Why They Get Paid The Big Bucks

In 1972 I hitchhiked from the east coast to Seattle and took the inland passage ferry up to Haines, and then hitched around Alaska. One of my rides offered me a job working on building the trans Alaskan pipeline but since I had plenty of money on me and wanted to travel some, I declined.
I've always wondered what my life would have turned out like if I had taken him up on that offer because at the time people were making extraordinary amounts of money up there working on the pipes. And just a few years later I started taking ground school aviation classes. Oh well.