldn't be nearly so annoying if they didn't mock you in your everyday life. Last week, Steller Air had its most successful day yet: 6 whole flights. While my personal record is 31 flights in one day, that wasn't in my own plane, and not on floats, and not desperately wishing that this small attempt at a small business is going to work. To get six flights in when you are piloting, office managing, fueling, taking phone calls and loading it feels like 65. Halfway through my 3rd flight, my hair tie broke. I landed, jumped down on the float, loaded gear into the floats with my hair in my eyes and mouth. I helped my passengers into climb into the plane intermittently ripping strands of my hair out of the velcro on my raincoat. Ow.
I closed the doors, pulled up my waders, got in the water and leaned on the bows of the floats. I blew the hair out of my eyes after inhaling for a big shove to push the plane off the gravel. I looked around at pine trees and mountains, I breathed in the scent of Alaskan summer: pine, dirt, moss, and damp cinnamon. I was thigh-deep in a cold lake, surrounded by wilderness with my wet hands on the float of my plane. I looked up past the prop at the sky, letting my hair fall out of my face, and thanked God. Even without a hair tie, this still feels like kicking ass.

Idiot Taxes

I took off almost empty on Grewinck Lake today. It's the child of Grewinck Glacier which has receded a couple miles in the last hundred years and left an icy pool of water behind. I had to give the park service a bunch of documents proving I am authorized to operate an aircraft in the confines of Kachemak Bay State Park, where the glacial lake is located. I wonder if my driver's license and EMT card authorize me to take icebergs out of the lake to resell to tourists in town as Alaskan martini ice? If so, this might be a lucrative summer after all.
I waited to buy a plane ticket until the last minute. I have checked the price on it every week for the last month. It has gone up every week. I officially paid $200 more than needed by waiting. Some of you are thinking: "Pilots buy plane tickets?" Yes, we do. But I think that if the captain and the first officer have the fish for dinner and pass out and I have to take over and save the day, they will give me a $200 voucher for my next purchase, black out dates excluded.
Only in this unlikely event will I break even on spending way too much on a flight I have known for years I was going to take.
My life is not as foreign to these idiot taxes as I would like it to be. I pay a late fee on my phone bill every month. I buy new sunglasses every week because I can't find the old ones and am 'too cool' to wear one of those leash things. In the winter, I do the same with mittens. I bank at Wells Fargo, which charges more fees than a foreign ATM.
If I had hired an assistant (glorified adult babysitter) five years ago to manage the money under my mattress for me, I would have saved enough in Idiot Fees by now to pay him. So, next time I go to Grewinck, I am going to fill the float compartments with ice and test the market. I will put any earnings into an assistant salary fund. Not at Wells Fargo.

Over the Crazy Cliff

When someone invites you to a party and tells you to bring a sleeping bag and "something you wrote," do you go?
I hardly say 'no' to anything, and the Better Offer Club (BOC) is still reviewing my membership application. That's how I found myself jumping on a seiner to spend the weekend in Halibut Cove, AK with a group of people I don't know as well as I'd like to.
And it seems this is how my life works best. Aught Ten has done nothing but take me by surprise and it has reminded me that travel, people, love, opportunities, and Cheez-Its are the things that make me feel like the world actually is spinning and that rumor is not just heretic science.
Anna, who claims to write for this blog, but in the last year has only posted a video of obnoxious birds, is taking her show on the road. I'll tell you, since she won't, that in 13 days, she's dropping her Chicago lease, throwing stuff in storage and seeing where life can take her if she occasionally borrows her parents car.
People our age are supposed to think this is irresponsible. I think its awesome...because not knowing where you will end up, but going anyway is a combination of adrenaline and faith that other people seek in skydiving, illicit drugs, or living out of cell phone coverage.
Sometimes, as I look down over the illustrative cliff where I have tossed money, future or relationships, I wonder if anything is going to bounce back up. It seems like operating without a net, but its not. It's just having a different definition of what that net is woven of. For Anna, it's knowing that as long as she has access to TV or a computer, she'll be able to watch Lost.
For me, I know that every place I end up, if I am looking and listening, there will be someone there to invite me to be a part of their tradition, once or forever. And that tradition will become part of who I am, and I'll shake my head every time I think that I almost said 'no' to that invite. This weekend that meant I put a sleeping bag in my pack, found something I'd written down, and listened to the prose of 7 friends. The weather was perfect and the mission was straightforward: hike, cook, laugh, drink, dance, and do something that people our age truly think is irresponsible: share our attempts at creativity. Outloud.

Bold Claims and Flying Machines...and some baseball

I've been saying for years that I was going to buy an airplane. I find that making bold claims is an excellent way to force yourself to do something. Unless the bold claims are too bold, like: "Blackberry bushes are the hardest thing to kill." In that case, I put a quarter in the bold claims jar rather than crusading against plant life. Digressions aside, repeating my wish for an aircraft finally coincided with an opportunity to use one and I stopped stalling.
I picked up a 1977 Cessna 206 on Aerocet Floats in Northern Minnesota/Wisconsin on April 20th. It was fitting that I found the plane of choice in the place I learned to fly them. Not to mention that fortune coincided with being in Minneapolis for Twins home opener in their new stadium.
Wes and I flew her from Minnesota to Seattle, stopping in Bismarck, ND, Fort Peck, MT, and Couer d'Alene, ID. The North Dakota and Montana stops were not necessarily at Seaplane-friendly ports, and Wes had his co-pilot work cut out for him with a lot of research to figure out where we could buy AvGas in parts of the country not so littered with water. The stop in Fort Peck was courtesy of a local pilot that hauled 5 gal jugs of gas down to a boat ramp so we could fuel the plane (and this was the cheapest fuel on the entire route!), then he offered that we could stay at his place for the night. This somehow evolved into helping him herd his cows. So I found myself, the proud owner of a new floatplane, cattle ranching in Montana.
In Seattle, we got delayed by weather and by the FAA, who of course couldn't turn around registration paperwork by Friday afternoon, but we were not allowed to cross an international border without it. So, we hung out with Wes' brother, caught up with friends, chilled in the San Juan islands and met Ed and Rebecca for drinks at SEATAC airport.
Wes had other obligations in Alaska that couldn't be delayed, so I took on Daria, his sister-in-law, as co-pilot for the duration of the journey north. We stopped in Nanaimo, BC where Canadian customs did not even ask to see the FAA paperwork I had spent days waiting for. In Port Hardy, BC, where we spent the night, the sea lions never stopped barking at the plane. I guess they're the real customs officers.
Our port back into the States was Sitka, AK... home of my recent herring spotting exploits, and then straight on to Homer, where Beluga Lake, the official seaplane base was still frozen. We landed right on Kachemak Bay and cheekily taxied into the boat harbor... ask forgiveness not permission.
Within 48 hours, the plane had her first work: Herring Spotting off Kodiak Island.
The plane and I are safely back in Homer now. This summer I will lease the aircraft to Steller Air. I will fly for that company. Our primary business will be charters around Alaska, tourist scenic flights, and trips to see bears.
The plane is in great condition, flies well, and has more bells and whistles than a bush plane knows what to do with. I've named her 'Beryl.' After Beryl Markham... similar in travel direction and hopefully in adventure.
I'm not very good at turning cartwheels in excitement, but I have found that pretty rewarding to task out to friends. Some people in Homer that I've developed a true affinity for insisted on throwing a 'wet the plane's head' party for me. I was reminded this is an event worth noting. And friends worth keeping. For if you're not going to commemorate the milestones in your own life, it is beautiful to have friends help do it for you.

The "Superbowl" of Seining

After round one, I can honestly report that herring spotting is just as dangerous and possibly as stupid as NASCAR. Fifteen to twenty aircraft are swirling around the same 500 feet of altitude in a 10 square mile area. All to talk to 52 boats and tell them where the same three schools of fish are. Every plane scrambles their radio calls so non-paying boats in the fleet can’t poach them.
The first opening of the Sac Roe Herring Fishery was Wednesday at 5:10pm. It lasted 80 minutes. In that time, the fleet caught 6600 tons of herring. Over one third of the total season quota was taken. The processing plants in the Sitka harbor are all full, and some of the tender boats were even sent to other towns. The fishery is on hold for a few days, while the fish are packed and the plants are ready to take in another catch.
If you are thinking that this could all happen without a little bit of drama, you are insane. The biggest story is that in the fray to get the nets set, one boat rammed the Shady Lady hard enough to knock the boom loose. The boats untangled themselves in time for the opening, and the Shady Lady managed to get her net out for a good set. However, as soon as she put weight on the boom to pull the net in, it came lose and the vessel listed to the port side. Way too far. A tender was floating nearby to pump the herring from the net. Shady Lady’s mast fell onto the tender. The tender was the only thing that saved her from completely capsizing. Many boats came to aid in righting the flailing vessel. Shady Lady managed to pump 150 tons of fish before going over, and she made it safely back to the harbor after taking on about 400 gallons of water. Everyone with two lips in the harbor is debating whether the Shady Lady’s crew is too inexperienced for this fishery and whether the vessel is too light or too small for these deep waters. Rumors are scathing about whether the offending boat hit the Lady on purpose, as a warning shot to the rookies.
Our boat, the Andy Sea, had trouble of her own. The fish were at 30 fathoms, too deep for a pilot to see. Dan, the pilot/spotter, directed the Andy Sea based on the movement of the other vessels, guessing at what they were looking at on their Sonar based on their movements. The Andy Sea managed to get around a big set. Possible 400 tons. The fishery closed and we flew back to harbor, feeling the weight of the bills in our pockets already. However, as we walked to dinner and thought of the boys out pumping the fish, Dan said, “It doesn’t count until it’s on the tender. There are 101 ways to lose a set of herring.”
While the tender were pumping fish, something on the boom snapped and the Andy Sea had to cut their net loose. They only got 150 tons on board. Not a bad set, but worse than it could have been. The boys are working on getting the rigging repaired before the next opening.
The largest set captured on Wednesday was by the Crescent Moon—over 600 tons of herring.
Apparently, Wednesday’s opening was a fairly large area. I can expect that for the next few openings, the plane and boat racetrack will get tighter.

Sandhill Cranes!

I just got back from Lincoln, NE for the world's most unique bachelorette party: one where the bride-to-be and her nearest and dearest lady friends watch the sandhill crane migration on the Platte River. After a 5 a.m. wake-up call (totally painful after a night of wine in the Ramada hot tub), we got all bundled up and made our way to a bird blind at the Rowe Sanctuary. Binoculars and cameras in hand, we waited in the dark, listening to the pigeon-crossed-with-seagull call of the cranes roosting in the sandbars, just waking up themselves. Around 7 a.m., as the sun came up, *SHA BAM!* They all took to the sky, hundreds of thousands of them, and made their mass commute to the fields to chow down on corn and other farm-y stuff for the day.

Amazing!

Waiting on Fish to Spawn

I left Homer at 11 Saturday morning. I flew to Anchorage, and then to Cordova, and then to Yakutat, and then to Juneau, and finally on to Sitka, 12 hours later. The total time in the air was less than 3 hours.

A Subaru, Alaska’s state vehicle, pulled up outside the airport and a tall man jumped out. Dan Beischline, the man I came to work for in herring spotting. He approached me and started apologizing. Apparently the blue truck he said he would pick me up in wouldn’t start. So he found Randy to drive him to the airport. I threw my pack in the back of the Subaru and slammed the hatch three times before I realized that the latch was broken. This must be an official Alaska Subaru. I climbed into the front next to Randy, who held his Corona between his knees to shake my hand. We bumped through the Sitka dark to the hotel where Dan and I were staying. Dan and Randy discussed the politics of the fishery, and I tried to piece together the drama of a foreign business in an unknown town.

It seems that my official title is Dan’s “Observer.” So far, I’ve done nothing but observe, so it seems a fitting title. Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then:

Dan has been flying his Cessna 180 on floats for the herring fishery for years. He has worked with different observers over the years, and was clearly hesitant when I spoke with him on the phone about switching to someone new. I am the last resort. It’s not the first time I’ve been picked last for a team. Hopefully it won’t be the last either… some of the best opportunities fall in the laps of the bottom stringers. He has already expressed surprise that he can talk so fluently with me--a girl--about airplanes.

In the last 24 hours, he has explained a lot about herring. The purpose of the fishery is to collect the herring eggs, which are a delicacy in Japan. They are fished right before they spawn, hoping for the best egg-to-body weight ratio (at least 50% of the fish females with at least 10% eggs). The boats, purse seiners, go out to test fish before the fishery opens to measure exactly how much of the fish are skein of eggs. When the fishery is opened by the State of Alaska, the boats go out to catch as many as possible as quickly as possible. This year, the quota the fishermen are allowed by the State to catch is a record high at 18,000 tons. The boats often hire their own pilots to fly above the water, spotting where the fish are and directing the boats to those spots by radio, thus guaranteeing a better portion of the quota to their boat if the pilot does a good job. The boats pay their pilots a percentage of their catch. Because each boat hires their own plane, there are a lot of planes flying in the same air over the same schools of fish around and around in circles. The pilots hire their own co-pilots, or ‘observers,’ to look for planes while they are looking for the fish. They pilots pay the observers a percentage of their percentage. If the fish are there, and the pilots spot them, and the boats catch them, and the observers don’t let them crash, everybody makes money.

The fish are processed whole and frozen, then shipped to Japan where the eggs are harvested and enjoyed on Japanese New Year.

This year, the Japanese are holding the price low on herring roe. They started at $300 per ton of herring. The fishermen have all got together and are refusing to fish until the Japanese offer more money. The fishery has a definite end, when the herring spawn out. The delicate balance is reaching an agreed price before the herring are too close to spawn so that the fleet has time to catch the record quota.

The Alaska State Fish and Game representative is out flying and boating, monitoring the herring, ready to open the fishery at any minute. He has put the opener on what they call a “two hour notice,” meaning he can open the fishery any time later than 2 hours after the notice was announced. It was announced Friday.

The fishermen are refusing to even go test fishing. No one knows what the egg to body ratio is. The fishermen will not test fish until the Japanese move on price. With this limited information, the Fish and Game guy just flies around to see where the most sea lions are eating the most herring. On his daily radio update, he reports on where mom and pop sea lion are having breakfast.

Finally, last night, the fishermen agreed with the Japanese on a price of $550 per ton. First thing this morning, all the fleet was back out test fishing. Fish and Game is still counting sea lions, but now they can test the number of females, egg weights, and fish size of the test sets the boats bring in. We spent an hour and a half in the air directing our boat around to where the schools of fish were.

Now that the price is set, everyone is chomping to GO FISH!

I have gotten two fitting comments from friends on my current choice to observe for herring spotting:

“That’s the most dangerous job in the world after crab fishing.”—from someone who has obviously not considered the dangers of taxi driving in Mumbai; and “You have a really fun job!”—I agree… in what other office do you get to wear a life jacket AND a parachute?

Ninety-five and Humid: The odds against good deeds, or "What really happened"

In my real life, I’m an Alaskan bush pilot. I find lousy weather, the sudden appearance of mountains in front my plane, and temperatures that would break steel entertaining. When the request came for pilots to fly relief to Haiti after January 12^th’s 7.0 earthquake, I headed southeast. Fly some new routes, do something for my fellow man, spend some time in warm weather: it sounded perfect. I arrived in Venice, FL ready to do whatever was asked. Agape Flights, based in Venice, flies a full time service to missionaries in the Caribbean. In response to the devastation in Haiti, they had received dozens of volunteer airplanes and pilots and tons of donated relief supplies. Agape’s permanent staff is made up of year-round saints; the rest of us were trying to combine a good deed or two with a short bout of adventure.

For weeks, Agape’s pilots flew into what could only be described as "airplane soup" over Port au Prince. Military, cargo and private flights arrived and departed constantly at an airport that, as designed, couldn’t handle two flights on a Tuesday-- and that was before the destruction of the earthquake. With the port only marginally opened, the airport was the lifeline for millions of Haitians: through it flowed the generosity of taxpayers worldwide and millions of individuals. Approach control was divided between the Navy in Pensacola, FL, the Air Force in Port au Prince, and Haitian controllers in a makeshift tower. In spite of this, we all managed to get our loads onto the tarmac without bending too much metal.

As the campaign went on, I served in a variety of rolls. An aviatrix in dispatch is essential, as payloads, cruise speeds, and fuel burn all need to be considered. With the volume of donations we took in, extra hands on the sorting line were never turned down. Eventually, I got myself resourced off of home soil to fly food, medical supplies, and aid workers into Haiti out of Santiago in the Dominican Republic, on routes not unlike those I fly in Alaska. Actually, it was a little more hospitable than home: if we ended up in the ocean, we would not die from the cold in two minutes; we would last long enough for the sharks to get us.

After a month of volunteering, it was time for me to head back to Alaska. I was to jump on a Florida-bound Agape flight on Friday, February 19^th. Then, Agape called me in Santiago and asked if I would be willing to escort six orphans from Children of the Promise (COTP) orphanage in Cap Haitien, a city on the north coast of Haiti. These kids were all orphaned or abandoned before the catastrophe, and had all been in the adoption process for years. They each had adoptive parents waiting for them in the States. Jean-Max Bellerive, the Prime Minister of Haiti, had personally cleared the children to leave the country, and the USA had given them humanitarian visas.

We surveyed flooded Cap Haitien before landing to pick up the six boys (Albert, Reese, Malachi, Ben, Simon, and Jeff) from COTP. We flew on to Port au Prince, where the kids had to check in with the US Embassy. We met Maria O’Donovan, a COTP field director, and one of the adoptive parents, Sarah Thacker, at the airport. The three of us took the six babies to the US Embassy in a taxi. After a month divided between office and cockpit work, I was ill prepared for handling my third of six infants in close quarters. You can kill yourself in an airplane, but you are unlikely to get covered with projectile snot or crushed cheese crackers.

The Embassy checked all the documents for the children, confirmed that they were cleared all the way to the USA. Sarah, myself, and the six kids would all fly on a military transport that evening.

After five hours of waiting and crying (on the kids’ part, not mine), Maura, an Embassy official, finally appeared and abruptly cancelled the flight and said there was no real intention to reschedule. Years ago, I worked in Washington, DC and knew hundreds of Mauras: Ann Taylor suit, Nordstrom shoes, Blackberry constantly humming, little or no real responsibility. Maura had no idea how the 70 children waiting in the embassy were going to get to the States. She seemed immensely relieved when we offered to arrange our own transportation for our own six boys. We called Agape and, within hours, the dispatch team had a donated King Air slotted to pick up our merry little band the next morning.

Maura told us to meet her at the airport at 11:15am, where the embassy officials would hand over the children's paperwork. The Embassy maintains control of the sealed adoption papers until they see the kids board the plane. If the seal is broken, the paperwork is considered “tampered with” upon arrival in Miami.

We arrived with the children at the Port au Prince International Airport in a taxi at 11:15. Within minutes of stepping onto the sidewalk, we were surrounded by an angry mob. They tried to pull the boys away from us and yelled that we were child trafficking. Sarah was knocked to the sidewalk, trying to protect the two babies she was holding. The Haitian police intervened taking the mob ringleaders and all of us into custody. They marched us: kids, suitcases and all, down the airport driveway to the airport police station.

Our Embassy handlers had still not appeared and since they had the paperwork, the police became suspicious that the mob might be correct. One cop, with two bars of rank on his epaulettes, seemed particularly skeptical of our story.

I called Maura at the US Embassy. She was still in her office because “her car had not arrived.” I told her to take a taxi. I explained and stressed the severity of the situation. In response, she announced that she would wait for her driver.

I asked the police officers if I could walk out to the tarmac to talk to our pilots and alert them to our delay. I pulled my pilot shirt out of my pack, with four bars on the epaulettes. Two Bar scowled. I sat back down. Rebecca, a volunteer nurse from COTP, had arrived at the airport to say goodbye to the children with her friend Eric, a pediatrician. They came into the police station and fell victim to our captors as well.

An hour late, Maura and other Embassy officials arrived, US paperwork in hand. We thought we would be free to go. Despite years’ experience with the government, I maintain a remarkable amount of confidence in bureaucratic structure. I foolishly thought this situation was something like a visit to the DMV: unpleasant, time-consuming, and tiring for the feet, but we would get our documents and be on our way.

The Haitian police had a different protocol. Two Bar said the adoption paperwork was not enough. He wanted to see the Haitian Prime Minister's signature— probably just for the novelty of it. The Embassy insisted that they were under no obligation to share the Prime Minister’s signed list with the police.

The police moved us onto the street so that everyone had room to argue. By then everyone at the airport with a badge had gotten involved: not only the embassy staffers and the police on the sidewalk, but the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers, Haitian Immigration, our pilots, and a guy on the street selling gum. A man in a plaid shirt and jeans showed up, and turned out to be a police inspector, and the ranking cop on the scene. Maura looked at me and said: "I guarantee you'll be on that plane today."

As the testosterone match between agencies heightened, Two Bar threatened to arrest the men from US CBP. A yelling match ensued, between men wearing guns, about who had diplomatic immunity. When the situation had deteriorated beyond recognition, the Embassy staffers finally agreed to go get the Prime Minister’s list. Maura took me aside and said, "I guarantee you guys won't end up in Haitian custody." I think we already were.

Fax or email would not work. Inspector Plaid Shirt insisted that the police needed the Prime Minister’s original signature from locked embassy files. When Maura’s boss returned with the paperwork, the inspector took one quick look and said it was a fake. Apparently he and the PM write each other letters all the time.

Five hours later, the situation had completely stagnated. The pilots said they had to take off. The police insisted on moving us to another jail and continued arguing with our low-on-the-totem-pole Embassy team. They crammed all escorts, two Embassy people, and the six children into the back of two police cars and we bumped through traffic while the new Haiti-Relief remake of 'We are the World' blared on the cop's radio.

At the new police station, well clear of the airport, I realized I had severely underestimated the situation. The Embassy was not going to prevail. Inspector Plaid Shirt announced: the adults are free to go, but the kids are being detained.

Maura looked at me again and said, "I guarantee they won't separate you from the kids." Lady, I thought, you’re ‘nothing and two’ and, if Plaid Shirt throws the high hard one, you are not going to suddenly become Joe Mauer.

Four hours later, the police decided the children would go to a Haitian social services (IBESR)-approved orphanage for the night. We climbed back into the police trucks holding the boys tightly in our laps. No music this time. After an hour’s drive in the dark, we had no idea where we were. The police stopped at a few UNICEF tents set up in a compound and the police started pulling the kids out of the back of the truck into the dark.

Unfortunately, Inspector Plaid Shirt and the woman running the tent facility seemed to be on very close terms. Maria from COTP talked to the woman in charge. Could we stay with them? No. Could we sleep on the ground outside? No. Could we at least feed them and put them to sleep to avoid a dramatic scene? No. The police escorted us out of the compound to the tune of six screaming, terrified children. It was gut-wrenching for me, and I had only 24 hours of emotional investment in these kids. Eric used his GPS to mark the location of the tents. This would be the only way we would be able to find the children come morning.

Rebecca and Eric took us home to the apartment they shared with other volunteer medical workers. They fed us. They gave us their beds. They showed us the hospitality we were trying to show the world but had spent the day forgetting in favor of frustration, anger and fear.

The next day, after an hour and a half drive through the devastated streets of Port au Prince, we arrived to find the children still in the tent. Maria and I spent five hours playing with the kids in the dirt outside.

On the drive back to the apartment, my cell phone rang. It was a reporter from CNN, Gary Tuchman. Where did he get the story? The Haitian police. They were accusing us of forging the Prime Minister’s signature. That was a lot of credit for our clever lot: we didn’t even know the Prime Minister’s full name. The interview took place a few hours later. CNN bought us pizza and we discovered that in Haiti that means Cheez-Whiz on bread.

We asked for the Embassy to provide us with transport to see the kids. Maura said civilians can’t ride in Embassy vehicles. I doubted Maura knew what the word ‘civilian’ meant and likely thought her Blackberry came with some military rank.

As the days went by, the children were confined to the tent, where they became dehydrated and developed diarrhea. The tent compound had inadequate supplies and staff to look after the boys. Each day we called every government official we could think of and were repeatedly told that the US Embassy was “working on it.” Each day ended with the children screaming as we had to leave them in the tent. The Prime Minister was apparently on a beach in Mexico, unable to take calls or vouch for his own signature. All seventy of the orphans waiting at the embassy were prohibited from leaving the country until our situation was resolved. It’s hard to buy beer in an earthquake-ravaged city, but we really could have used one.

Back at the apartment, we watched ourselves on CNN, disappointed that they included the ubiquitous cable news commentator. A white-haired Barbara Streisand look-alike with bright blue spectacles opined that the children’s parents should be coming to pick them up. It was little concern to her that no commercial passenger flights had been coming to Haiti since the earthquake, and the US Embassy and the Prime Minister had been clearing children so haphazardly that it was impossible for parents to find timely transportation.

On Tuesday, Maria and I paid an exorbitant amount to get to the tent orphanage by taxi. I walked into the tent to see the boys. No one was there. I looked in the other tents: All older children, no little munchkins. I looked helplessly for the few adults. I couldn’t speak a word of Creole besides “Mesi” and I couldn’t ‘thank’ my way out of this. When the police took the six children from us on Saturday night, our worst fear was that we would come back and they would be gone, or that some of them would. That fear was rapidly being realized.

I looked at Maria panicked. The kids aren’t here. She ran up to one of the adults and asked about the children. I had to suffer the agonizing wait of not speaking the language when an emergency is at hand. The translation came slowly, as Maria tried to get as much information as possible. The kids were moved. Last night. Where? They don’t know.

Maria called our taxi and he had already picked up another fare. I called the US Embassy. Pius Bannis, Maura’s boss, answered on the second ring. This was the first he’d heard of the kids being moved. He said he’d call back.

Maria and I could not spend an hour staring at these infuriating people who would not tell us where they had taken the children. We walked out the gate and onto the street. We were not 100 yards down the dusty gravel when a “TapTap” came by. Maria flagged it down and we climbed into the back. A TapTap is a pick up truck that has two benches in the back. They drive in random routes through Port au Prince and you tap the side of the truck to let the driver know when you want to get out. These rickety trucks are possibly the most smoothly operating piece of infrastructure in all of Port au Prince. We rode to the nearest busy intersection, both on our phones trying to find where the kids had been moved. We called COTP, Agape, Senators, and Congressmen. I called the Embassy twice more. They replied that they were “working on it.” Work faster.

Just as we climbed out of the TapTap into the intersection, another TapTap came along, driving towards town. Maria flagged him down. He was empty. She asked how much to take us all the way to the US Embassy. It’s a one-hour drive. Way past his route. Would be very expensive. Fifty US Dollars did the trick and we were on our way. The driver, happy to have such an affluent load, showed off the amenities of his vehicle, which included tinted windows and cup holders. He cannot have realized that the two women to his right had absolutely no desire to make small talk. Drive faster.

En route to the Embassy, Maria received a call from the Consulate General. He said they had found the children and had been granted custody. The Embassy would go pick the children up in an Embassy vehicle (either no longer illegal for civilian transport, or the United States had granted our orphans much-deserved soldier status). We should meet them at the Embassy.

I immediately called Agape back in Florida and asked the dispatcher to find a plane to fly us out tomorrow, completely cognizant of my “wolf!”-crying status. Within a half hour, I got a call from the pilot, who said he needed a “$13,000 reason” to make the flight. That is about how much it would cost his company to make the donation. I told him our story. I hung up to the sound of children’s voices coming down the hall. When they saw Maria and myself, the ones that could run did. We couldn’t pick up all six of them at once, so there were kids in our arms and kids clinging to our legs. We were all laughing, even baby Albert. The pilot called Agape to confirm: he would be at PaP International Airport at 11:00am tomorrow.

The boys were all excited, but desperately needed their diapers changed. Maura gave us XL Adult Depends (size 64” waist) because the Embassy had no diapers. They came to the kids’ chins.

The Consulate General was suspicious of our private transport arrangements:

“This is a problem we have had in the past: that people arrange their own transport, and then the aircraft does not show up.”

My frustration overwhelmed my discretion. “One: that was not the problem on Saturday, sir. Your aircraft cancelled on Friday night. Our aircraft was waiting on the ground at the appointed time on Saturday. But, your staff told us to meet you at the airport rather than the Embassy, and then you didn’t show up on time.”

I was angry, and frustrated that we had apparently not all lived on the same universe for the last 5 days. I should have known better: Washington bureaucrats and Alaskan pilots never operate on the same cerebral plane. “Two: Do you have another suggestion as to how we should take these kids off your hands? The Embassy is not even prepared to provide us with transport to see them in their tent jail, let alone an aircraft to take them to the United States.”

Besides random inquisitions about transport, the Consulate General also controlled non-immigrant visas for the US Embassy. Maria was an Irish citizen. In a great quirk of immigration law, Irish are allowed to travel into the US without a visa if they are on a commercial flight. But, if they are on a private plane, they have to have a visa. I asked if the Embassy could grant Maria a visa so that she could see the children into their parents arms. The last five days of ambiguity and fear had taken more of a toll on Maria, who was the only family some of these kids had, than it had on the rest of us. She would return to Haiti the next day to resume her work at COTP.

“No.” said the Consulate General, “That reason is not compelling enough for me to grant a visa.” Apparently the US State Department required more than a $13,000 reason.

Just for fun, I asked if the Embassy would provide us with transport from where we were staying to the airport. Nope. We would have to meet them at the Embassy.

It took our taxi over an hour to get to the Embassy on Wednesday morning, a distance of less than 5 miles, not that surprising in a rubble-filled city. We stumbled up to the front gate, carrying kids and kicking bags. No. You cannot come in this way today. The guard pointed 200 yards down the street. We explained that we couldn’t walk with these kids on the street. There were child-attacking mobs on the street. The guard insisted and pointed again. We asked for someone to help carry our bags. No. Embassy employees are not authorized to carry luggage. Are Embassy employees authorized to do anything in this country besides ride in Embassy vehicles?

By employing a form of stubborn refusal often used by women and children against men, we got one Embassy guard to help carry one bag to the next gate. Juggling six children and stringing out down the sidewalk, we stumbled into a parking lot full of Embassy vehicles. Lots of shiny Suburbans: worldwide vehicle of the US government. Consulate General Moore was waiting for us.

The CG insisted that Maria, Sarah and myself all climb into the third seat of the Suburban, then the kids were piled in on top of us. In the seat two-thirds the size of the one in front of it, there were nine people. In the next row up sat Consulate General Moore and the US Consulate General for Hungary, who is in town and out for a sight-see. In the front were the driver and an empty seat. The kids were all screaming. They were piled three deep and very uncomfortable, stepping on, kicking, and hitting each other to find a space.

When we were half a mile down the road, Sarah asked from below three kids, “You do have the paperwork, don’t you?” the CG looks at Hungary, who looked to the front. “Where’s Pius?” asked the CG. “Pius was supposed to bring the paperwork. We’d better call him.” The driver asked if he should turn around. Larry, Mo and Curly are too busy looking for Pius’ phone number. No one had it. They decided to send him an email, using their government-issued Blackberries.

I shoved a kid off my arm toward Maria so that I could get to my bag. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through recent calls. I dialed Pius’ number and handed the phone over the kids and over the seatback to the CG. “It’s ringing.” I said over the crying, crowded children.

We backtracked to retrieve the paperwork that these 2-year-olds could probably have kept better tabs on themselves. We left the Embassy again, this time in a two-car convoy, Pius following with the paperwork, while three adults and six kids still remained crammed in the back of the first Suburban. Exhausted by the crying, the CG gave the kids juice and Pringle chips to shut them up. The immediately threw them all over themselves, us and the vehicle. We pulled onto the tarmac and the Embassy suits got out to wait in the shade and play on their Blackberries.

Right on schedule, the airplane sent by Agape pulled off the runway. CG Moore told us the kids had to walk in single file. We picked up kids and bags and left him to explain the concept of “single-file” to a two-year-old covered in Pringles. The Haitian government charged the pilot over $350 for the privilege of landing and taking off in their country, making his contribution to these children $13,350. We climbed aboard and Maria strapped in the kids. They started screaming when they realized Maria was getting off the plane. There was nothing to be done. Her visa wasn’t compelling enough to the adults on the tarmac.

US Customs and Border Patrol in Miami took two and a half hours to clear all six children. One of the officers that had been present at the fray in Port au Prince on Saturday had since been transferred back to Miami. I asked him, “What the heck happened?” He said an anti-American grudge of one cop started it, as far as he could tell. Two Bar. And when Inspector Plaid Shirt showed up, he basically wanted to make the boys “disappear” back into the system. Why? Because you guys were not supposed to enter the airport through the front door, you were supposed to go through the back, with the Embassy. He was going to show the US Officials who had the power. It seemed like an awful fierce punishment for going in the wrong door.

After all the kids were cleared and fingerprinted, we delivered them to five sets of parents who couldn’t contain their excitement. One mother took her baby and me in her arms at once. She was sobbing. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ll never know. Thank you.” For a hug like that, I’d fly through mountains, Alaskan weather, and Haitian police stations all over again.