Monday Meanderings - 6.20.2016

I'm not much for chatting with my seatmate during airplane trips, but last week on the Fresno to Salt Lake City leg of my journey I struck up a conversation with an interesting fellow and we chatted the entire trip. He was a retired Delta Airlines employee, now living in a small community outside Ogden, Utah. In the summer he manages a water supply company that provides irrigation services to a number of farms and ranches, and by winter he manages a cross country ski area.

He said that he was employed just enough to be a productive citizen and retired enough to be happy. Evidently he made that Fresno-Salt Lake trip often. Along our route, he pointed out various landmarks and areas of interest, and knew the exact route the pilot was going to take on his approach.

One of the landmarks we passed over was the Kennecott Copper Mine - an open mine so large it can be seen from outer space. He talked about the mine and pointed out where earth-slides had occurred over the years, and he added that it was not well known, but that a considerable amount of gold was extracted from the copper tailings by a company owned by the Royal Family and that upwards of a million dollars worth of gold left the country every few days as cargo on Delta flights, headed to Great Britain.

He knew about the shipments because he was responsible for them back when he still worked for Delta. I commented that there must have been a lot of security involved, and he said, "Less than you might expect." He said that often it traveled in checked baggage in ratty old suitcases. $1,000,000 in gold typically weighed less than 50 pounds, and couriers from the mining operation would bring in a bag of gold and he would simply go out on the runway and load it directly in the plane. When it got to London, his counterpart would intercept the bag and hand it over to representatives on that end.

Huh.