Locomotoring

Today’s story is about a small plane flight. It originated from Boeing Field, Seattle and landed in Friday Harbor Airport, San Juan Island. Apparently, San Juan Island is in Salish Sea’s banana belt. The arial view of the Puget Sound is described as the highlight of this short flight.

These planes are tiny. In addition to the two pilots (ours only had one), it can accommodate eight passengers. There are four rows of seats, each row has one seat on either side of the plane. There isn’t much between you and the outside – the 6000 square miles of the sea, the Olympic mountains, the straits of Juan de Fuca, the 400 islands and unending blue sky. These planes fly low, and I had packed my binoculars in my day bag, ready for island spotting (and really hoping to see whale activity on the ocean surface). Statistics doesn’t quite apply to one’s own situation. The day we flew out, all the precipitation that is statistically due in the banana belt in the month of August fell on this one day in August. As a Californian, who has often picked up the phone to watch a fire report, I am not averse to rain. However, given everything the ride over the Puget Sound had to offer, all I got was the clouds.

Today, there is no reason to think much about these commuter flights. They exist like a cab service. You get in the airport, get in the flight, get flown around, you get out – all within the hour. There is no bathroom. There is no food service. Your luggage is in the back of the vehicle. You could keep browsing your phone.

Seventy five years ago, this flight would have stood between a person’s life and death, not a weekend vacation.

The Friday Harbor Airport presents its origin story. And it appears to be all about one individual, an accomplished bush pilot, Roy Franklin. This bush pilot was also a returning World War II Navy pilot. Before there was an airport on San Juan Island, a cow pasture about two miles from Friday Harbor, was used as a landing strip. Roy had developed a three-car system of landing on cow pastures or grass strips at night. He would have three cars positioned to show where the “runway” was located — one at the near end with headlights pointing forward up the field, a second crosswise to the landing area with lights pointing across it to mark the midpoint, and the third at the far end with red brake lights showing the end of the landing area.

Nothing speaks about what it would have been like to fly back then, than Roy’s own words explaining, “Why build an airport?”

“If you have ever tried to beat frozen snow off an airplane while a doctor is waiting, trying to keep someone alive, you don’t have to be a genius to know the first building you better build is an aircraft hangar. If you have ever had your heart slamming against your rib cage while you feel your way down at seventy miles per hour, onto a black and unlighted cow pasture, there will be no doubt as to the value of runway lights. If you have ever worked all night on a sick engine, with frozen fingers and lockjaw from holding a flashlight in your mouth, you will automatically be making plans for a lighted and heated aircraft maintenance building. If you have ever started out the first flight of the day with fuel gauges bobbing on empty and the closest fuel miles away across the waters on the mainland, you know you will mortgage your soul for a local fueling facility. If you have tried to the last ounce of your strength and resolve to maintain an on-time flight schedule, with aircraft mired axle-deep in mud or a blown tire from frozen ruts, or watched your few and precious passengers step in cow pies, you will know about drainage, hard-surfaced runways, and airfields that are for airplanes and people and not cattle.”

Last paragraph in the above poster reads: “The San Juan Islands were being discovered in the 1960s. Many new homes were being built in the islands, and Island Sky Ferries was pushed to meet the growing demands for air service.” During our stay, we had met a retired couple at the Salty Fox Coffee who had bought a cabin on 8 acres of land, for ~$68,000 in the late sixties, soon after the San Juan Island Friday Harbor airport got built. Their first home is in Seattle. They had shared photos of their beautiful cabin with us. They had talked about their everyday view of beautiful island sunsets. When we asked them what had changed on the island, they mentioned that the island used to be home of hippies like them and now it belonged to people who either had three houses or three jobs. The average cost of home on the island now touches a million dollars. Like everyone on the island, they too talked about their fondness of whales (i.e. Orcas). Although they were noted that their favorite whales were starting to prefer the Canadian waters due to overuse of the channels by shipping containers.