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Wednesday reading rec
This week it's a link to ... well, I don't know what you'd call it -- an article, a nonfiction novella? Anyway, it's online and it's free.
Out in the Great Alone by Brian Phillips: the author (city born and bred) becomes fascinated with the Iditarod so he decides to travel to Alaska and watch the entire race, all 1000 miles of it, from a small plane. This is his account of his adventures, an outsider's-eye view of Alaska that is, I have to admit, disturbingly accurate -- from the unique blue color of the long winter twilight, to the way that rural people are so unused to strangers that they don't quite know how to cope with having another human being in their space. It's not a deep memoir full of philosophical insights, but rather a lightweight, amusing and fun travelogue.
Here, for example, his bush pilot/guide is teaching him how to land on a frozen lake in the event of an emergency. (Nugget is the name of the airplane.)
... which gives you a pretty good idea what the whole thing is like. It's also full of interesting details, historical and otherwise, about the race and the little towns along the way; I learned a few things I didn't know.
Out in the Great Alone by Brian Phillips: the author (city born and bred) becomes fascinated with the Iditarod so he decides to travel to Alaska and watch the entire race, all 1000 miles of it, from a small plane. This is his account of his adventures, an outsider's-eye view of Alaska that is, I have to admit, disturbingly accurate -- from the unique blue color of the long winter twilight, to the way that rural people are so unused to strangers that they don't quite know how to cope with having another human being in their space. It's not a deep memoir full of philosophical insights, but rather a lightweight, amusing and fun travelogue.
Here, for example, his bush pilot/guide is teaching him how to land on a frozen lake in the event of an emergency. (Nugget is the name of the airplane.)
I won’t bore you with the details of how to steer a Super Cub — where the stick was (imagine the porniest position possible; now go 6 inches pornier than that), how to bank, what the rudder pedals felt like. Suffice it to say that in theory, it was ridiculously simple. In practice …
“You have the aircraft.” Jay’s voice in my ear. “Just bring us down in a nice straight line.”
I felt the weight in my right hand as Jay released the stick. The lake was straight ahead, maybe three miles off, a white thumbnail in an evergreen-spammed distance. The plane was under my control.
Nugget — I’m not sure how to put this — began to sashay.
“Just a niiice straight line,” Jay reminded me. “And OH BY THE WAY … your pilot’s dead.” He slumped over in his seat.
Little lesson I picked up someplace: Once your pilot gives up the ghost, it is not so easy to see where you are headed from the backseat of a Super Cub. I mean at the “what direction is the plane even pointing right now” level. You will find that your deceased pilot, looming up against the windshield, blocks almost your entire forward view. To mitigate this, the savvy backseater will bank the wings one way while stepping on the opposite rudder pedal, causing the plane to twist 30 degrees or so to one side while continuing to travel in a straight line, like a runner sliding into base. That way, said enterprising backseater can see forward through the plane’s presumably non-corpse-occluded side window.
Yeah. Well. A thing about me as a pilot is that I do not, ever, want to see forward out of the side window. Especially not while plummeting toward a frozen lake. It’s like, bro, why create the hurricane. I figured that, as an alternative technique, I would just basically try to guess where we were going.
“How’s your speed?” my pilot(’s lifeless form) inquired.
The ground seemed to be making an actual screaming noise as it rushed up toward us. Hmm — maybe a little fast.
... which gives you a pretty good idea what the whole thing is like. It's also full of interesting details, historical and otherwise, about the race and the little towns along the way; I learned a few things I didn't know.