a flying ice cream truck

each day is different in bethel. you might work your ass off all over the delta. or you might get stuck waiting in the pilot's lounge, flying the couch all day while everyone else gets 4 flights.

granted, i've frequently been a bench-rider in life (mainly for my attitude, although i'm sure that my utter lack of mad skills plays a part). this week is getting ridiculous though. 5 days in a row of sitting on the couch for 10 hours, followed by a 1 hour flight at 6 pm. i feel the batshit insanity overtaking me and am defenseless against it. the clock on the wall clicks over to 3. something is about to break. i head outside.

it's almost 80 today. i sun myself on the ramp, attracting the local pussy.


summer in bethel is not bad. both days of it.

billy comes out. he tells me i've got a freighter run to tuntutuliak. a short 20 minute hop. i grab my thermos and clipboard, and head out to the ship to remove the seats. the rampers drive out with the forklift. it's 560 pounds of frozen goods. i'm not sure why we've waited until the hottest part of the day to fly this cargo out.

after filling the plane with ice cream bars and red baron pizzas, he comes back out to tell me i will now have 3 passengers. i take the frozen boxes back out, placing them on the searing hot ribbon of asphalt under the plasmic sun. put the seats back in. re-rig the cargo net and reload. go inside to get my manifest and passengers.

something doesn't make sense. now they have me flying to kongiganak and then kwigillingok for more passengers before dropping off the ice cream in tuntutuliak. the routing is similar to departing boston for atlanta and miami before dropping off your main cargo in new york.

the flight doesn't make any sense. i don't have any room for the passengers they want me to pick up. i would if i dropped the freight off first though.

i suggest my more-efficient, higher-revenue routing to dispatch.

"you have to go that way, because the agent in tunt won't be able to come for two hours."

"why not?"

"she's cutting fish."

"ok. but kong has a short runway. it's 80 degrees out, and i won't be able to take the weight of this freeze and pick up passengers, or even have space for them."

"well, this is the way we need to do it. the agent is cutting fish."

"i'll take whatever i can, but some people will get left behind," i say, frustrated. i couldn't come up with a more asinine way of doing things if i tried.

"you need to take them all."

"that's not going to happen," i think but don't say.

i call the passengers for kongiganak. only 2 of the 3 show. i go upstairs to the coffee shop. outside to the smoker's pit in the front. call her on the loudspeaker. no one. i'm now late by ten minutes. what would the airlines do?

i launch. on the way down, i think of ways to improve my attitude. come up with nothing. reflect on the irony of delivering eskimo pies to the eskimos. wonder about why they love frozen red baron pizzas so much.

i get to kong, and find not the one 120 pound passenger on my list, but three 250 pound passengers with 80 pounds of luggage each. i try to explain about density altitude, maximum weights, no wind, and how the airplane does not have enough runway to accelerate to flying speed under those conditions. i also point to the bulk of melting ice cream and lack of physical space. no one understands or cares. they bought tickets, after all. that entitles them to a ride, no matter what safety concerns the captain might have. makes sense.

a hageland airplane lands. i walk over. sure enough, he's empty going out. i ask if he can take them to bethel for me.

yes, it's our competition. yes, it's lost revenue for grant. but i'm not going to push what's safe or legal, period. plus, it would be morbidly embarrassing to run off the end of the runway overweight; another aviator taken down by the immortal and frozen red baron.....

furthermore, because of my efforts to accommodate them, these travelers will now get to their destination an hour earlier, with two less stops. for my consideration, i am rewarded with a sour bitchy face that advises me to "plan better next time."

i thank her for the career advice.

they waddle away, upset about having to haul their ridiculously heavy bags another 30 feet. a worthwhile expenditure to get on an aircraft that would be safely loaded? only future generations will be able to say.

i fly to kwig, then tunt. drop off the now fully-melted ice cream bars.

take off for bethel. check the atis 20 miles out; give the little house a call 10 miles out:

"bethel tower, cessna six niner zero eight mike 10 southwest, whiskey."

10 seconds later the reply from a shaky and uncertain trainee voice: "cessna...... six niner zero eight mike.........enter a left base runway one left....... report two miles."

another 207 checks in 10 west, and then a third 10 southeast. we are all assigned the same runway. we are all the same distance from the airport. we are all traveling the same speed. i try to remember that distance formula from algebra. bethel has no radar. and as fun as a threesome might be, i'm not interested in trying this tower-sponsored event on final. i do a 360 for spacing and let the other two sodomites fight it out. come in last place. like i usually do with the ladies.

get fuel. park my bird. walk into the terminal.

a woman steps up and yells at me. my awol passenger from the outbound flight. she is upset cause she missed her ride to kong. i ask her where she was, and explain that i looked for her out front and in the cafe. explain that it's generally a good idea to be in the waiting area around departure time. that i waited ten more minutes for her. nothing registers. i do my paperwork and walk back to the dump.

another day of staying alive in the ky delta, despite permutations of incompetence so complex they would blow steven hawking's mind. sometimes i feel like this.


granted, those would be sweet hats to wear, but it sometimes makes me question my career choices.