My First Airplane Ride... A Miracle From the Lord

Kids these days fly everywhere. Teenagers don't even remember their first airplane ride because they were babies when it happened. That applies not only to teenagers, but also to forty-somethings; it applies to my almost forty-two-year-old daughter, Rachel. When Rachel was four months old and I was twenty-five, I took her for our first plane ride.

It happened right before Thanksgiving, 1969. We were in the middle of a monumental move to Alaska, where my husband Dave Goins intended to work on the Pipeline (which was still in the planning stage, not yet being built). We left San Diego November 12, and had already had a lot of adventure, most all of which is necessarily another story...

Basically, we were driving a 1951 Chevy truck that was meant for hauling small house trailers short distances on warm highways. We were hauling a 15 by 40-foot, three-axle mobile home that folded up to eight feet wide, with heavy furniture stacked to the ceiling, all the way from San Diego (actually Chula Vista which is farther south, right on the border) to Anchorage, Alaska. We had already been on the road almost two weeks, and had made it to Fort St. John in British Columbia, Canada on Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

That night we experienced the first snowfall on the whole trip as we pulled the long and heavy rig up a steep and winding mountain that was fast becoming icy. We knew there would be ice and snow on the road to Alaska at that time of year, but had no idea what we were in for. Dave should have known. He had lived in Michigan as a teenager. Well, maybe they don't have mountains in Michigan; I don't know. I've never been there, but I know they have lots of snow. So he should have known. He should have been prepared, but he had only one length of chain which he tied around one of the four back wheels of the truck. It didn't help.

We found ourselves almost cross-wise of the highway with the back axle of the trailer hanging off the steep precipice into the dark void. This was on a two-way highway, a long and very icy hill, late at night and very dark. All traffic stopped, both ways. People got out in the blowing snow and helped. Most of all, God helped. I was talking hard and fast to Him. Sure is a good thing He is so merciful to ignorant young people who take on cold slick mountains with a heavy load, not realizing what they are getting into.

It took us about an hour and a half to go about five miles to the top of the hill where there was a level area and a gas station. We managed to park there for the night, buy some real chains, and get some rest.

We decided that the next day when we reached Fort St. John, we would find the airport and send Rachel and me ahead to Anchorage on a plane. I had never been in an airplane, but I was sure it couldn't be as scary as more icy mountains like those of the night before.

At the airport, we bought a ticket for the next flight to Anchorage. We learned that I had just missed a connecting flight in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory that would take me to Juneau, Alaska and then on to Anchorage.

"But wait," the ticket agent said, "we'll call them and see if they can delay twenty minutes..." He talked on the phone a few minutes and then told us, "They're holding that plane for you. We'll instruct our crew to call ahead when you get close and see if they can wait until you can board..."

We were elated. Sounded like a plan to me. I was blissfully ignorant of the in's and out's of flying in Canada and Alaska. I was blissfully ignorant of flying. This was going to be my first time on an airplane.

Dave kissed us goodbye and left. It was necessarily going to take him a lot more days on the road to get to Anchorage with the truck and trailer. I remember standing at the window holding my four-month-old baby, watching that old truck pull away with its enormous load, creeping slowly down the side road from the airfield toward the Alaska-Canadian highway, the "twelve hundred miles of dirt road" which had turned out to be an ice road.  I prayed, "Oh, God, please take care of him... and us."

When I left the terminal building to walk out and climb into the airplane, I was too concerned about making the connection in Whitehorse to pay much attention to my surroundings in the plane. I found it not uncomfortable at all taking off into the white sky. The flight attendant had been informed of our need to make the "illegal" connection in Whitehorse, and they had radio'd ahead to Whitehorse about my situation when we approached that airport. They knew that if I didn't make that connection, I would have to stay maybe a few days in Whitehorse.

The attendant came to my seat, smiling as we started to land. She told me, "The other plane is on the ground waiting for you. Someone will meet you at the terminal..." I breathed a sigh of relief and thanks to the Lord.

As it turned out, someone did walk out to meet me, but the information they gave me was not what I wanted to hear. The fact was that the airplane headed for Juneau had actually left for Juneau a couple of hours before. In fact it had already left when we were buying my ticket in Fort St. John. It was a prop plane. Then, about fifteen minutes into their flight, one of the engines had just stopped running. They had to turn around and return to Whitehorse with just one engine running.

They had put up all the passengers in a hotel, and called for another plane to come down to Whitehorse from Fairbanks, Alaska to take the failed engine along with all twelve Juneau passengers back to Fairbanks, then to Anchorage, then to Juneau. That plane would not arrive until the wee hours of the next morning. Legally they could not put me up in a hotel in Whitehorse because my flight to Anchorage was just beginning there. But they allowed me to stay in the terminal all night, if I wanted to, and they would tell the maintenance people to watch out for me and the baby. Then they would fly me to Fairbanks, put me up in a hotel there for whatever number of hours until their flight left Fairbanks for Anchorage.

Sounded like round and round the mulberry bush for me, but it sounded like I was going to make it to Anchorage. On the flight to Fairbanks, I sat beside a man who had been on the failed flight to Juneau, had actually been watching the engine propeller stop running. He told me all of the people on that flight were angry and upset with the airlines, thinking they had sent them out without checking that engine. I didn't tell that man, but I thought, "I bet they'd be mad at me if they knew that, in answer to my prayer, the Lord had made that engine fail so they would have to come back to get me in Whitehorse and I wouldn't have to stay there a few days."

Hmm. For all I know, though, maybe God was working a lot of other things out for all those people, too. He is always in control. We can totally trust Him.

Thanks to my friends in Anchorage, Warren, Theresa, and Kathy Covey (Welch) for taking me and baby Rachel in and keeping us until Dave made it to Anchorage a week or two later.  He had to make two more trips back to get the truck and trailer all the way to Anchorage.

But that is another story...