Back from my stint up in Edmonton

So I have since returned from my adventures flying out of Edmonton for a few days. I ended up spending Saturday, Sunday and Monday night in the hotel.

Flew up in the back of one of our planes on Saturday afternoon that was on an empty leg for positioning purposes. I then flew that plane to Lloydminster where we spent a good few hours in the abandoned airport terminal building there waiting for our clients to finish their "meet and greets". It was quite chilly there with the windchill, and I had to spend a good few minutes exposed to all the elements sweeping frost off the wings that had formed prior to departure. Brrrr... I actually felt my forehead freezing.

Checked into the hotel quite late at night and arose the next day to prepare for a flight to Calgary and then over to Saskatoon to bring back clients to Edmonton. Very nice day for flying, blue skies and happiness. Very uneventful and pleasant flights.

The next morning I woke up and got a phone call in the hotel room from my roommate who was in town on a layover himself. So we both decided to go and check out the West Edmonton Mall. I think we ended up spending 7.5hrs there! We just walked around to kill time, window shopped in all the electronic stores and had a great dinner at Earls. They even have a gun store there that has an indoor shooting range, that I'll have to try sometime. We weren't really up for it that day though, so another time for sure though.

Only got about 4hrs of sleep and then had to be at the airport really early to do a quick little flight between the two airports in Edmonton. We were at the business airport right next to downtown, and our clients for Monday wanted to be picked up at the International airport. So I got to handfly the entire flight (all 6 mins of it). That day we were off to Fort St. John where we taxied into town while the clients went to meetings and we had a great breakfast at White Spot. Next it was off to Grande Prairie where we both had a nap on some leather couches while waiting for the clients again. Then on the return to Edmonton we had to really hussle and kick our clients off the plane, because another crew was taking the plane to Vancouver to pick up some other clients to return to Calgary. Now I was done flying for the day and ended up taking a rental car home to Calgary and got in rather late at night.

Quite a busy few days, but full of flying and good times. Too bad it didn't involve any Vancouver flights though.

Aside from the flying, we are VERY busy at the company. This is our busy season and we've got all of our planes flying and all of our crews flying as well. I will likely get xmas off and then will be working over new years. It will be a quiet celebration at my house with not too much going on. I'm available to fly in the middle of it all and hoping that a Vancouver flight will come up so that I can come home and enjoy some of the holidays with family and friends, but the chances are fairly slim.