October 27, 2006

I’m back. I have been working on some other writing and it lead me down a path that I wasn’t really anticipating. In the end, I wrote a few major chapters for one book idea out of several. The problem was it lead me down a contemplative path on such minor issues as the meaning of life. I would love to report that this effort was productive, but like most people who have spent any amount of time studying the meaning of life, I came up rather short on conclusions.

This month has been a change of pace. We still got out and did some great hiking. We saw lots of bear scat, but no bears. We have seen a few moose, but not all that many. The fall colors lingered on. In fact, a few trees and shrubs are still holding out. We finally have snow on the ground, but that is new in the last day or so. The snow line moved down the mountain to about 2000 feet and then stalled for several weeks. Now it appears to be winter. The ski resort is less than a month from its scheduled opening and it just might make it. The studded tires are back on our vehicles.

I had an interesting new experience this week. I had my first helicopter ride. I was down in Kenai for several inspections including one oil platform out in Cook Inlet. Since the water is deadly cold, all passengers must wear a survival suit of sorts. I donned the bulky bright orange jump suit and cinched up the multitude of straps designed to minimize the flow of water through the suit. The heliport waiting area looked like a miniature airport and about 20 people, mostly oil rig workers on their way to their week of work, were waiting for the two scheduled flights. They called our flight and showed the safety video. Then we walked out to the helicopter and climbed aboard.

The helicopter was rather large with seating for about 14 people. We had 8 passengers and loaded mostly into the two rows of bench seats facing each other. The bench was rather crude and upright with seat belts for each person. We filled the row with large orange people except for one seat because one passenger elected to sit in one of the side areas near the back of the helicopter, accepting the risk of being without any assistance in opening the door if we were to go down.

The blades started to rotate and the helicopter started to shake. I began to worry about motion sickness because the shaking had a significant amplitude. The pilot increased the rpm’s and things smoothed out. Then he slowed the engine back to shaking speed and we sat for several minutes. With ear plugs and the loud engine, I couldn’t hear a thing, but no one really seemed to know what was going on. Finally someone headed out to the helicopter with some luggage and loaded it into the luggage compartment. He headed back to the building and we sat at shaking speed for a few more minutes. Finally another orange suited person was escorted across the tarmac to the helicopter. I gave up my window seat and slid over to make room.

This time we actually took off. The machine lifted calmly and began to rotate. We weren’t more than a few feet off the ground and I was a little uncomfortable with the rotation so close to fuel pumps and other ground obstacles with a fairly strong wind blowing. We finally began to move and headed quickly out over the water. The views were impressive and I could several oil platforms out in the distance. We passed over a ship.

All of a sudden, the helicopter made a U-turn. I didn’t give it much thought, but soon noticed the confused look on the faces of the other passengers, people who flew on these things on a weekly basis. We headed back to the heliport and landed. Someone opened the door while the engine was still running and we began to file out of the helicopter and headed back indoors. I removed my earplugs and someone seemed to know that an oil pressure gauge had been reading low.

We sat in the heliport watching the mechanic work on the other helicopter which apparently had problems of its own. After an hour and a short test flight, he appeared to finish with that machine. He then attached a strap to the blade and headed in out of what was now blowing snow. Even if he managed to repair our ride, we weren’t going anywhere due to the weather. It was probably a good thing that we had a mechanical problem since I would have likely been weathered in on an oil platform overnight.