Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/769056
I t ain't easy to get to Manitoba from where I live. Fourteen miles by boat and 300 by truck, up I-16 and I-75, which have killed more men than all the bush plane crashes put together. My commercial flight had been cancelled, but I didn't know it. I parked off-site. Hours later the same cabbie that hauled me to the airport hauled me back. I was doing some serious therapeutic cussing when my newest sister- in-faith both admonished and evangelized. "Don't let that Ol' Debil steal your joy!" We were fixing to have us a serious theological throw-down right then and there, God being my copilot and all. But it was after midnight and I was wore about down to nothing, so I let it pass. Clockwork in the morning. Delta to Minneapolis, Air Canada to Winnipeg, then an hour aboard a 50-seat, twin-jet CRJ-100—the size and configuration of a flying culvert—to a gravel strip at the mining town of Thompson, Manitoba. If you think a prop job will sling gravel, you ought to see what a jet can do. Then north to the absolute end of the road via four- wheel pickup to a seaplane landing on a lake whose name I've forgotten. Two aircraft nudging the dock: a De Havilland Otter and a Cessna 172, both with floats. The Otter was a monster from the 1960s . . . "the one-ton truck of the sky," according to De Havilland. The Otter was hauling freight up to Lake Waskaiowaka on the Little Churchill River, and I could ride along if I chose. I inventoried the cargo: 55 gallons of gasoline, a 15-horse Mercury Mariner outboard, ten gallons of mixed gas for it, and two 100-pound bottles of propane. I trusted my copilot, oh yes, but the Good Book says don't tempt Him. I chose the Cessna instead. It was a 1973 model, considerably older than the man who would fly it. There was no door on the passenger side. I slid across the pilot's seat, reaching for a strut behind the windscreen to pull myself into position. "Don't touch that!" the pilot barked. "That's not a handle?" I asked. It was retained by four 5/16th-inch bolts, one of them loose. "No! It just holds the plane together!" We pushed away from the dock, fired the engine, and turned into the wind. God is my copilot. n 47 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S