Chapter Three –  Moose on the Loose

When I first heard they were hiring at Wien Air Alaska, I couldn’t believe it.  Nobody else seemed to be hiring in 1981.  I loved the idea of living in Alaska.  I’d never been there, but it sounded wonderful, wild, woolly and wide-open.  I immediately sensed there were adventures just waiting for me to experience them.

The commuter I was flying for in 1981 was based in Fresno, California.  Inland Empire Airlines had been very good to me.  I’d started by flying Navajo Chieftains, a light twin normally flown by just one pilot.  When this company acquired Metroliners I was a captain right away.  In fact, the first time in my entire career I ever flew as copilot was after I’d been with Wien long enough to upgrade from the flight engineer position.

When I took a month of leave to train for my flight engineer’s rating in a DC-10 (I wound up finagling a captain’s type-rating out of the deal at the same time) they even paid my salary while I was gone.  “For the publicity,” they said, when I expressed my astonishment. It’ll give our passengers more confidence if we can tell them some of our pilots have had training with the majors.

The DC-10 type-rating was what turned my interview at Wien in my favor.  The personnel director, who was non-too-friendly, grumbled, “Well, if you can fly a DC-10, I guess you can fly a 727.”  And with that, I was hired.

Inland Empire generously gave me two weeks of vacation when I told them I was resigning so I could still use my travel benefits to get up to Alaska.  I had wanted very badly to take a ferry from Seattle as far north as possible, but the ferry workers were on strike so I decided to hop a ride on Flying Tigers from San Francisco to Anchorage.

The chief pilot at Inland Empire, who had escorted me when I went to get my DC-10 ratings and gotten his own flight engineer’s rating at the same time, loaned me his car, a Volkswagen Rabbit.  It’s the same car we used to drive from Fresno all the way to United’s Flight Training Center in Denver.

United offered training to other companies and individuals in addition to their own pilots.  It had been expensive, but worth it.   The whole thing had run me about $12,000, but since I had been quoted about $25,000 I felt it was a steal.  Others were paying $10,000 for a type-rating in a B-737, a very small jet compared with the DC-10, and I got not only the captain’s rating but a flight engineer’s rating as well.  It was overkill on my part, but after the comment by the Wien personnel guy, I knew it’d been worth it.  Women were still not generally considered desirable as airline pilots and I wanted something extra to offer.

In any case, goodbyes were said and arrangements made to have the car picked up at San Francisco Airport in a day or two, and I was off.  I didn’t get off to a very good start, though.  About an hour or so north of Fresno, the car quit.  This was not good.  I mean, this really, really was not good. 

The car was packed to the gills with my few possessions.  I’d had a piano, but sold it to another pilot as I didn’t want to mess with trying to transport it.  Absolutely everything else I owned was jammed into that car.  I’d never accumulated much, or wanted to.  I’d already moved five times in the past three years.  My goal was to never have more than I could pack into a single car.

I managed to get the car off the highway and onto the shoulder.  I waited for someone to stop, and fortunately didn’t have to wait long.   A man I estimated to be in his early forties soon pulled over.

“Not good,” he said cheerfully.  That’s not what I was hoping to hear, actually.

“What is it?” I asked. I know absolutely nothing about cars.

“Broken timing belt.”  You’re not going anywhere.

As I said, this was not good.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Alaska,” but I’ll settle for San Francisco Airport.  It was my good fortune that he was headed that direction anyway, and not only got me to the airport, but took me around the back side of the airfield where Tigers had their hangar.  I’d had to leave the car, full of my worldly possessions, right where it quit. 

I was later able to convince the friend who’d loaned me the car, along with a second Inland pilot, to rescue my stuff and get it onto another Tigers’ flight.  Talk about an imposition, but they were great guys and they helped me out.  I got my things just a few weeks later, as soon as they were able to manage it. 

My friend was obviously annoyed about the expense and inconvenience of the breakdown, but he didn’t consider it my fault and wouldn’t even let me pay for the repair, which of course I offered to do.  I felt just terrible about the whole thing, especially the enormous inconvenience it caused for him.

In any case, I made my Tigers flight and as we approached Anchorage my nose was glued to the window.  Dawn was just breaking and the view flying over the Prince William Sound was spectacular.  We flew right down Turnagain Arm, allegedly named by explorer Captain James Cook who, upon reaching the water’s end, announced it was time to “turn again.”
On my previous trip to Alaska for my job interview there had been overcast skies the entire way and I never saw anything until we landed.  I was just there overnight.  This was my first good look at the new state I was to call “home” and I was immediately smitten by this beautiful and rugged place.

Friends who had lived in Alaska before told me people decide one of two things very quickly:  either they love living there or they hate it.  I knew immediately I would love it.