The Yukon, Summer 2018 “Aaron, do you smell that?” The acrid stench had been following me around since I entered the main cabin this morning. At first, I chalked it up to the charred bacon Aaron’s wife was cooking—a culinary assault I found uniquely nauseating. Few scents in this world can make my stomach churn like the pungent, smoky reek of bacon frying away in its own grease. If you gave me a choice between wearing a decomposing rabbit carcass around my neck or waking up to the smell of pig butt sizzling on a pan, I’d take the rabbit every time.
“No, smell what?” Aaron replied with genuine confusion.
Aaron was my boss up here in the Yukon, running a hunting outfit with a lease on a sprawling conservancy north of Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s vast Yukon Territory. He was the kind of guy who likely wouldn’t notice a bad smell unless it came with flashing lights and a bullhorn announcing its arrival.
For this season, he’d hired me to fly his well-heeled, trigger-happy trophy hunters around in his vintage Piper Super Cub on floats. That plane was as old as disco but less well-preserved.
Today, Aaron and I were out scouting—searching for anything with hooves or horns that his clients could justify taking a shot at: mountain sheep, moose, caribou.
It was hovering around 5 degrees Celsius outside, but I had no choice—I yanked open the window. The icy wind clawing at my face was far more tolerable than the vile stench that seemed to have taken on a life of its own inside the cabin.
“For the love of God!” I blurted out as Aaron leaned forward, unleashing a new wave of nasal assault that made my stomach flip. “When did you last take a shower?”
Aaron straightened up, looking genuinely affronted. “Well,” he said defensively, “last week, at the hotel in Whitehorse when I picked up my wife from the airport. Why?”
“Last week?” I was aghast. “What does your wife think of that?”
“What do you mean? She also showered last week at the hotel.”
I sat there, stunned, trying to process this casual admission.
The guilt hit me like a freight train—I had mistakenly blamed the bacon this morning. The truth was, the stench had a name, and that name was Aaron.
An opening excerpt from What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Chronicles of Chaos and Courage remains available here. The full book can be ordered here.
"Did Someone Die in Here?" – Part 1: Altitude, Attitude & Afterlife™
This wasn’t turbulence. This was rot.
Somewhere over the Yukon, trapped in a Super Cub on floats, I realized my aviation dreams had come true—just not the way I’d hoped.
Because my boss? Was decomposing in the backseat.
Not metaphorically.
Not emotionally.
Literally.
Eight hours into a mission meant for antlers and ego, the smell hit like airborne karma.
The outdoor bros might romanticize “bush flying” as wilderness freedom, but try doing it while calculating trim vs. corpse fluid trajectory.
I wasn’t flying for glory.
I was flying to outpace rigor mortis.
From What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
— the only book where the answer is:
“You. You could go wrong. All of you. Right now.”
Dawn in the Yukon. Serenity Outside. Rot Inside.™
The scene? Cinematic.
The lake? Sacred.
The silence? Divine.
The cockpit? A festering airborne crypt sealed with duct tape and despair.
This is what National Geographic doesn’t show you: when the sunrise hits just right, but the backseat of your Super Cub still smells like a neglected tomb in an abandoned Yukon mine.
I wanted to write poetry.
Instead, I opened the door and gagged on reality.
This wasn’t bush flying—it was spiritual punishment on floats.
From What Could Possibly Go Wrong?,
the memoir that proves even paradise can smell like purgatory.
This Yukon lake cabin could’ve been paradise. Instead, it became an olfactory hostage situation—because apparently, most of my colleagues thought hygiene was a government conspiracy.
Clouds ahead. Biohazard behind. Flying a Super Cub should feel like freedom — but not when your passenger smells like the coroner misplaced him.
Marcel Romdane’s aviation career, What could possibly go wrong? Chapter 1: Did Someone Die in Here?
⚰️ Fuel your midlife crisis with someone else’s crash landing. ⚰️
