Places.....

.... a friend of mine sent me a link to this video this afternoon........ and I am quite sure that I will likely be having horrible nightmares for most of the night........

..... notice the BIG mountain on the left of the screen that is partially obscured with low-lying cloud?....... well, that'd be Mt. Moffett..... I wrote once of Mt. Moffett here, as I recall............

... Lake Andrew, although you can't see it from the shot, lies just to the south of the mountain and is protected from the Bering Sea by a thin seawall that runs from Mt. Moffett over to the east towards the "other" little bump you saw on the approach, Mt. Adagdak....... in the first few seconds of the approach video, Adagdak is off to the right..... a little pap-shaped arch of land.......

.... I lived in the shadow of Adagdak for nearly two years... climbed her many, MANY times out of pure boredom........ but, God, I do not miss that place one little bit........

....... the video shown here is not typical......

.... that plane came in and landed just as if it had done it a million times in the past, but trust me, those pilots will be sucking down the juice after that landing...... that was a landing of pure peace.......

..... every day that I was there, the planes landed sideways in a gale.... and the co-pilot had to have his ass pried from the cockpit because both cheeks had gripped onto the foam so viciously due to fright, that there was simply nothing else to be done in the matter........

..... eh.... lies, damned lies, and statistics..... and old memories of veterans....... hey, who can you really trust these days??.....

... but still?..... Adak, Alaska sucked, boys and girls..... and she sucked MIGHTY hard......