Co-Pilot

I had the day off today!!! After being exhausted from working far too much i was able to relax today. I put in 16.5 hours on Thursday. I am pretty sure i have never worked more hours in one day, and i think i made more money on Thursday than I ever have in one day. It feels good. Enough about that.

So last night i had some people sitting at my bar at the top of mt Roberts and one of them is a pilot for a float plane company that gives float plane rides. They were still sitting at the bar when my shift was done so i sat down and had a beer with them. Now i am starting to realize that i can get pretty much any tour in the area for free because i work for Goldbelt. I can get some through Doc Waters as well but more through Goldbelt. Goldbelt sells everyones tours and then they let me on for free since i work for Goldbelt. So this pilot tells me i can get on for free as long as they have an open seat. So i am like heck yea i am going to do that tomorrow. I had plans for a hike but Lu canceled on me. So i went down there today and hopped on a float plane called the wolverine. WOW, ALL FOR FREE. i love it.

As we are boarding this little float plane, that carries 10 people including the pilot, i hear the pilot say someone has to sit in the co-pilot seat. Now you better believe i was ready to throw Grama aside and hop in there. Luckily for everyone i got the seat. I don't know if everyone else was afraid or what. Well i aint afraid... So i sat down and started checking out all the gauges and dials and all. WOW

The take off was amazingly smooth, it was raining as we took off and as we landed. The scenery was absolutely breath taking. I was so giddy. I couldn't hold back. I am sure the captain and others were like why is that kid laughing his ass off and smiling so much. There were mountains everywhere. The route that the plane took went like this:

Take off from the wharf (downtown Juneau) and head south to the Taku inlet and we flew up the Taku inlet and on top of the Juneau ice field and then back around and up the channel. Some things you should know...The Taku glacier is in the Taku inlet (obviously) it is the only glacier from the Juneau ice field that is actually growing instead of shrinking. The plane route is here
Make sure when you view these maps that i have made that you click on the button that says satellite (if its not on satellite already) in the upper right corner. Depending on your browser and stuff it might pop up as a cartoon map. Those are satellite photos and are beautiful to look at by themselves.

It was amazing, i was totally flipping out. Tears came to my eyes more than once. There were beautiful little pools of bright blue glacier water sitting on top of the glacier as we flew over it. Dodging the mountains with the plane was awesome and seeing the ice field was something i had really wanted to see. Apparently you can see the ice field from the top of Mt Juneau too so i will see it again. There was some gorgeous blue water that i got some good photos of. Sitting in the cockpit was really cool too, i had a way better view than everyone else. It was really loud on the plane but they had headphone that had a little speech about the area. i took those off and turned on my ipod. Sufjan was singing in my ear the whole time, and since it was so loud no one heard my singing or other random giddy noises that may or may not have come out.

The flight was smoother than most commercial flights. i couldn't believe it. Landing was like butter. WOW what a great time.