The Kodiak saves the day!

The e-mail began innocently enough:

"Four passengers have been confirmed for the flight on 21 October 2009."

"Great!" I thought, "Now everything is set for our New Britain survey." It wasn't until I skimmed down to the middle of the page that I realized what was not so great:

"We can only offer around 300 kilos for the flight."

Some quick mental math told me that our combined body weights total 290 kilos, which would leave 10 kilos of cargo for 4 people, and I squirmed at the thought of spending 3 weeks with a backpack weighing only 2 1/2 kilos (about 5 pounds), most of which would consist of my life jacket, questionnaires and recording equipment. I do enjoy trying to be hard core, but I will not even pretend to be that hard core.

I'll spare you the tense details of the next few days as we explored every possible option, from driving several hours to a city where we could catch a commercial flight, to leaving one of us behind. But commerical flights don't go to the remote areas we need to get to, and it would be really hard to get all the data we need without all of us there.

Well, remember a few weeks ago when our brand new airplane, the Kodiak #8, landed on our airstrip and cars full of excited people drove out to welcome it? I believe I may have written something along the lines of, "To me, a plane is a plane, and as long as it gets me where I need to go I'm not too bothered about what kind it is." That may be true, but in this case the Kodiak is the only plane that can get all of us where we need to go! It is bigger than our older Cessna 206s, so it can take all four of us and our sleeping bags and dry clothes! But it is also able to land on the small airstrips where commercial flights never go!

This may be the very first time our Kodiak has saved the day, but I suspect it won't be the last! Thanks, God, for the Kodiak.