The morning of the flight, I received a very nice email from Chuck’s new friend and coworker that eased my worried mind a bit. He assured me that “Alaskans fly like the rest of the world drives”, and that their “pilot is one of the area’s best and has tens of thousands of hours of flight time”. He even sent me a picture (below) of the actual plane Chuck would be flying in that morning. This plane carries only one passenger. Chuck said it was so small, when he sat down, his knees touched both sides of the plane. That morning there were three guys who needed to get to an island, so once the pilot dropped one guy off, he had to go back for another.

"Super Cub, Alaska's Finest Bush Plane"

I was really surprised that Chuck was so willing and eager to fly at all. He’s flown before, but only once. He has been known to go to great pains to drive to mandatory, far, far away business trips while all of his coworkers traveled via air. He is afraid. Yep, he is VERY uncomfortable with flying. He says it just isn’t natural. Until now, we haven’t had any reason to consider a fear of flying in small planes. After giving it some thought, I think he might be more afraid of the jet planes because of their size. Something so massive, made of aluminum, coasting through the air…come on ya’ll. That IS unnatural. Great. Now I am scared.

Jeff went on to tell me that his bigger concern was that my “Fishin’ Crazy husband” stay dry and avoid being mauled by a bear during a fishing excursion. It was nice to hear someone echo what I’ve been telling him but then again….not so much. This meant that my bear concerns were valid and Chuck had actually been taking a risk by going out to fish without being armed! Chuck always assured me he fished in well-populated areas and stayed close to the truck. He would have carried a gun, only he didn’t have any guns there in Alaska. After reading up on the border regulations he opted to have me ship them instead of just putting the dern things in the truck with him. So, Jeff, was nice enough to equip Chuck with a shotgun with bear slugs and a new pair of waders.

"Alaska’s Finest Cheechako"