Flight to College: Dropping Romay off for her first year at UAF

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“You going to make it out of here in this?” Myra asked referencing what was becoming a decent rain with gray skies all around. 

            “Ruby is showing no clouds and it is supposed to be good all the way to Fairbanks from there,” I answered.  “We should come clear of this just outside of Galena.”

            I sipped on my one cup of coffee for the morning.  The best way to assure I would need to use a bathroom mid-flight was to put me on a plane without plumbing.  Our little Tripacer definitely was not equipped.

            Romay had packed the night before, and as we shuttled her stuff from her room to the back of Myra’s Scout, it appeared that she had included all of her worldly possessions save her shot gun.  They would, after all, not allow her to have that in the dorms.

            The next day was scheduled to be her freshman orientation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and much like my parents did when I went to Hope, I was going to go with her to assure she was set up.  Unlike when I went to school, we didn’t have the luxury of packing two cars with the stuff she would survive on for the year. 

Mom and daughter under the wing and out of the weather before Romay and I left for Fairbanks.

            I credit both playing Tetris as a kid as well as learning from a dad who packed and unpacked UPS trucks for a living with my ability to cram as much cargo into as little of a space as possible.  When Romay and I squeezed into the plane and out of the rain, all we had was a small spot that looked like it had been molded to accept our bodies, my guitar from college gently squeezed between the top of the pile and the headliner.

Just before getting underway... how do normal families do this again?

            Galena has a long runway, but even loaded to the gills, we easily got off the ground and climbed, the ground dropping away below as we pointed east toward Fairbanks.  The Yukon River was a brown ribbon marking the basic path we would take.  Five minutes, and the rain was no longer coating the windshield, and a warm sun began drying the fuselage.

            “You want to take the controls?” I asked over the intercom?

            “No, I’m good,” Romay answered, “I just want to enjoy the ride.”

            Five more minutes, and she was snuggled against my shoulder and breathing the deep contented breaths of a hard sleep.

            As a freshman in high school, Romay had often visited with the guidance counselor just as a place to hang out.  Romay has always liked to joke, and the counselor liked to laugh.  On one such visit, a boarding school student unfamiliar with Romay walked in on the conversation.

            “This is Romay,” the counselor had introduced the two girls, “she is Mr. Harris’ daughter.”

            “Oh wow,” the girl had said, “you sure look like your dad.”

            “Yeah, pretty strong genetics,” Romay had answered straight-faced, “I get that a lot.”

            The counselor just laughed knowingly without correcting the newcomer.  She knew that Myra and I had adopted Romay when she was eight.  She also agreed how uncanny it was how like me Romay was in looks and demeanor. 

            “You’re the only Eskimo I know with a northern Michigan accent,” I had laughed when Romay recounted the story to me.

            The village of Ruby, once a bustling town on the short list to become Alaska’s capitol, sat quietly below and to the south of our path.  Romay shifted, pulled out her phone, snapped a picture, and then repositioned her head against the passenger window.  I could not even tell if she woke in the midst of the process.

            Our first meeting replayed in my mind.  A five-year-old Romay bounced around in the waves at the beach just north of Unalakleet in Bering Sea water that had been ice just three weeks before.  Short pigtails stuck out from either side of her head as she giggled and danced to a music only she could hear.  The sun was warm, but the cold of the water was evident in the light breeze.  She played until her lips turned purple and voiced her protest as we adults insisted that she come out and warm herself by the fire.

            At that point, I had no idea that I would become her dad in three years.  I was still trying to figure out how to convince the woman who would become her mom that I was worthwhile to keep around.  But there was something magical about the little girl.

            A little turbulence rocked the wings of the plane and Romay awoke, “Was I asleep?” she asked groggily. 

            “Yeah, you were twitching,” I responded.

            “Late night.  I hung out with Sweetsy, and then didn’t start packing until after midnight,” she confessed.

            Awake now, but just dazedly looking out the front of the plane at the terrain passing below, it was like she was still asleep.  I thought back to another early meeting.

            “Jason!” Romay squealed as she headed full speed down the road, rubber boots splashing through the puddles as I knelt down to meet her.

            I had come to Unalakleet for teacher meetings and was walking down the road with some other educators on our way to the store.  I opened my arms for a hug and was nearly knocked over backward, Romay never slowing down before throwing her arms around my neck.

            Romay was six and a force of nature.

            “When did you get here?” she spoke with a light in her eyes.

            “Just this morning,” I smiled back.  “I’ll be here for a couple of days,” and just as quickly as she had tackled me, she sprinted back through the mud and water to where she had left her friends playing.

            “Dad,” Romay brought me back to the present, “where are we?”

            “Uh, just south of Tanana,” I looked out my window to see if I could spot the village, “little over an hour left.  How you doing?”          

            “Fine.  You would never think we started in rain, would you?” she asked.

            The day had become beautiful.  One of those late summer interior days with crisp yellow light.  The air, for the most part, was smooth, and only a few wispy clouds could be seen in the distance.  A line of hills that marked we were getting close to Fairbanks came into view.

            I thought back to when she first called me dad.

            “So, can I call you Dad?” she asked as she plopped down next to me on the couch of our apartment in Koyuk.

            She and her brother had been living with us for a couple of months into what was only supposed to be a year to help out her mom at that point.  A small voice at the back of my head warned me about getting too close to a kid I would be sending home at the end of the year.

            I ignored the voice, “I’ll never make you call me dad, but if you want to, it would make me proud.”

            It was as though a switch was flipped.  One moment I was just some adult in her life and she was just some kid I was taking care of, and then the next moment she was my flesh and blood as though she had always been mine.  She was just always with me after that.  Hunting, fishing, out for a ride, Romay was with me.

            “We must be close,” she commented as a car drove below us on the road between Fairbanks and Nenana.

            I dialed in the weather report, got the information I needed, contacted approach, spoke with the tower, and got cleared to land straight in at Chena Marina.  It was not my first landing on the little strip bordered on one side by tall spruce and on the other side by a float pond.  It had looked ribbon thin the first time I had landed on it, and that was how it appeared to Romay as we closed in on the ground for her first landing there.  The mains touched, the nose wheel came down and we slowed in order to be able to turn around and back taxi.

            “Glad it was you flying,” she commented over what had been an eerily quiet intercom coming in.  Evidently, she had been concentrating just as hard as I had on putting the plane down smoothly.

            Our friend and mechanic, Steve, met us at the strip and shuttled us to the rental car place, we got a car, drove back to Chena Marina, unloaded the plane into the rental car, and at that point the trip to college became just like every other kid heading off to school that fall loaded into the family sedan.  On campus, Romay’s new roommate helped us haul boxes to the closet the school called a dorm room.

            We made store runs, we picked up a computer, got her books from the book store, got her settled in, and it came time for me to do the final drop off before heading back to Galena.

            I got out of the car and smiled, wrapped my little girl in a tight hug and reminded her, “your mom and I love you very much.”

            “I know, Dad.”

            “Be good, be safe, have fun,” I fell into the stereotypical father departure speech.

            “I will, Dad.”

            “Okay then.”

            “Thanks for everything, I love you,” and she turned and walked up the stairs away from the parking lot and toward her dorm building.

            I sat in the car and watched her until she crested the hill and out of my sight.  Then I just sat in the car.  Childhood passes so quickly for parents.  A parent who starts with a kid who is eight sees that childhood slip by that much faster.  My little girl.  I waited for my vision to clear enough to drive, slipped the car into gear and became just another dad dropping off his daughter for her first year of college.

Romay saying goodbye to her little sister before getting in the plane headed to college.

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.