Cloudly with a chance of...

People everywhere talk about the weather. It's lazy, and fairly uninteresting conversation, but it's a guaranteed go-to. I might not know you well enough to tell if you want to talk about airplanes or ice cream, or if you hate the Yankees, or if you think Mark Twain is the greatest writer of all time, but all these topics aside, I can assume that you, in your short or long life, have experienced weather. Weather: the great leveler.

In Alaskan air taxi business, people lie about the weather. Specifically: clients lie about the weather. Oftentimes, flying in Alaska is prohibited or delayed by the weather.  If people really want to get somewhere, or, more often, really want to be picked up from the wilderness where you left them, the weather miraculously becomes beautiful, by the mere power of their words.

This was the case this last week. We had dropped off a guy to camp for four days. He had 350 pounds of gear.  I just rode along as the copilot, in order to check out the logistics of the area and the drop off, and to be an extra set of hands, in the rare case they were needed. I was so into my spectator role, I didn't even wear hip waders. I was in Chucks and Carharrts, not even wearing aviator shades. This wardrobe guaranteed that I would get wet. I ended up jumping off the plane and standing in waist-deep, freezing cold water to hold the plane upright in the swell rolling into the beach.

When it was time to return for the pickup, the client would call with a weather report on his satellite phone. I told him that if the water was not calmer than on the drop off, he would have to hike his gear to the nearby lake and get picked up there.  Of course, his report the morning of was calm seas and beautiful outlook. On the other line, the local surfers were requesting a charter to the same beach because of rumored swell. But we decided to believe the guy on the ground with eyes on the beach. The one that wanted to get out of the wilderness. Amateur call on our part.

I was riding co-pilot again, this time in fly-fishing chest waders, and we took off over the icefield. The swell was visible from the air, and we landed anyway to explore a way through the waves to the beach. The client had his mound of gear stacked where the breaking waves were smallest, but they were still breaking... not something to which a Cessna 206 takes kindly. We taxied as close as we could and just pointed towards the lake... over a mile away.

We landed on calm waters in front of a glacier and decided to start hiking through the woods looking for this guy and helping him pack his gear. We pulled the GPS out of the plane to use for land navigation to the spot where we had seen him in the surf.  Miraculously, in the spiderweb of trails, we had both picked the same one and met up within a half hour. Even more miraculously, he found an old timer with a cabin and a four wheeler who would shuttle his stuff to the plane (Alaskan Bush motto: "If your neighbor needs help, help him. If he doesn't, leave him alone.")

The client was dripping sweat and a little exhausted from hauling his gear all day-- first to his "calm" spot on the beach, and then to the lake. I believe that you don't learn to pack light until you carry your own gear far enough, and I sincerely hope the angelic four-wheeler didn't stunt that lesson. We loaded the plane without incident and had a perfect take off and beautiful flight home from a pristine, safe lake.

My question is this: is it not obvious that weather minimums exist for small planes for safety reasons? We are not just worried about breaking the plane, we are worried about breaking the plane with you in it.  This should be something most people are adverse to, but surprisingly, they are not.

Don't Ever Let a Straight Man Cut Your Hair

Right now, the status of my haircut is, as quoted by my house guests: "Don't worry about the back. The front looks good, so people will just assume the back does too." It took 4 haircuts  and $38 to get this way. I'd say I miss living in a big, salon-filled city, but then wherein would lie the comedy?
The first haircut was by actual appointment, shortly after I had changed into dry clothes after jumping in the 40 degree ocean to push my plane off a remote beach where it was being pummeled by waves. After the adrenaline, and then the cold, subsided, the next thing on my mind was grooming. Natural, right?
The guy asked how I wanted it cut, and I answered "long layers." Forty-five minutes later, after he advised me that I would look great with a spiral perm (the 1980s called, they want their style advice back), I emerged with a blow-dried version of a Darth Vader helmet: tragically un-layered in a distinct A-shape around my head. I paid him.
Blessed with an 18- and a 20-year-old cousin staying with me for the summer, I came home to two hip college girls who told me that my hair looked horrible. Thanks, I know.
After contemplating this problem for a day, the older one, Taylor, announced that she thought she could fix it. And, truthfully, Homer doesn't have a lot of options for emergency stylist services. Given a half hour on my lunch break, Taylor cut my hair into two distinct layers: kind of Darth Vader gets a wedding cake, which, we can all agree, is better than a grumpy, single Darth Vader.
Hats can work wonders, and I had other things to worry about, mainly that I had just found out from his housesitter that the guy I work for left town for the summer. Back at work, trying to finish up the pilot training we started before the boss left, we jumped in a plane and headed west. An hour later, after talking the ears off remote park staff, we realized the plane was stuck. The tide had gone out while we jabbered.
In the water, well over my hipwaders, I shoved the plane into deeper water. The other pilot started the plane while I held onto the float in the propwash, and hoisted myself in the cargo door. En route back to Homer, we congratulated ourselves on another ridiculous adventure where no one got hurt, no metal got bent, and we didn't have to use my new satellite phone. I also wrung the water out of my socks.
Finally back in dry clothes, I settled in for a quiet night of reading at home when my cousins blasted in the door. Taylor announced that she had thought about it all day, and could 'definitely' fix my haircut. She took a full hour and produced many many many more layers than the two she had left me with this afternoon. In fact, now the number of layers was insane. I've seen children give sheepdogs better haircuts.
I was forced to take matters into my own hands. Floatplanes and air taxis are simple, compared to attempting to cut your own hair. But, armed with desperation at how long I would have to wear a hat, and emboldened by the fact that just last week I cut my own lawn (how much harder can hair be?), I stood in front of a mirror in my living room and started snipping. The results are short, but acceptable-- in the front. I can't see the back, and when I asked my cousins how it looked, they said, "people will assume the back looks as good as the front."It's 11:30 at night, too light to see a lunar eclipse, and there's a good chance I'll end up in the ocean again tomorrow-- people's assumptions will have to do.