Day Trip

I and a fairly new coworker are assigned to go to a site about an hour away and do some work. It's expected to be a single flight: zip up there, do the work and come back to base without landing. I say, "Just in case the work takes longer and we have to land for fuel, do you have a company credit card?" He doesn't yet, so I grab mine, just in case.

We fly to the location, but don't succeed in completing the work. The conditions aren't appropriate. We've just turned for home when my coworker receives a message on the satellite link. "Do you guys have overnight gear?"

The true answer is, "No," but we understand that it means, "Don't come home until the work is done." Never leave home in an airplane without a toothbrush and a change of underwear. I turn the airplane around and land at an airport nearby where we both know people. We get a ride into town in a veterinary van (no not driven by a Terminatrix), check into a hotel, call our friends, and go visiting.

Next morning we are preparing to do the work they sent us up here to do, but we are sent instead to another province. And then up north. Where we got snowed in. The new coworker goes home on the airlines. I eventually spend almost a week in the field, including the day I spent digging the airplane out of a snowbank. I think it was May. At least it was May by the time I got home.

When I finally get home, the vice president sees me carrying my gear into the office: my flight bag, a Wal Mart bag of emergency clothing and toiletry purchases, ten thousand dollars of credit card receipts, and a straw broom I bought to whisk the snow off the airplane. "What's that for?" he asks, indicating the broom. "Is that how you got back?"

So you see, management considers me to be a mighty and powerful sorceress. Or something.