After a long, uncomfortable flight with another delay, I am back in Wasilla, with my wife and cats

Twenty-four hours and about $350 after I had been originally scheduled to board the first leg of my Delta Airlines flight home, I followed these guys onto a plane bound for Salt Lake City from New York's JFK airport.

We filed between the rows of those seated among the elite in first class, where serious business was being conducted, and then entered the cabin.

My first choice is always a window seat, then an aisle and I hate the middle, just like most everyone else does. The worst of all is a middle seat in an emergency exit row, because the seats do not recline and instead of a regular armrest that can be lifted up and down, the armrests are solid from the seat up. This creates the effect of being forced to sit in a rigid box.

I had originally successfully booked non-emergency row window seats all the way from New York to Anchorage but now, I had been assigned to a middle seat in an emergency exit row.

Worse yet, when I sat down, I discovered that there was a big, irritating, bump right in the middle of the seat. I would have to sit on that bump for five-and-a-half hours.

The situation worsened even more when I discovered that I been sat between two people, who, whenever they were awake, from the beginning of the flight to the end, continually and intentionally did all they could to try to push my elbows off the armrests altogether. I did not totally begrudge them, because it is just a plane fact that those three seats are just too squished together. There simply is not room for three adults to sit comfortably side by side in them - although I am usually reasonably comfortable in a window seat, because I can lean against the wall and away from the shared armrest. Yet, it was still incredible. I had been stuck in middle seats plenty of times, but I had never before experienced anything like this.

When my adjacent passengers would nap, they would relax into their most comfortable positions, which meant they would lean away from me toward the window or the aisle and their arms would follow them off the rest, no longer to push against me.

Even so, I managed to read most of what was left of the book, Into the Heart of the Sea, before we reached Salt Lake City, but it was the most uncomfortable ride I have ever had in a jet airplane. I am still sore from it.

Yet, compared to the travels of those who were part of the final voyage of the Whaleship Essex, I rode in comfort and luxury and traveled to my destination with amazing speed. I have nothing to complain about.

In Salt Lake, the flight back to Anchorage had already begun to board. I was hungry, so I bought a not-very-good ham sandwich and a bottle of water at a diner right across from the gate, then got in line.

Just as I was about to board, it was announced that the flight had suddenly been put on a weather hold, due to high winds and snow. Out the window, I could see that the snow had turned to rain and it did not look that bad, but apparently it was.

So, as I took note of a bar and grill just a short distance away where I could have got a hot meal, I sat down and ate my sandwich.

Then Lydia Olympic, who had been in the bar and grill watching basketball, sat down beside me. 

I first met Lydia many years ago when I followed her and several other Alaska Native tribal leaders on to a forum in Washington, DC, where they also did some lobbying among House Representatives and Senators.

Lydia is from the Lake Iliamna village of Igiugig in the Bristol Bay Region. Right now, she is living in Anchorage where she relocated in order to fight against the Pebble Mine, because of the harm she fears it could bring to the salmon and other wildlife resources of her home.

"Do you get back to Igiugig much?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said. "Every summer I go back to cut fish."

Finally, they let us board the plane where, once again, I was seated in an emergency exit row. This time, at least, I had an aisle seat and the middle was empty. I did not have to contend with battling elbows. We seated in the emergency rows all paid strict and rapt attention as the stewardess told us about our duties should the need arise to evacuate the airplane.

After the lecture, we sat on the tarmac for about two more hours as we waited for the plane to get de-iced.

It was strange to let my mind wander outside the plane and into the surrounding community. I let it wander to my sister Mary Ann's house, downtown. I had tried to call her right after we landed, but she did not pick up. It was a bit after 9, but some people go to bed early.

I let it wander to the house up in the Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, where Margie and I used to so dearly love to drop into during our early days of marriage. We visit my parents, eat and watch TV with them and sometimes at night, being as quiet as we could possibly be, make love as the old folks slept. Sometimes, we would drop baby Jacob off so we could go out and do things like go to movies or climb a nearby mountain.

I pictured that house now, with only my older brother Rex in it, he living in a state of declining health.

I pictured the place upon a hill at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, where lay my Mom and Dad and my brother Ron. Ron never wanted to be buried but cremated but in the end, his wish was overwhelmed by the force of the Mormon faith that he had journeyed away from long before and he got buried, anyway.

I thought of the later years when I would visit my Mom and Dad, and how hard those years became. I thought about Mom and Dad and Mary Ann and Rex had always hoped that, at some point, I would come to my senses, say my Alaska adventure had been good but was now over and that I might settle down nearby in that same valley to one day be buried on that hill with them.

I love Utah, but, damn, I couldn't live there. I just couldn't.

I lived in Utah for one year when I was a baby and for the five years total that I attended BYU.

That was enough. I can't live there anymore.

Sometimes, though, I awake from a dream. In it, I am in the basement of my parents' house where I am at last writing my books.

I am alone in that house. Nobody else lives there. Just me.

I really don't like that dream.

Then the flight was off - five more hours to sit in a box seat with a stiff, non-reclining back, having already sat in it for two on the ground - plus, of course, the New York to Salt Lake ordeal.

After about four of those hours had passed, I headed back to the restroom.

When I came out, I heard a female voice speak out of the near darkness of the cabin, in which all the main lights had been turned out: "Bill? Is that you?"

It was me, and Courtney was the young woman who asked. I first met Courtney when she showed up at the hospital emergency room after a Saturday Wasilla High football game, probably in 1992.

Caleb had been injured in that game and his memory temporarily knocked out of his head.

Courtney, a cheerleader, was right there at his side, hovering adoringly over him, smiling warmly upon him, caressing his hands in hers'.

They were an item for a long time after that, hanging out, going to the prom and such, but in time she went her own way. Now she was on the plane with her daughter, Abby, and a son who was sleeping in such a dark spot that I could not make him out. They had been living in Texas with her husband, who had just becoming qualified to fly a C-130.

Now she was going back to Wasilla. "I can't believe how much I have missed being home," she told me. "You don't realize how good it is until you go away."

"How old is Abby?" I asked Courtney. Abby answered for herself.

Margie picked me up at the airport and we arrived home in Wasilla about 4:15 AM - 25 hours after I had gotten up at the Comfort Inn that I had stayed in by JFK.

It was nearly five by the time we got to bed and I had hoped to sleep until 11:00 AM, ten at the earliest. But I began to wake up at 7:30, perhaps in part because Jim kept going back and forth from beneath the blankets to resting on top of me.

Everyone tells me that Jim has a hard time when I gone. He gets lonely and anxious and a bit desperate. When I come home, he will come to me with the most anxious expression. Then he will dash this way and that way out of sheer joy. Finally, he will settle down wherever I am at and will stick as close to me as possible.

As I have been working on this blog, he has alternated between resting upon my chest and shoulder to my lap.

Anyway, I gave up on sleep shortly after I took this picture at, as the clock says, 8:44 AM.

Pistol-Yero was sleeping there, too, but when I got up, it woke him up. I do not think he was ready to wake up.

Next I went out into the garage, where Royce and Chicago had already begun to dine on food put out the night before.

I then went outside to get the paper. 

According to our tradition, I next took Margie out to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, just as I always do when I return home from a trip, whether I can afford to or not.

I ordered my hash browns to be cooked "very light." They came back cooked dark, hard and crispy on the outside, mush on the inside.

Oh, well. The ham and eggs were very tasty, the coffee just right, the multi-grain toast and jam quite excellent.

Overall, breakfast was a good and pleasant experience - as long as I did not think to much about what we now face.

Although I am back in Wasilla, I will return to New York and then Nantucket very shortly - at least in this blog. I will begin by showing readers how my search for a New York City pretzel turned out, and most definitely I will bring you along on the tour of Cloisters and the very northern tip of Manhattan that Chie Sakakibara took me on. I will tell you a bit about the unlikely story of how she, a girl in Japan who originally believed Native Americans to be Caucasian because that's how she saw them in the movies and Aaron Fox became bonded to the Iñupiat of the Arctic Slope and brought a treasure that had been lost back to them.

As to Nantucket, I am now completely fascinated with the place and want to learn all I can about it.

Comments

[Nolan in NJ]

Welcome home. I can not wait to read about the rest of your trip.

[LisaJ]

So glad you made it back here safely! I must say, after reading about your long journey home I have no desire to travel to the lower 48 anytime soon. Yikes, what a nightmare!

Enjoy being back with your family and cats, and like Nolan I too cannot wait to read more about your trip.

[dahli22]

thanks for the long post...i admit i was having withdrawals when it didn't appear this morning.

[WhiteStone]

Welcome home again. That is, if I can welcome you all the way from Iowa.

I'm a small woman and I've flown many times, each time wondering how tall or large people ever get comfortable on a plane. There is never enough room!

[twain12]

glad you made it home

[debby]

Coming home is the best thing, isn't it? The very best thing.

[Michelle]

There's no place like home.

You've piqued my interest with so many things in this post. Immediately, your family stories, and after that the Cloisters. I bet you have wonderful photos.

[Lynda in Canada]

Hi Bill,

Usually I put my comments on FB because I didn't scroll down far enough to see this little box!

Welcome Home! What an adventure, albeit a slightly uncomfortable one. Isn't it amazing that no matter where you are outside AK you can always run into someone you know from AK? Except where I am, 13 years I have never run into anyone from AK, and only one from the Yukon who stopped my truck so we could share stories about the North.

I'm so glad to have found your web pages, especially this blog. But sad at the same time because it makes me so homesick for Alaska, all the years I lived there, all the people I met who I felt were more 'family' than my own flesh and blood. I didn't exactly choose to leave, circumstances just went that way, and I certainly didn't expect to be gone this long. Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans!

And now of course, I'm too old to fly back one-way, with only pennies in my pocket, sleeping on friends' sofas, and hoping I'll find a job, or drive all the way sleeping in back of my old SUV, although if I had the money to make sure it was mechanically sound for a few thousand miles, I would. I love the drive all the way up through BC and the Yukon and AK.

I miss traveling and flying, even on a piggybank budget, trapped in a middle seat! ha ha But I regress. Now I live vicariously through your blogs and photographs.

Thanks for sharing!