Ellen enters the world: We don't do anything normal.

Hide and seek became harder for Myra.

A very plump Myra sat patiently next to me in the waiting room.

            “Do you want a boy or a girl?” she repeated the same question that she had multiple times before, but with new meaning as we had decided to find out the gender of our baby during this visit.

            I repeated what had become my standard answer, “I want a healthy human with ten fingers and ten toes.”

            However, inside a little voice kept saying, “Let it be a boy, let it be a boy.”

            Our 18-year-old daughter, Romay, sat at home also wondering whether her little sibling would be a boy or a girl.  We had already raised one girl, adopting her when she was eight.  She had been my hunting, trapping, fishing, gardening, get greasy in the garage buddy since the day she called me Dad.

            There was just some stereotypical urge to father a son.

            Myra’s name was called and I followed her back to the ultrasound room where the technician helped Myra pull up her shirt exposing the little water melon of a belly it had been poorly hiding.

            The tech made pleasant small talk while she lubed up the transducer probe with what looked like an entire jar of goo. 

            “I absolutely love my job,” she bubbled.  “I get to meet expectant parents and show them their babies every day.”

            It wasn’t an act.  This isn’t an advertisement for Chief Andrew Isaac Native Clinic in Fairbanks, but I do have to say that it is the nicest native clinic I have ever been too, and quite possibly one of the nicest clinics of any kind I have ever seen.  This tech is only one of the reasons I give them such high reviews.

            “I’ll take the measurements that I need, and we’ll see if we can get your baby to show us a gender near the end,” she explained while moving the probe around and showing us what our baby looked and sounded like.

            A little face came into view with a mouth opening and closing at about 60 miles per hour.  My eyes moved back and forth between the miracle on the screen and the miracle that was carrying and growing this little human inside of her.

            “Looks like we’ve got a talker,” the tech pointed out, “won’t guarantee it, but I’d say over 90% of the babies I see moving their mouth like that during an ultrasound are girls.”

            The little voice inside of me wanting a boy didn’t say a word as he too sat transfixed by what he saw on the screen.

            The tech moved the probe around getting what she needed and then slid it down and applied some pressure to Myra’s belly to see if she could get the little alien in there to move just right to reveal the secret he or she was hiding.

            “Don’t know if we’ll be able to tell,” she said as we all stared and willed the little baby to move, “oh, there it is…”

            The little voice in my head got excited, here was the news finally he had been waiting for.

            “Looks to be a girl.”

            “We’re having a little girl,” the voice repeated inside of my head.  “We’re having a little girl,” and it was not with a tone of disappointment.  “Our best friend is carrying our little girl.”

            “Are you happy we are having a girl,” Myra asked as we carefully walked to the car.

            “Absolutely,” I reassured. 

            I thought back to Romay and the little girl she had been: sitting in my lap in church, dancing with me in the living room, cuddling on the couch during movies, greasing up her face with camo face paint when we went out duck hunting.

            “I thought I wanted a boy,” I said truthfully, “but God wants me to be a father of daughters,” I smiled.

            We had seen our little girl, but there was still a long wait ahead.  It was not quite spring yet, and we would not head to Fairbanks to wait until the end of June (the baby was not due until the end of July).  Once in Fairbanks, we would wait through one of the hottest summers they had seen in a while with a baby deciding she wanted to hang out as long as possible in momma’s little hot tub.

            We went to minor league baseball games in a breezy park, saw movies just for the sake of air conditioning, and went to the pool everyday where Myra continued to swim at least a mile each time.

Trying to stay cool at a Gold Panners game.

            On July 25^th, we made our annual barge run where we loaded a truck full of groceries and various other supplies into a U-haul  and drove it to Nenana to unload at the barge landing.  Ruby Marine would haul it via river barge for us to Galena.

            Upon return, I helped a very plump Myra into our rental car and we gingerly drove up Murphy Dome in Fairbanks to a friend’s dry (It is a short word… don’t miss it, means no running water or flushing toilet) cabin where we would continue to wait until Ellen (she got a name sometime in there) decided she was ready to enter the world.  The house we had been staying at was no longer available.

            The road was a pretty steep grade with some pretty large chunks of rock in it.  We drove up to what looked like the description: a powerline going across the road next to a small trail leading into the woods.  I walked in and found the cabin before going back to get Myra and then making two trips to get our stuff.

            I happily did not marry a normal woman.

            “Oh, this is nice,” Myra said as she sat down on the couch. 

            An old .410 hung above the door, the cabin had been decorated with a variety of fur and feathers and furnished out of a Value Village (pronounced Vil-loo Vil-laage).

            I went up in the loft and made the bed and then helped Myra out to the outhouse so that she could bed down and rest after what had become a very long day.

            It felt like my eyes had just closed when I woke to Myra saying, “I’m not sure, but I think it’s time.”

            The drive to the cabin had taken longer than the time we had slept there as I helped Myra back up the trail, into the car, and opened the bottle of coffee I had bought the night before just in case a drive like this was necessary.

            Myra called the hospital and described what was going on as we made our way back down the hill and toward town.

            “Better come on in,” I could hear the nurse on the other side of the conversation say.

            “We’ll get there, and they’ll just tell us it’s a false alarm,” Myra said with certainty. 

            This was after all our first go around with this.

            We checked in, the nurse checked out what was going on and said, “yup, it’s happening.”

            We still weren’t too sure, but they got Myra suited up as though it were the real thing.

            The real thing is nothing like the movies.  Nothing goes quickly.  Myra walked laps around the entire baby birthing level of the hospital, she bounced on an exercise ball, she breathed, she got measured, the doctor came in and out of the room, and hours passed.

            Then things amplified.  Ellen started becoming insistent (she has remained so since that day).  More breathing, some hissing, and me holding Myra’s left leg while the doctor told jokes (not sure if that is standard medical training or if we were just lucky).

            “Better get the other nurses in here,” the doctor said to the woman working with him, “we’re about ready.”

            I thought that was what was said twelve hours earlier.

            The nurses filed into the little room.

            “Wow, what is she on right now?” one of the nurses calmly asked.

            The doctor made eye contact with the nurse for emphasis and said very slowly, “Not a thing.”

            “Noooo,” was the incredulous chorale response.

            The doctor just emphatically nodded his head.

            And then Ellen finally decided it was time.  With one last push, she came skipping across the table bouncing three times before landing in the doctor’s hands.  People who know Ellen now should not be surprised by that entrance.

            I clipped the cord and collapsed into a chair.

            “You okay?” the doctor asked concerned for me, “not going to pass out are you?”

            “My husband butchers moose,” Myra bragged.

            The doctor placed the brand new baby on Myra’s chest and she nuzzled and drew life.

            Ten fingers, ten toes, healthy.

            “We have a little girl,” the voice cheered inside of me.

Ten fingers and ten toes.

Stopped Props and Christmas Miracles

            Bub and I were just walking back from one of our wrestling matches that morning.  This one involved a toothbrush and an airport bathroom.  I am not sure if I had won or not, but her teeth were mostly clean.

            “I have an article for you to read,” was Myra’s greeting as I carried a still squirming Ellen back to where we had been sitting in the Anchorage RAVN terminal.

            “Uh, oh,” I responded.

            “It is an interesting read,” Myra continued while handing me her phone with the article open.  “I’m going to brush my teeth.”

            “RAVN Victim of Cyber-Attack” was not a reassuring title to open the article with.  Boiled down, the gist was that RAVN’s computer system had been attacked and the maintenance records for their DeHaviland Dash 8s were being held hostage.  Without the maintenance records, the planes couldn’t legally fly.

            I sighed while looking down at my ticket listing the Dash as the plane we were supposed to fly on that day.

            “St. Mary’s passengers,” was called out over the public announcement system, “your flight is still on hold.  We will have an update in a half hour.”

            The announcement was met by a collective laugh in the terminal.  It was the same announcement that had been made every half hour for the last two hours.

            “Doesn’t look good for us,” a young couple headed to Kodiak remarked. 

            Five minutes later and the PA was alive again, “St. Mary’s passengers, the first flight to St. Mary’s has been canceled.  We will give an update on the second flight in a half hour.”

            People sighed and began collecting their belongings.

            It wasn’t looking good for any of us scheduled to fly from Anchorage via RAVN, but we all hung out since we didn’t really have anywhere else to go. 

            Myra, Ellen, and I had started out the day in Fairbanks where we were visiting Romay and Ethan before Christmas.  It was good to see our other kids, Bub got some time in the pool, we did a little shopping where everything is available, and ate foods we normally can’t get.  We got on the early Alaska Airlines jet and were cruising along until hitting this little hiccup.

            “Kodiak passengers, your plane is taxiing up, and you will be boarding shortly,” was met by cheers when announced on the PA.

            “Well, good luck guys,” the Kodiak couple wished Ellen and I as Myra sat back down with us.

            “Things are looking up,” I told her.  “RAVN must have gotten something figured out, and planes are moving again.”

            We happily lined up when the Unalakleet flight was announced ready for boarding.  The only three seats together left on the plane when we boarded were part of the back row made up of five seats on the Dash.  Two ladies we didn’t know heading to some other village through Unalakleet shared the row with us.  It was cozy.

            Take off was uneventful, climb out was smooth, and the flight attendant was handing out beverages and the cookies the Dash is so famous for in Alaska before we knew it.

            “I’ll have an IPA,” one of the ladies sitting next to me answered the flight attendant before the question was fully out of her mouth.

            “White wine for me,” her friend added.

            Bub was sound asleep and therefore couldn’t ask for her usual of apple juice.  She hits that stuff pretty hard while flying.

            Ten minutes later, and our row friends were ready to start round two.  My coffee wasn’t even gone yet, but they were having one more of what they had on the first go round.

            The flight was clear, and as we neared the Nulato Hills, Myra and I got a good view of the Yukon River below, a landmark that had meant home for ten years.  Where the river skirted the edge of the hills marked the beginning of a solid gray carpet of clouds that we would have to descend through to land in Unalakleet.  The weather report from earlier in that day was calling for 900 feet overcast which was only just below the airport pattern height: an easy landing for an IFR rated pilot.

            We weren’t worried as the plane began its descent, and kept descending down through a gray soup.  The mechanical whir of the flap motors and the clunk of the landing gear locking into place signaled we were getting close to the airport, but then the plane banked and went around signaling that the pilot must have missed his first approach.  The wings leveled out and it felt like we were going for try number two, continuing to descend with no break in the clouds visible.

            Watching out the window for a sign of the airport, half the passengers groaned as we witnessed the gear go up.  The other half of the passengers joined us after the first half explained what the gear going up signaled.

            The engines responded to the pilots adding power and we began to climb out of the clouds.  They roared with the added effort, but then something didn’t sound quite right.  The left engine sounded rough.

            “Is that prop slowing down?” Myra asked leaning over to me.

            “Nah, has to be an optical allusion,” I answered. 

            Props when looked at from a different angle can even appear to change direction, and I figured we had to be seeing things, but it was unmistakable what was going on when the prop slowed to the point of barely spinning.  The pilots were attempting to feather it to reduce drag.

            “Ah, yup, that’s stopped,” I pointed out the obvious to Myra.

            The pilot’s calm voice came on over the speakers, “Folks, we have had a little bit of an emergency and are experiencing a mechanical issue.  We have rerouted to Galena where the skies are clear and winds light.  We’ll land there and get things figured out once we’re on the ground.”

            The mechanical issue that he was referencing was quite apparent to most of the passengers.  The fasten seat belts light came on, and one of our row friends got up out of her seat.

            “Mam, you’ll need to sit down now,” the flight attendant encouraged.

            “I have to pee,” our friend answered.  Two IPAs will have that effect on a person after all.

            “Be quick,” the flight attendant directed, “we are having a mechanical issue.”

            “With this plane?” she asked incredulous as she hurried up to the bathroom.

            At this point, people had pulled out phones to take pictures of the eerie sight of a stopped prop on a flying plane.  I will never afford to own a twin-engine plane, but every time RAVN doubles their ticket prices due to a holiday or other high traffic time (last day of school for instance) my grumbling to Myra often includes the threat of starting our own airline.

            “RAVN, who do they think they are?  Doubling their prices and gouging us, grumble, grumble.  I’ll buy a bigger plane, grumble, show them.  Cherokee 6 and start hauling people around, grumble, grumble, kick a rock in the road.”

            These grumblings have led me to read articles on small twins with which I would fight back the Goliath that is RAVN.  Each article at least skims over the fact that a twin with one engine out is harder to fly than a single engine plane with one engine out (the math is simple on that, and I actually wrote that correctly… checked it twice).  It has to do with the difficulty of balancing power and drag with the cliché being that with one engine out on a twin, the other is guaranteed to carry you all the way to the scene of the crash.

            “Let’s pray,” Myra earnestly stated while bowing her head.

            And we did.  We prayed for the pilot, prayed for the weather, the engine that was still running, the engine that wasn’t, the people on the plane, our families on the ground, the runway in Galena, and once we were done praying together, we continued to pray silently on our own.  We pretty much cycled through that pattern for the eternity that was the hundred and eight air miles to Galena from Unalakleet, plane flying nose up to compensate for that one less engine.

            “There is a mechanical problem on this plane,” our row companion who returned from the bathroom was explaining to her comrade.  “We’re going to Galena.”

            “On this plane?” her friend asked for clarification.  “Maybe we should turn our lives around,” they both laughed as they tightened their seatbelts.

            The flap motor whirred, the gear dropped into place and I felt the familiar descent to runway 06 in Galena.  It has always been a popular runway with me, but this cemented its place as my favorite.

            Touchdown, though much more significant, felt like any other touchdown when both engines were running, and the plane slowed and turned off on a taxiway, making its way to the terminal.  The passengers cheered.

            Engines shut down, plane parked at the terminal, the pilot stood in front of us, “Well folks, sorry about the inconvenience.  We’ll be in Galena for a little while.  They have a nice warm terminal, and we’ll figure out what we are going to do to get you out of here tonight.”

            He didn’t even look rattled, a little tired maybe.

            We exited the plane, and Myra and I had never been so happy to see Galena.  Ellen had finally awoken as we packed to get off the plane.

            “Where are we,” she asked, “is this Galena?”  She had been hoping we would go to Galena at least at some point the whole time we were out on our little vacation.

            Inside the terminal we were met by smiling familiar faces, “Welcome home, you guys moving back?  You were on that flight?  Good to see you here safely.”

            “Well, who do you want to call?” Myra asked me and before I could answer.

            “Jason?  What are you guys doing here?” Pastor Kopp asked.  “Want to come over for dinner?”

            “Yes,” was sufficient

            Galena was a Christmas winter wonderland with three feet of fresh powder on the ground and the trees wearing it like icing in a ginger bread village.  Never had it felt so much like coming home as we drove the dark roads to the pastor’s house.

            We feasted on a homegrown chicken, sweet potato casserole, and caught up.  The Kopp boys got me up to speed on how the swim team was doing and that they finally had a mascot: The Whitecaps.  Chris talked leather work, and firewood, and what had changed in town and the church and what had stayed the same.  Shell played host.  Myra and I sat around a warm kitchen table while Ellen ran around with the Kopp’s youngest daughter, a new-found friend that she didn’t remember was an old friend from when we had lived in Galena before.

            Chris and I drove out to check on people to see if anyone needed anything.  A mutual friend from Unalakleet had called and asked him to check on a couple of college freshmen who were traveling back from school in Hawaii to spend Christmas at home in Alaska.  When we walked through the door we were greeted by the smell of moose soup and were surprised by the rolls, cookies, chips, crackers and cheese stacked up on the check-in desk.  The people of Galena had provided an impromptu potluck feast for visitors they didn’t even know.  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was just starting on the terminal television.  People talked and laughed, Chris checked in on the two students, dropped off some homemade summer sausage, and we headed back to his house.

            Back at his house, three hours flew by much faster than a Dash on one engine, Ellen made ginger bread men with the Kopp kids (using a recipe that didn’t have eggs which meant she could eat it too) and when I called the local RAVN terminal they told us to be at the airport at 9:15 which was in fifteen minutes.  A different plane and crew was coming for us and would take us back to Anchorage where more than likely we would be stuck until after Christmas.  The cyber-attack and poor flying weather were adding up to a lot of stranded passengers.  That was okay though.  Myra and my perspective had changed on a lot of things.

            “You are all invited to my birthday party,” I announced as I walked down the aisle toward my seat, “it’s in June.”

            Loaded on a fresh plane with a fresh pilot, he addressed the passengers before climbing into the cockpit, “Well folks, we were originally going to go straight back to Anchorage, but looking at the weather, things have improved in Unalakleet and we are going to give it a try.  Not promising anything, but it looks good, and we are going to see if we can get you home tonight.”

            More cheering.

            The plane climbed as it should, the engine sounded as it should, the air was smooth, and visibility was good as we lined up with the runway in Unalakleet.  More cheering at touchdown.

            We had left our car parked at the house, and so the three of us did a cold shuffle to the four-plex where the girls went inside and I got the car to go pick up our bags.  Everyone had left the Unalakleet terminal by the time I went to pick up our totes.  It was dark, late, and cold, but we were home.  It had only taken us six hours to make the one-and-a-half hour flight.  Being home for Christmas was only a small part of our Christmas miracle.

The UAA/UAF Dash: One of the more recognizable planes in Ravn's fleet, this is one of the planes that was affected by the cyber-attack, but not the exact Dash 8 that had an engine go out.