The Shirley Years part 7
FINALLY, OUR CHARIOT
We board the C-130 and find our places in the “slings” arranged in rows facing laterally across the aircraft. Every spot is an aisle seat, and some (not all) are also window seats. I’m thinking these seats will become more and more in demand as the tour progresses. I manage to get one, but only because Shirley and her people (that would be Bob Doidge and me) are among the first to line up at the loading doors. This has less to do with eagerness than Bob’s fascination with aircraft in general.
You might remember my description of the flight, almost three years previously, into Inuvik on our first trip to the Arctic. The one where the pilot couldn’t line up with the runway because of poor visibility and kept swooping around to get a better shot at it. I was beside a native government official who was freaking out, and Dan Lanois was right behind me, threatening to throw up if we went around one more time. I swear you could hear praying and the odd stifled scream. But Bob Doidge had his nose to the window blubbering gleefully, “Wow! Check it out! They never do this on Air Canada!”
Bob was a real aviation nut. He still is and in fact now has an airplane that he regularly flies in the skies around Hamilton. Scary.
So Bob wants to know this C-130. He wants to envelop it, own it and be one with it. Caress it, feed it, take it for walks.
Because of his boyish enthusiasm and our agreement to stick together, we are on the plane early, and I get a window sling.
A CERTAIN AMBIANCE
The airplane interior is typical of anything and everything military. If there is a department in the armed forces that designs the interiors of their buildings and airplanes, it has to be run by really boring people. Olive, mahogany, grey, and white are everywhere. It’s like a twilight zone episode where we’re all trapped in a WW2 sepia photograph.
Except for the slings we sit in. Red.
And it all smells like military. How would I know what military smells like? I don’t, but this curious aroma of pipe tobacco, old leather, disinfectant, and authority prevails wherever we go.
When we are all aboard and seated, some khaki brown military guys read us all our Miranda rights. Well, it might as well be; they bark the safety rules as if we’ve already broken them.
“Stay fastened in your seat as much as possible, don’t wander around the aircraft.”
“In the rare event of an emergency, your exit doors blah, blah.”
If you don’t know the bathrooms are coed (please knock) or that the in-flight meal is a box with a sandwich in it by the end of their loud, monotone tirade, you are either deaf, drunk, or asleep. When you consider the unbelievable roar of the giant Allison T56-A-15 turboprop engines (one of which is right by my window), the half a bottle of Johnnie Walker the night before and only two hours in bed, I qualify for all three.
I snap back to reality as the winged brontosaurus taxies into position for take-off.
HOLD ‘ER DOWN NEWT, SHE’S HEADED FOR THE RHUBARB
With the engines suddenly jumping from “casual” to “Give ‘er HELL!” the airplane begins to move down the runway. To say it “lumbers” is to exaggerate. “Creeps” is closer. The mighty roar is all hubris, like my sister’s little wiener dog barking at a pitbull terrier.
‘I could run faster than this.” I’m muttering just before a true WTF moment happens. The nose rises a little, and we’re airborne! Not by much, but we’re off the ground. The great beast shudders, holding on to its few feet of altitude, and I’ve got a queasy feeling that we’re breaking a few serious laws of physics.
Then suddenly, the awkward land sloth morphs from Aergia to Aeolus, takes possession of the wind, rises high above the Bay of Quinte, and gracefully turns due north.
