You might live in rural Alaska if… your fuel comes in on an airplane. A really BIG silver bullet called a DC-6. You can hear them in your chest as they lumber toward the approach and giving a low, deafening buzz over town as they circle around in their “short final.” They come in screaming…taking up the whole 3/4 mile runway, whipping the engines in reverse as they hit the gravel. Then you know to run and meet the plane if it’s your fuel or cargo load.
DC-6′s also are the cargo carriers. My kayak rode into town on one of these sweet chariots last year. It was too long to fit on any other planes in town and much more cost-effective. They are the cargo planes get the privilege of hauling all big freight to Port Alsworth. At $0.50 a lb. you can have almost anything delivered up to 10,000 lbs worth.
I’ve always been tempted to get a red Mini Cooper on a charter and drive it around town. How hilarious would that be!
You might live in rural Alaska if your gas station looks like this…
Some towns decorate with neatly organized hanging flower baskets from street lights, colorful, well manicured parks, and those cement things that line the streets called sidewalks. Port Alsworth is going with a colorful circular trend called fuel tanks. FUEL. Not coffee…the other kind of fuel. Bummer, I know…no drive through coffee stands here.
The sale price of 100LL is $6.70 to fuel our lives. I’ll let you do the math on 2,000 gallons of fuel that is a typical delivery for a business or split between families. The Burrows house got 500 gallons last fall. During the summer, when the flying increases exponentially, the fuel plane gets to visit much more regularly, filling our tanks with the ability to leave our little piece of paradise.
The rush of being on the side of the runway when a fuel plane takes off or lands never gets old. Jonathan took this video by placing his camera in the middle of the runway. The girl flailing up the side of the runway is me. Desperate to be at the “prime spot” as the DC-6 silver bullet took off. Quite the adrenaline rush, dust shower and ear blast! But so worth it!
