All right uh steve cannon welcome to the podcast here glad to be here so really interested in how people end up in ketchikan people always ask me when i'm down south how do you how'd you end up on prince wales island and for my family it was moving up in the 80s because of the oil boom and so as teachers my parents moved up when did your family move up here and what was the industry that they were kind of chasing or coming following you know it's a fish it was
fish my great-grandfather ec phillips you know as being a young man a young kid growing up and in next to his business not in his business but my dad worked for him in that business and so did my dad's dad and they let's put it this way i never really asked because i really wasn't concerned about being in the fish business till I got older when they're all gone.
But yes, fish on both sides. Even my mother's side of the family, her, I think it was her great uncle was in the business at the other New England and then this end of town. So fish. So growing up in the fishing industry, seeing that, was that kind of your direction you wanted to maybe go or when did being a pilot end up getting in there? So, growing up in Ketchikan, I didn't know really what I wanted to do other than ride my bike, play a little baseball and be a total menace. Yeah.
But my dad started flying when I was very small. And so, you'd ride him in a plane with him a little bit every blue moon and get sick, you know. And so, I didn't know if I wanted to do that. I wasn't sure. But my father always said this, and I say this on my tours. My dad said, if you work for the family, I'll break your neck. And then he said, and if you work for the pulp mill, I'll break both your legs. And my dad's not a violent guy. So, you know, he just said, I don't want to
see you end up at those two places. And probably... Encouraged me to fly, you know, a little bit, but didn't push, didn't push it on me and just got me the opportunities to ride along with him, be around it a little bit and just, just watch him in his career. And then one day, it's a funny story, but I was sheet rocking with a buddy of mine. I was just breaking into sheet rocking after painting and all this.
And he said, Hey, my dad you know need they need some help uh hanging some sheetrock i didn't know anything about it but i've been around a little bit within the job and so i'm looking out the window, at the west flight building they're still building it you know we're inside and i look over and i see, my dad and this other guy they're putting an airplane in the water and it was one of these summers it was just the water was harbor was like a mill pond at
least every day i was on that job It was beautiful. I mean, the sun was coming up and it's warm already. It's in June. And I looked down at these guys, got their coffee and they're talking. They're putting an airplane in the water. And I can remember it was my father and Rusty Schaub. And the airplane's kind of stuck a little bit. So they're just kind of hanging on to their coffee and they're just kind of trying to hip it in the water and just kind of, you know, nudge it.
It's a little slide over and they can let it go. And it's just not working with them. And you could see that when they had to put their coffee cup down, they're like, oh, my God, I got to put my coffee down and actually do this. And at that moment, I thought, you know, it's a lot better than working physically, you know, and it looks like something to do. And so I just started pressing my dad for, you know, how to get into the business.
And then I was very fortunate, you know, to have my father as the way in. There's a lot of opportunity for young people to make it into some of those really rugged industries, but a lot of those are kind of the young man's game. Yeah. What about the fishing industry? Because the pulp mill seems pretty obvious, but what was it about the fishing industry? Was it the ebbs and flow of the populations of fish, or what was it that made your dad deteriorate from that?
It just didn't, you know, it didn't reach out and grab him. So maybe it didn't grab me. I would watch my grandfather come home from the cold storage, and it's cold in there, obviously, but it's just, even on the warmest days, it's still cold and damp, and you just, it just doesn't look like any place you'd want to be really working, you know, in and out of the freezers, and so it didn't look like it had a wow factor or anything, and I didn't really, wasn't interested in commercial fishing.
You know, the group of friends I was with, you know, a couple of guys did it and they didn't like it. So you'd hear the horror stories and it's like, well, that, and the other one I wouldn't do would be a logger. Those guys work way too hard. Yeah. That's crazy. So. Yeah. There's, you have to be all in with those things. You can't kind of be, you know, half committed. Those things are just require that, that total commitment and it's brutal.
And it takes a, definitely a different type of person to do that. Yeah. What about Ketchikan? Because it takes a different type of person to stay in Ketchikan. Were there times when you thought you were going to move away and stay away, or do you always want to come back to Ketchikan? Yeah, it's, you know, I don't know. You know, I've been in and out, getting my ratings, you know, going to Seattle.
Kind of liked it, but then I kind of just liked the idea of being a small fish in a small pond or being a small fish in a very large pond. And Seattle was fun for a while, but I could kind of see real quick that it just got, it's not, it wasn't me. You know, even now when I go to the big cities, it's like, it doesn't, doesn't get me going. Yeah. You know, way off up in, you know, in the mountains or something or where the population is smaller. Definitely. But yeah.
So you graduate high school. What did it look like? Barely, but I did it. Well, that's the thing. I tell the students like GPA and there's studies that have shown this, that your 4.0 isn't success indicator necessarily. Like it means that, okay, you're really good at following directions and getting good grades. But yeah. Had a lot of students who, you know, once they find exactly what they like to do, like you can see the underlying hard work.
They might only get a C in the class, but you know they're going to be okay because once they really buy into something, it'll feel less like a hoop and they'll just get after it. So you graduate and then what, was it right into getting your ratings or? Well, it's a funny story. Yeah, I kind of thought, you know, I got out of school and I got a job right on this location for Tye Airlines.
A buddy of mine who's been flying for Alaska for, I can't count that many years now, 30 plus years, started on the waterfront, I think about 1985, but he was down here in 81 on the dock. And he was going to get his ratings, calls me up and he says, hey, I know you want to fly. Do you want to, do you want to fill in for me? Cause I'm going to leave him a month early and I need somebody right away.
Came down, hung out with him for a day and Kirk Thomas said, well, I guess you're going to, you know, do you want to fill in for Scott? That'd be great. And I said, yeah, yeah. I knew nothing. I couldn't even tie the plane up. I mean, it was, and it's the, some of the guys that flew down there knew my father and, and he'd look at me like, oh, young Cam must know something. Nothing. Nothing. So, and, but, so, I go to this ground school, aviation ground school, and I don't pass the test.
You know, I did a local thing, and I kind of thought, and I had a kind of a mishap. I wrecked a vehicle, and I thought, I'm not, I'm not done being a kid. And I, that responsibility wasn't, wasn't there for me. So, I kind of goofed off until I was about 22 and then I got started again and then got with it. But for some reason I had to, I had to get that out of my system.
Yeah. Knowing what you want to do when you're young can be good, but also you kind of, you might potentially kind of trap yourself into this is my path and it doesn't leave a lot of time for variation and whatnot. I, it was my second semester of senior year of college that I was like, I don't know if I want to be a journalist working for a paper, you know, making $18,000 a year covering high school softball or something. And I thought, I don't know if I want to do that. So yeah.
I think most people's careers have something like that where you either second guess or you choose a totally different route and that's pretty normal. Yeah. I knew sheetrock and I only sheetrocked for maybe less than a year. I kind of got started in it when I started flying. So when I went to Seattle to get my ratings, I worked part-time working for the Cowan family and just kind of learning how to hang sheetrock, tape it, mud it, all of it.
And I still can do it. So I don't let anybody tell them I can do that, but I pass it off. What are some of your favorite memories from growing up in Ketchikan? Because it's obviously a different place. There was an element of tourism, but not a whole lot. So what was kind of like a summer week like without five cruise ships and 10,000 people? We'd ride our bikes around this town a lot. I mean, we'd ride from one end of town to the other sometimes on those good days in June.
You know i played baseball most of the summer till till you know june just before the fourth slide would be over and he's just goofed off i just i grew up on canyon road just down below carolina lake all over the place i was in that canyon all the time trout fishing just just tearing it up you know just you know i we'd think nothing of getting on our bikes and riding that town and you know the other one is i'm glad people don't do it but you'd see somebody you know it,
you'd hang onto the mirror and you'd get a free ride through town all the time. Yeah. You know, or back in the day it would, you know, like wintertime, it seemed like we used to have some snow. And I remember walking to the basketball games, it'd be a foot of snow on the ground. So then you'd, what we called it, hooky bobbing. You'd hang onto the bumper and just slide behind the car to get where you were going from point A to point B. Yeah. So, but summertime was...
You know, just a lot of bikes, baseball, you know, we didn't have indoor games or anything. So just being a hoodlum. Yeah. You mentioned before we started recording here about Bell Island and you used to spend some time there. I'm kind of fascinated with that. It seemed like the 60s and 70s here or 50s, 60s and 70s was such a unique time before statehood.
And then right after with things like Bell Island where you had hot springs and Alaska Airlines had a, they had leased the property or something. Or they were running some tours out of it or something? You know, it just seemed to be a lodge. Like there was Yes Bay and then Belle Island. So when I was a kid, it was a big thing to get in a boat and go up to Belle Island and spend the day. And it was busy.
I showed up, I was with my grandparents one time and then my mother and father, we went up in a boat when I was a small kid. But that's, I don't remember it much past the age of seven. It was, it seemed like it, it just kind of went away real quick. You know, they say, oh, the maintenance on this and that, and things got run down. And, and, but I do remember you couldn't, it was hard to find a place to park your boat.
Sometimes you'd have to anchor up, row in, or people would let you park on the outside of their boat and their boat. Right. And so, but quite a few people. Is there anything else around town that doesn't exist now that was something that you really remember growing up? You're going to or a location or a shop or a store, just a way of life that has kind of gone away. Not to make you feel or sound old, but there's been a lot of turnover even since I was in high school in the 90s.
Well, the drinking age was 19. So you, you know, a lot of us, some of my friends were 18 at the beginning of the year. So they turned 19 and they were legal to buy booze. They were your really good buddies. I would say just the population from when the mill was here was, you know, the classes were bigger in high school. So there was more people, more industry. So they had a couple of nightclubs. You could go out on the weekends and there'd be loud bands. So that was something as far as...
You know, just, just the usual kid, you know, younger guy stuff, ripping around a little bit. It seems like the long arm of the law wasn't so long, you know, so you can feel like you were more invisible. Yeah. The, the commerce thing is interesting. I remember we would do some shopping. We'd come from Prince of Wales over here to do some shopping, go to Seattle, maybe do some shopping down there when we were down visiting relatives in Colorado.
Otherwise it was like catalog, but there was enough here because you didn't have Walmart. there was no online shopping. And so there just seemed to be one or two places where you could get anything that you needed. Right. Between, you know, Outfitter, Tongass, The Workhorse. Jay Jacobs, Bon Marche, all those stores were there. And what was the feeling like maybe in the mid to late nineties when everything was starting to kind of, you know, what's Ketchikan going to be without the pulp mill?
What did that feel like? Because at that point you started flying in 88, right? Yeah. And my father actually had a job flying helicopter for the mill. So I felt like I kind of was blessed. I could kind of feel the pulse of what was going on. And he had that job until 97. And, you know, tourism was growing so fast, but it was kind of one of those in my, you know, in our business of flying, it was all about scheduled service to Prince of Wales and mail and, and loggers and stuff.
And so you kinda, I don't know, I just, I don't know if they were taking tourism real seriously. Like, as like, it's like, man, this stuff's going, it's going to be here. It's not leaving. But, you know, it's just things, I guess you're, it was some concern, but I guess there was another flying job around the corner if I'd like to leave town at that time. So when you started in 88, how many carriers were there? Just a few. And were they like huge operations? So in 88, Jerry Scudero was 10
years in business from when he started in Metlacatlas. So there was TAC1. I believe there was Dave Doyon had Misty Fjord. He was 185. And I'm trying to remember if Max Lucan was doing something. There was Ketchikan Air. That's when Tempsko was doing float planes at that point, right? Yeah, they were big with it. I believe they started in 85.
I got a picture around here somewhere of what it looked like when they were, when he purchased it from, when Kenny Eichner bought this from Kirk Thomas at Tye. Let's see, so I'd say four. I think Dale Clark was just out of business in Revella Air. So there was 90, then it went, That's when ProMech started. It was 90 or 91. So it has always been like four. Two bigs, some smalls, but neat time. Yeah. So how long were you flying for someone else?
And then who were you flying for? Sorry, at the beginning there. I started 88 for Tempsco. I did the majority of my training time with Cherry Skidero at TAC 1 Air. So I was down there for two summers. And then I got hired at Temsco. Went there until they closed. Went back to TAC1 until 2000. Then I went through a restructuring or whatever. And then I went and worked for PROMEC in 2000 until halfway to 2003. And Les and I decided that we thought we were going to be somebody.
Bought a little airplane, a little 206, and started. Nice. Yeah. Was it called see when from the beginning yeah yeah what made you uh make that jump. Well, let's see. I just didn't, Leslie. Let's just, you know, just to narrow it down. I still, I tell this story all the time. We were, I was talking with a friend and with a fellow pilot who would stay in town for three, four days and he'd stay out at my house. And we'd talk about this business.
And I said to him, I said, we should find a way to get a caravan. You fly three and a half days and I'll fly the other three and a half days. I'll be your ground support and we'll figure this out. And we talked about it and talked about it. And Leslie looked at the situation and realized that maybe the other person I was talking to was never going to get to that point. And maybe my talk was more. She goes, why don't just you and I get a smaller airplane and do this?
And at that point, I said, if we did this, do you know what this means? And she said, no. Well, you know. I said, Leslie, that means you'd be doing all the work and I still get to do all the flying and the bullshitting.
And she said okay and she's still the hardest working in this company you know she works hardest i just fly and try to look important was there anything about the industry that you thought you might be able to bring or alter or change about it because sometimes you get a good view of how you would do things your own by working for someone else and was there something that you thought you know this would be an a cool opportunity when we start our thing
we're going to do this or is it just go with what works we go with what works right uh because a lot of people have done the math you know and and that's it's, I don't have any original ideas. I take other parts from other people and I kind of put it together and then I kind of spin it as my stuff. But it's, you know, they say, don't get too big too fast. Don't do this. Don't get huge. And it's all true.
But it's liking what you do. You know, if you like what you do and then you're good making, you know, a certain amount of money doing what you do and trying to get, I don't know, you don't want to work too hard for it. But, you know, at the end of the day, you're willing to work for it. But I don't think there was any one thing I was going to sit there and say, oh, I do this way differently. I might pay people a little differently or treat people a little differently.
But I look back as, you know, all the guys that I worked for were basically meant to rescind this. And, yeah, there's things I don't treat people like that guy did or I definitely treat people like that guy. and you really look to the guys that have the experience that have handed down all these pearls. So that's one of my strong points is I listen better than I talk.
Yeah, if you're in a community like this, it doesn't benefit you whatsoever to come in and either disrupt what's going on or if you've been here for a long time to ruin some of those ties and some of those relationships that you have with people. Right.
Certainly not a good idea. No. so when did some of the the industry go from just your kind of fly out go to lodge support to more the cruise ship fly out day trip when did that really start to take off about about when i got into business like you could just you could just tell that kim kirby who referred to her as kayak kim she's from england and she's she was selling at the visitors bro and we were talking one time And she goes,
Steve, I turn away dozens and dozens of people every day that want to go to the Misty Fjords. Really? Yeah, it's just interesting. So you work your calculator over and you do your rent and your payment. And it's, okay, this is the price. And it's just, it was a good time for somebody like myself to get into it. Because if you want to work, you know, seven days a week, it's there. And it just kind of just worked out. Just knowing, networking went a little bit. And I did not know how the tours
were sold down there and how that works. And that's its whole little weirdo way of doing business down there. But when somebody comes and they say they want 8% or 10% of each ticket and they're selling it for this, yeah, definitely. So you've got a hook in the water, people walking off the ship looking for that. So that's really the way that we kind of looked at it to get us going and then charter. And we knew that we weren't going to be busy in the winter. That was the other
side. I was like, it's not the most thrilling thing to fly in the wintertime. It's, you know, it's raining, it's blowing. And when you don't work for a bigger company, you don't have that ground support. So that's you out in the rain. That's you out there doing that.
It gets to be a long day pretty quick. Yeah. everybody who comes up and talks about the old great bush pilot they had they said well that's because they're taking high school kids from prince of wales flying around here in the winter like that's yes that's why the summer is a nice relaxed time for them to have fun because, that was me flying up to cake or wherever it was and man it's just just brutal but yeah so much so what jeff what did you ride with when you were out there
we did some takwan i remember temsco So you probably rode with me many times. Probably. I did a lot of Craig trips back then. And 94, 94, 95, we got the first Turbin Otter for TAC-1. And that was very blessed. That was mine for 90% of the time, which that meant my back was still in good shape. What's your favorite plane to fly? It's probably the Otter. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's hard to say. I haven't really flown a lot of different planes consistently.
So out of, out of the beavers and the otters, I can narrow it down to like there was this one beaver that used to fly at Tempsco that was hands down the best flying beaver I'd ever flown. They all fly the same, but some are just fit you better. And same with the otter or the 185s. So the otter, it's just, it's, it's just a big stable. People enjoy it better. And that's the turbine otter, not the piston otter. Okay.
What's the difference i think the noise reliability and just better creature comforts just less it's not as brutal in your your senses you know something that's so loud that you can't carry on a conversation you know it's that's that's hard on you at the end of the day as far as performance goes what would be the difference between a beaver and an otter because outside of size and outside of maybe loudness volume what would someone notice maybe or if if you're in one side to side
what would be the main performance difference oh the turban otter by far that's it'll it'll climb to 10 000 feet and at a thousand foot per minute with a load so 10 minutes you could be 10 000 feet beaver probably run out of gas before it got to 10 000 feet what about when looking at places to fly in because you do a good amount of chartering when you're looking at lakes to fly into. Based on what you're flying in there, based on weight. We flew into a lake in
August. You flew us in in the Otter. When you're making those determinations, and it was a lake that you hadn't flown into before, what are you looking for as far as structure, as far as how much length do you need to take off? What are the things that you're looking at? Basically, how to get out, because you can get into anything. It's just getting out of it to be tough. That particular day was funny.
I'd never been to that lake. I've been by it. You know, it's like some routes just don't take you ever by things. If you're coming from Wrangell, you don't go over it. If you're coming from the North End, you don't go by it. So I thought that day, I thought, well, God, you know, I look at the GPS. This should take me right over the top of it. And I missed it. I missed it by two miles and it put me on the other side of that.
So I was like, Like, I know it's, you know, so rocks, you know, like in that lake, you know, just doing a step turn. But that's actually not what I would call a small lake. It's actually bigger than some of the other lakes, like 1314 or what is that, 1174, you know. So, it's a little bit bigger and a little easier to work. So, I didn't even really have to think about it. I just looked at where I was going to put you. And that airplane is such a beast when it comes to that.
It's just that even load, you just feel comfortable with it. Where the beaver, you might have to work a little harder. Step, turn, and circle inside the lake, climb out. Yeah, I'd been in that lake before, and that's what we did. Kind of went right at the rock, and then just did a little corkscrew up. I know. Yeah, that otter just pulled it right out of there, didn't it? Yeah, it was pretty wild. Yeah. You could just feel the power.
Yeah, it's, and the thing is, that particular, those turbine engines, they're rated by temperature. So if you don't achieve that temperature, I don't have to pull that throttle back. And they have the radial engines, after about a minute, you have to get it off of, you know, takeoff power. And then it turns into a heat issue where, you know, it's going to destroy the engine if you keep doing that. So, or the Otter, you know, it's just, oh yeah, we're finally out of there.
Oh, I'll just pull it back now. So it is nice. What do you like doing more? Like taking someone out to a lodge, a charter, or planting the Mistys? It seems like might be an obvious question, but I figured I just... Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I don't want to do too much of any one thing. So if it's kind of a mixed bag... I like the Lodge stuff. You know, people are excited. But then people are excited to go on the Misty. So, it is some of the best flying, doing the Lodge work, the Misty's.
It is, because people are excited. They're seeing it for the first time. It's not like, oh, God, I got to go to Craig today. You know, yeah, I got to spend a day over a minute. How's weather going to be later, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, it gets a little long in the tooth, repeating myself for the amount of years I've been doing this. I still have remnants of some of the early days of what I used to say in the stores, cause I haven't got any new stuff yet.
But if people haven't heard the jokes, then that means they're always going to work in good shape. Yeah. Sometimes you get some people are pretty funny and like, like this conversation we're having now, it's, it's, that's the enjoyable part is when people can interact and they bring something to it. And, and let's just, some days the weather doesn't work out.
It's not as nice or it's not as pristine. So it's, it gets a little rough, You know, the, maybe the passengers in the back or, you know, from other parts of the world and there's no English. And so it's kind of like, okay, you know, skim the old, look out the window. Pretty outside. Yeah. Listen to Led Zeppelin and let's go. Yeah. There you go.
How many days or how many, I don't know which question to ask, how many days that you, you fly to the Misty's during the summer or how many planes, cause you have one plane. So how many tours are you taking in the Misty's? for a summer? You know, there's been days back when we got into business just started. I remember one day I did seven in a row. So, I don't like to do too many, like more than three. You know, I mean, I do them, but it just, it gets so repetitive.
You know, I've been back there a lot of times. I'll definitely change the music. No, it's just, Well, just to give you an idea, I use Spotify to play music. So I build up these playlists. And I got this one song on this one track. And so just ironically, we went to the Eagles concert in the Sphere. And I get out of the Eagles concert, and Spotify wants to give me the year-end update of what I've been listening to and how much.
Well, I've never seen this, so I look at this. I listened to Staring Down by Collective Souls, 197 times this summer. Just the summer. So the only reason why I listened to this song is because it's the second song on my playlist to the Misty Fjords. Because I thought, you know, hey, what a good song. We're staring down, looking around, right?
So just to answer that question, I know I did, 179 tours and i'd have a couple other playlists so it's it's a and you know i haven't have another guys working here i definitely try and shovel this stuff off to the younger guys anthony you know manillo and max ludwigson and max doobie hey guess what you're going to misty what are you doing well i'm going to thorn bay.
When you have some of these younger guys like like max in here is there something different about the talk you give them versus maybe the ones that you got do you try to you know what's different about the new person coming into the industry now than maybe when you started, maybe a little less macho you know so when i started actually like i was i was hired through the through the winter because the there wasn't enough guys so being a junior pilot and flying of winter. It's a big thing.
So in 88, you know, Tempsco had all the mail routes, Hyder, all the way to the north end and everything in between. I mean, they're the only ones doing the mail next, you know, Ketchikan Air did as well, but there was more of it, more logging camps. So you felt like you needed to work harder to get the job done to keep your position through the winter.
You know, you didn't want to be that guy, well, I always turned around or always, And you kind of buy into, you know, these guys are doing it, so I should be doing it too, even though they had tons of experience. And a lot of these guys would take you asides, yeah, I saw you doing this or I saw you doing that. And basically I just tell them, they said, hey, there's no macho in this. You'll come about and you'll gather that. There's no need to prove it.
I flew with a couple of guys that didn't make it through a lot of this stuff when they were young and they were wanting to make a name. So maybe, maybe that way that might've saved my life because they took us aside and said, Hey, look, at the end of the day, we act like assholes, but we don't want you to be an asshole or whatever. And that's all I bring to those guys is I want to give them all the good stuff, make them look cooler than they already are.
You know that's funny with max when i was talking with him on the podcast he was talking about how it was i don't know if it's grandfather or great-grandfriend or grandfather landed a plane at mountain point i thought what like how and then there was a dave kiefer article that showed a picture of and i thought wow that's pretty pretty crazy so yeah it's kind of cool i in he's following in the footsteps and it's
it's it's pretty interesting but you had to have that sort Sort of that early aviation, just the stones on those guys. Just look at the walls. Yeah. Just, oh, some of these are Weber Air pictures over here. And anyways, just to fly a Grumman Goose in this environment without navigation, like what we have now. So just a friend of mine who flew this, it actually flew a Goose a little bit. So you're flying along. You got these two engines on the sides.
So you can take a look out the side and out the back, but guess what? You can't see anything. You're just staring at an engine. They make a turn in the Harris River, and you try to look around out the sides. You can't see it. And the guy looks at them and says, what are you looking at? It's all out the front. So we finished the turn, and okay. So you're right. Big stones. Big stones on these guys. I couldn't imagine just operating a goose without support everywhere I went.
So it's, and that was the big, the big thing of the day, the PBY or the Grumman goose. So the, the Havilland planes are like post-World War II and then they became available to the public. So some of the fuselages or some of the planes themselves are pretty old, but the technology is, is much better. So what are some of the tech changes you've seen since the late eighties? Well, for one, these airplanes are actually better than the day they were built.
They find where the weak points are. Plus, you know, I don't think they built them to think that they were going to last this long. And then it's like, damn, look at that thing still out there kicking. This airframe will outlive these engines that's on these things now. They're running out of engines. So different power plants, that's what's come about for these airplanes. It's definitely navigation, traffic awareness, terrain awareness.
It's kind of like putting a TCAS on a beaver. Terrain awareness is actually... Like putting gold hubcaps on a beetle, but, but it's nice to have, it's, you know, especially traffic awareness. That's, that is, you know, kind of a must. It's just, you get tired, two guys come and look at the screens, even though we know what happened up over Silvis Lake, it was kind of a, one was off and so just, it was just bad, bad, bad timing, I mean, you know, but yeah, about that.
I'd say everything nowadays flying is actually better, better for all the stuff in the past. So looking forward, what do you think about the stability of, I mean, we're just getting more and more cruise ship passengers, it seems like, and more and more people are coming up here to hunt. So you think it's an industry that's going to like kind of slowly continue to increase? Do you think it's plateauing? What do you think the future holds?
You know that's the ball because you're a future seller right well you're a hunter it's like shooting at a running deer it's like yeah i might get it i might not that's uh since i've been in this business the moment i always thought that i had something nailed down in the tourist industry something changed and it it didn't get worse it just i didn't get a chance to actually get on board with it and and ride it for a couple of years but it would something would change over here.
But okay, then I got to chase it over there. But it was always there. I think if we made it through 88 and the pandemic, I think the city's got the challenge of how do we get these guys in town and how do we get the cars through town so we can function? People go, aren't you sick of it? And I go, no, actually, I'm not downtown in the summer. So by the time I get down there, they're all gone so i you know i feel their their pain on that i would i'd like to see them here.
Longer and not necessarily more i just want to see them here just a couple hours longer because then they can relax it's not such a rush right you know it seemed like years and years ago we were doing these tours at 5 30 at night you know till the last one because the ship was in longer Now it's, these ships are called by five. So, you know, I'm not, I don't know about the Ward Cove thing. Oh, that's working out for them. It's a pain in the butt for us, but we'll do it.
It's, you know, we'll drive out there and grab them if we have to and drop them off. If, uh, if there was a local kid who was looking to get into aviation, be a pilot, what, uh, what would you recommend? Uh, study, go to college, have a, have a, have a go back to, you know, if, you know, pilot didn't work, you know, you've got a degree in something else.
That's the smart guys did that. You know, I had some friends that got a four year in like aviation science or aviation management and that got them to the jets. If they weren't flying a jet, they'd be like, I don't know what I'm going to do. So I want to encourage it. I think it's a great way to make a living and get to see a lot of neat things and deal with a lot of neat people. Any closing thoughts or anything about the industry or anything about catch
can living or your golf game or anything? Golf game. Yeah, my golf game is working on it all the time. And I still have a hard time shooting anything under 90.
Everything, everything I do. Doesn't matter. 97 all the time i'm the higher the iron the the better i am because i think you know if you're just a little off to the left a little off to the right it's not going to be as severe but man off the tm horrible but then you know seven seven iron nine iron pitching wedge i think it's get a little bit a little bit better feel good yeah yeah it feels okay enough to keep me out there you know you have
enough success to be to be with my wife and i went to a driving range in tucson when we were down there for Christmas last year, she'd never hit a golf ball in her life. And I said, let's go to the range. Let's just spray them. Like, it doesn't even matter. You just hit as long as you make contact, it's good. And of course the first time she swung, she missed. I thought, all right, well, you know, we'll get better.
But yeah, she loved it. It's just fun to hit the ball and get better, choose a different club and go and then. When you're playing, when you're playing around, it's. Especially when they crack it. When they finally swing and it goes, and it goes out there, all of a sudden you see the light come on and it's like, hey, I kind of like that. And it's like, yeah, now you know what I'm talking about. One of my, we went back years, well, this was probably just seven years ago.
We went back to Augusta, Georgia, where Leslie's mother's at. And I said, why is Thanksgiving? Let's go find a driving area, see if one's open. Sure enough, there was one that was open. And so we got a bunch of balls and all these, all my daughters have played softball. So they could swing a bat pretty good. So what was neat, they had a little driving competition amongst them and a lot of whiffs, a lot of shanks, but occasionally they get a hold of one.
So they were challenging each other and then they, now they still want to go play golf. So that was fun. It's fun. I definitely like hunting and fishing better, but yeah, golf is. Well, golf's just something you can do when you're not doing that. Exactly. It's a good winter thing to do. Look at how many people, exactly. Yeah, look at how many people are going to play golf down there in, you know, the desert. Yeah. I mean, that's the last thing they talk about doing. Yeah.
They want to be up here to lodge, fishing. Yeah. Yeah. So, if someone wanted to charter, to book, how would they get a hold of you? How do they contact? How can they follow? How can they like? You got social media? Give the whole pitch for a sea wind. Yeah, I would just call us and we'll see what kind of mood we're in.
And this is something, and I would apologize to anybody who calls, all of a sudden, deer season's upon us, the weather starts changing, pilots are getting kind of burned out from back to back, and then all of a sudden, a hunter comes along and wants to go into a small lake. You know, and you're like, oh, I'm done. You just kind of want to coast. I wish hunting season really wouldn't start until September. And then the weather would be like August.
And that's just it. Just be patient. Because we're dealing, the factors that we have is weather, as you know. You know, you can get stuck in these things or lose time going out. And it's just sometimes you just carry the stress of wanting to get them out there. make sure they get deer, you know, do the whole thing and have a good experience. Like, I was so relieved that you weren't going elk hunting.
Elk hunting is one of those, and I've never personally gone, but I've just seen it through the eyes. They're going to go get one. They're going to get one. And then they go to Edelon Island. And then all of a sudden you can just see the life just drain from them when they start looking at the terrain. Yeah. And it's like, you can't drag a horse up and down that hill.
You know, it's, and, and I've, we've seen a lot of people that never come back and there's guys, I think, I want to say his name, Foster, Forrester, Foster. Chris Foster? Yeah. He seems to eat that stuff up. He's just, I took him into 13, 14 and he took his girlfriend along and I, I think he eventually wore her down verbally, you know, to where it was like, you know, she seemed to be up for the challenge and I think he got the better of her on that one.
And, but it's a special breed and the guys that have been flying lately are all really good. I can just, and you can see it a mile away. It's like, oh yes. And these guys are, these guys are dialed in. So it's a lot less. So just call us and we'll squeeze you in, make it happen at seawindaviation.com on our webpage. Just best way to do is just talk to somebody. We answer our phone every day. Excellent. Yeah. Cool. Thanks for being on here. Appreciate it. and have a good winter.
It's the first time doing this, so I hope it sounds okay. No, it's perfect. Well, I think if there's ever a bad episode, it's the host's fault. We're not asking good questions. I can be a little dry sometimes. No, it's good. Thank you. Appreciate it. Not a problem. Thank you.