I had this conversation with one of the other teachers here at 9 o’clock last night:

“Dave, did you hear about the chopper?”

“no, what about it?”

“they didn’t make it back to Nome.”

…

Spine chilling. Simply put, in these parts, “they didn’t make it” means that they are dead.

Thankfully that wasn’t the case this time. Much later last night the local who does seat booking for the chopper heard from Captain Mike–him and Simon are o.k., they set the bird down outside Nome for weather reasons. But holy cow, that was a case of the willies like I haven’t felt in a while. Mike (pilot) and Simon (flight mechanic) are two of the greatest flying guys I’ve met. They bust their asses to get passengers and mail out here to dio, and they’re just nice people. They’ve picked us up on their way into the airport (“hey, why take a taxi? we’re headed there too, we’ll just pick you up!”), hauled silly amounts of cargo jammed tetris-style into the tiny helicopter for a bunch of teachers all traveling at once, given us hot tea and coffee while waiting in a freezing cold shipping container.

There is an important moral here: it is an unfortunate fact that sometimes it takes a god-awful thought wrenching your gut around for a while to realize just how much you appreciate people.

So this one’s for you, Mike and Simon. Best damn chopper crew in the 907. Keep it up.