Another International Incident...

This whole rodeo started on about the 27th of February, when the Chinook flight company sent four aircraft to fly from Fairbanks, across Canada, through Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and on to the National Training Center in California. Supposed to be about a 4 or 5 day flight. Well, an aircraft broke in a little town called Fort Nelson in British Columbia (Canada). It was a serious enough malfunction that support was called in from the stand-by maintenance team. They left on Friday, and made it to Fort Nelson early on Saturday. Ironically, they broke as soon as they landed at Fort Nelson! (Must have been something in the air, eh?)
So, Monday morning I got a call saying, "pack your bags." The government travel department booked me a flight leaving Fairbanks at 1:00 am on Wednesday, through Seattle, Vancouver, Dawson's Creek, and arriving Fort Nelson at 4:30 that afternoon. It would have been ideal to take this trip a couple of weeks ago, and maybe miss a connection in Vancouver, but that is not how my luck usually runs...
I picked up the needed replacement part at the hangar, packed it in my luggage, hoping that Canadian customs would not think that it was a bomb in my suitcase. Somehow, all the bags made it the entire way, spare part and all!
The trip was pretty uneventful (read: boring) until the landing at Dawson's Creek, where a passenger on my plane was arrested on the tarmac, and the plane was searched in the vicinity of his seat and overhead compartment. There was a young lady seated next to me who was a "white-knuckled flier," who was quite concerned that this guy was a terrorist who planted a bomb, and our plane would blow up in the middle of Canada. I refrained from either laughing or pointing out that being blown up in mid-air would be preferable to many people than living in Fort Nelson. (Fort Nelson is an oil and natural-gas town, with three hotels, two grocery stores, several petrol stations, one bar, two restaurants, and not much else. Not even a place to pick up a T-shirt and pair of jeans!
Once we landed (safely, no kaboom involved) in Fort Nelson, the aircraft were fixed, and we were on the way (8 hour flight) back to Fairbanks. Craziness.