Vancouver was great... now Edmonton

Well.. I'm not implying that Edmonton is great, just that I'm currently here.

Ok, so.. visiting home worked out great. The layover stayed for the whole trip and I was able to visit with most everyone. There were dinners, casino visits, poker tourneys, crusing in the rental grand am and general fun was had! Turkey was also consumed at the Sander's household. We had an early turkey feast as my sister had to work at night.. so it was more of a turkey lunch. Regardless, it was good and I've brought back leftovers with me!

Now I'm in Edmonton where we'll do a simple day of Edmonton to Calgary to Edmonton and then returning back to Calgary afterwards. Could I make that any more confusing!?

Well, I'm pretty tired.. So I'm going to catch some Zzzzzz's. Oh, but I did manage to catch the Canucks vs. Detroit game while having dinner tonight.. great game.. Canucks played well and won!

Thanksgiving at home!

Well.. I managed to swing some favors and gave up a couple of my days off in order to get put on a Vancouver layover which begins tomorrow at about 9pm and lasts until Monday morning. So.. there's the heads up! Hopefully get to see everyone during my stay. I'll try and send an email or something to notify u all, if you read this pass it along to everyone you bump into!

Destination Tracker Revamped!

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Hey all, I finally revamped my destination tracker on the right side of the screen. It's a little easier to read now and less cluttered. I've been to quite a few places now that I read it myself.. some of those places dozens of times.
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Schedule is quiet

After returning from Penticton our flight schedule has been VERY light. Actually, the reason we spent all 4 days in Penticton was because our schedule was so quiet.

The other pilot and I did hit up the town pretty hard on the Saturday night. Enough so that my Sunday was a write off. As per the procrastinator's comments from my last blog, I'll add a couple more details, but my mind is fuzzy from that night. :)

We started the night at Earls for dinner. After a nice big dinner and a pitcher of beer each we walked down the road at the suggestion of one of the bartenders to a local pub called "The Barley Mill". We went in, and it was a little quiet but a nice little establishment. We then proceeded to drink some more there... I believe it was 4 Crown and Cokes. Now quite liquered up, we got to talking to the younger bartender and asking him about the popular places in town. He proclaimed that the "Blue Mule" was going to be the happening place that night. So we got a cab and headed downtown towards the "Blue Mule"! An interesting little nightclub, seems all of Penticton was there that night though. The place was packed, the girls were everywhere and the booze once again began to flow. *disclaimer* I was pretty sloshed at this point and so have only vague recollections of what proceeded over the remainder of the night. I do recall a very friendly waitress coming over and making sure we always had a drink or 4.. I continued with the Crown and Coke's for a couple rounds and the other pilot was back onto beer. We learned that our waitress "Yohnna" was from some Europian country and enjoyed partying it up in Penticton. She tried to get us to buy drinks for some girl who's birthday it was (Likely her 19th.. eek) and before we could go one way or another, some other girl came over and flat out asked us to buy HER drinks. We chatted her up for a bit, she was there with all her friends and she was as drunk as we were I'm pretty sure. She was going on and on about how much courage it takes a person to come up and ask someone else to buy them a drink and then all of a sudden some more of her friends walked in the room and she went running off to meet them. I bumped into a few girls on my way back from the facilities and they took that as my inclination to get dancin with them, so we had a little 4 way groove session for a couple of mins until the song changed and I continued back to the table where the other pilot was busy plotting my demise. The bastard started ordering Jager and 7-Up. I'm not a fan of this drink. After 2 rounds of this, I had pretty much reached my limit for the night and had a really awful taste in my mouth from the last couple of drinks. We headed out of the club, but not before chatting up some other girls as we left. I can't recall anything from that conversation! Outside we hopped into a cab, and to our amazement it was the same cabby. We returned back to the hotel where I climbed into bed and essentially passed out.

My A/C was on high and my foot was hanging off the side of the bed all night totally exposed to the direct flow of super cooled air! I awoke at 9am and it took quite some time to get my right foot back up to a reasonable core temperature! The proceeding day was a complete write-off. I left the room twice.. once for some lunch and then later that night to grab a little dinner, nothing fancy that's for sure.

Monday was the return to Calgary. We checked the weather before departing and to my horror it was SNOWING! Nothing sticking, but still... white stuff already! It is that time of the year. If I recall correctly it was this time last year that we had our first full on snow storm.

Well there you have it.. and as of right now I currently have NOTHING on the books as our flight schedule is very quiet. This is likely to change, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't work again until after my next set of 3 days off which occur Sunday - Tuesday. Oh well... I'll survive. ;)

In Penticton for the weekend

It appears that I've managed to hack into a wireless signal near the hotel here. It's pretty spuratic though, so I'm not even sure if I'll be able to upload this post due to the signal availability. But it works a good chunk of the time.

Got in last night (Friday) and we stay until Monday afternoon. Yesterday was a very bumpy flight the whole way here, the headwinds were brutal as well. We listened on the frequency as other aircraft tried to find smooth air all over the place but to no avail. A Westjet fight even came as low as 22,000 ft which is VERY low for them, extremely inefficent that's for sure. They're normally up between 28,000 - 41,000 depending on the type of 737.

Well the weather here is decent enough, but rain is in the forecast. So it will be a lot of time in the hotel room I forsee. Some paperwork to catch up on and I brought a couple of movies to watch if I get too bored.. (Garden State, Ocean's Twelve, Be Cool, The Girl Next Door).

Well, here's hoping this weak internet signal stays going!

Days off

In the middle of my 3 days off right now, and they even fall on the weekend which is nice. Saturday to Monday.

And of course, booze is a required staple for the days off. Beverage of choice this set of days off is Rye. Alberta Springs 10 year old vintage to be specific. It's actually really good. Mixed with gingerale it's a great bevy!

Here's a pic Shelley my roomate snapped of me an hour ago while I was outside on our deck enjoying a Rye and gingerale and a decent Cuban Cigar while browsing through an aviation book. A nice laid back evening here in Calgary tonight!

C H I C A G O

There's some of the skyline of Chicago as viewed from the Navy Pier. We had quite the day yesterday. Woke up at a reasonable time, had a brunch downstairs in the hotel and then caught a free shuttle to take us to the commuter train station at the airport. There we hopped a train to take us right into downtown Chicago.

First stop... the Sears tower. Here's me standing in front of it:



We hopped a ride to the top and spent some time taking in the views and reading a lot about the history of Chicago. Here are a couple of views from up high:





After departing the tower we began to walk around the maze of buildings in downtown. What a site. You have some of the most amazing looking buildings all surrounded by the older buildings of Chicago's past. Some looking like they were ready to fall down, but most just looked spectacular. The city was extremely clean and the people very friendly. We decided to head towards Navy Pier in Chicago which is a touristy kind of place where there are some site seeing boats and mini cruise ships around a little shopping and dining area that is on a large pier that heads out into the waters east of the City. It was a very long walk and along the way we came across a huge outdoor amphitheatre which was amazing. There was an international band of some sorts playing. They were doing some sound testing and man were they good. So we got a mini free show for 20 mins. There was also this crazy weird sculpture of highly polished stainless steel too. As pictured here:



It was pretty neat, very reflective. Here's a pic of the other pilot and I in the reflection. Hard to tell it's not a mirror, rather a weirdly shaped reflective piece of artwork.




So we finally arrive at the Pier after a LONG walk. We toured around a bit, had some cold refreshements, chilled out a bit and then started getting hungry for dinner. The plan was to head to the Cheescake Factory which is located at the bottom of the John Hancock building. We eventually found our way there an hour or so later and arrived at this very cool restaurant. We opted for the patio outside because the weather was super nice and the views around this little courtyard were quite amazing. We were surrounded by skyscrapers and beside us was a big waterfall and the restaurant itself which was designed to look like the inside of an apple pie. We ate too much for dinner and didn't have any room for cheesecake.. that kinda sucked. Oh well. Here was the view looking up from our table towards the top of the John Hancock building and also a look at the restaurant.. can you see the theme inside!?





After dinner we were headed off to the House of Blues which is a huge bar and venue for some great blues music. After walking around for quite a long time to find the place we eventually come to realize that they were holding a private party that night and we were not able to get in! What a rip off. So we started walking around some more and decided that we were at least going to find a decent pub and have a couple of beers before heading back to the hotel. So we realize we are clueless as to where any good establishment might be; so we walk into a store that's open and asked a couple of people. We walk back quite a ways to an area which was rich in bars/pubs/clubs. At this point we've crossed over the Chicago River about 9 times in our efforts! We pick an intersting little Irish pub, head in and have a couple of drinks. At one point I wanted to have a Rye and Gingerale, and the waitress/bartender had never heard of Rye... what the hell?!!??!!? They had no Rye in this joint and had never heard of it... crazy! Oh well..

It was now 1130 pm and time to catch one of the last few trains back to the airport so we could get shuttled back to the hotel. We make it back in pretty good time and then it was off to bed. I'm writing this blog entry on Tuesday morning and we've just found out that instead of leaving tomorrow morning, we will be flying home tonight. We won't be getting back into Calgary til about 2am. Lovely. Not only that but we are going to have massive headwinds the whole way... yuck.

Well there you have it. My adventures in Chicago. This has been by far one of my most favorite destinations. This city rocks.

P.S. You can click on all of those pics to enlarge them.

In Chicago!

Made it to Chicago late Sunday night. We spent the past couple of nights in Penticton having a very chill weekend. Nothing too crazy, just a very relaxing time. After dropping off the Penticton people back in Calgary, we picked up our next set that we were to take to Chicago. A relatively nice flight out here. There were a few bumps along the way and we had a fairly good tailwind so we were able to make it direct to Chicago from Calgary in 4.5 hrs.

It was already dark here by the time we arrived, but as we flew the approach into the Midway Airport in Chicago we could clearly see downtown Chicago not too far away.

We're here until early Wednesday, so that will leave us some time to explore the city a little. And that's what on the agenda for tomorrow for sure. We'll be making our way downtown to see some of the sites.

We're staying in a very nice hotel near the airport.. a Holiday Inn Express, but it seems more like a Hilton. The rooms are huge with fancy everything. The bathroom is bigger than my room at home! I also have internet access so maybe I'll see some of you online, but don't hold your breath as I do plan to make the most out of my time here in Chicago. All expenses paid vacation pretty much for me!

6 Day Trip Approaching

Well it appears I'm slated on a 6 day trip that begins on Friday and returns home Wednesday.

Friday - Sunday afternoon I'm off to Penticton to spend some time there.

Sunday afternoon - Wednesday I'm then off to Chicago!

This should be an interesting trip as we charge around in our newest plane with all the gizmos and gadgets with the same set of people the entire time. Hopefully it will prove to be a good time.

Days off = booze

Simply put. Pilot's are pretty much alcoholics.. This is because we can't drink on so many occasions that when we can drink we feel the need to make up for lost time.

So.. I'm on days off and of course the first thing that happens at the beginning of our scheduled days off (3 days off every 12 days) is a visit to the booze store. So yesterday I hit up the superstore liqourstore.. yup.. you heard right.. thanks to privatized booze! Anywho... Crown Royal had a special where u got a free glass as well that had the logo of a CFL team. Much to my success the only glasses left were of BC Lions. Hey, works for me!

So the picture above is my prize... I'm already on glass 3 and it's 5pm on Saturday here.. nothing to do because the weather is so freaking miserable.. so I've been having a couple of drinks and surfin the net with tennis on in the background. A riveting 3 days this will be!

Downloading up a storm

Last night the laptop was buzzing away with 9 consecutive downloads.

On the hitlist right now:

The OC - The third season just started on Thursday so I was downloading that episode in HDTV Widescreen... ahh.. finally.. the OC is back! (My guilty pleasure)

The Office - NBC's Americanized version of this series that began in the UK.. I keep on hearing that it's good stuff, so I've got the first season downloading

Over There - This is a miniseries based on the Iraq war and the soldiers and stuff 'over there' I just realized that it had already started in the states so I have the first 7 episodes downloading...

So far only The OC and the last episode of Over There have finished downloading... the others may take some time. Ahh the internet.. what an invention! I rarely watch tv live anymore, I just download the higher resolution and widescreen versions off the internet and play them on my widescreen laptop!

Regina.. wow.. party town & "Are you good with kids?"

First off.. Regina was NOT a party town during our stay. Upon arriving into Regina last week and driving through some rougher areas of the town on our way to the airport, we quickly realized that this was going to be an interesting layover. Once checked into the hotel we KNEW it was going to be one heck of a layover. The hotel was packed. It was labour day weekend and so it was busy busy. The hotel was crazy: 2 weddings, kids running around the pool and hotel hallways and crazy parties.

We took a walk outside looking for a decent restaurant but after a 40 minute walk we came up with nothing. Back in the hotel now we walked into the completely empty hotel bar. We sat down and ordered some food off of the menu (it was actually pretty good) and had a couple of beers to help us forget the fact we were in Regina on a Friday night. After the beer and dinner we decided to temp fate and walked to the "club" next door to the hotel looking for a little Regina fun. When we walked in however, we discovered a completely empty bar/club except for one table of 'questionable' individuals... we promptly turned around and walked out of there as quickly as possible!

Ok, we now needed another drink. So back to the hotel bar, where we pulled up a couple of bar stools and the drinks started to flow again. After a couple of more drinks a few more people had since filtered into the bar, including an older asian guy who sat down next to us at the bar. We were rather friendly that night thanks to a few drinks and so we started to chat him up. He was from Houston Texas and was involved in the oil game. He was up in Regina for the Labour Day Classic football game which was the next day. Quite the character.. we chatted him up for a good hour I think. At one point he calls the bartender over and promptly exclaims "how 'bout we circle the wagons here!" The other pilot, myself and the bartender and I aren't quite sure what to make of it. After a few seconds of awkwardness we all realize he'd like to buy us another round of drinks! We graciously accepted, even though I had already cut myself off, I accepted another crown and coke thanks to the hospitality of this southern individual. It wasn't much longer and we got kicked out as the bar closed.

The next day we were supposed to end up in Edmonton for a night, but that flight was changed and we just ended up in Calgary for Saturday night. The next day it was off to Kamloops for a beautiful morning of flying.

My last flight since then was to Vancouver for a quick pickup on Tuesday. After loading up the bags of the family of 4 I returned into the lounge area to escort them to the aircraft. The mother and young boy were in the washroom and the father with baby girl was waiting for them as he noticed me walk into the lounge. He then asks me flat out "are you good with kids?" How the hell am I supposed to answer that question professionally? "Sure am!" is my quick reply. Great.. I knew what was coming. He walks over and asks if I would hold his child while he runs in and quickly uses the washroom. Holy pressure batman. So I gingerly pick up the baby girl and hold onto her as he runs to the washroom. I am now standing in the middle of this executive passenger lounge in full uniform holding a baby girl who hasn't quite figured out who the hell I am and I can see her looking straight into my soul with her big blue eyes. One of the receptionists even asked me "I didn't know that was in your job description!" The mother returns with younger boy from the washrooms and sees me holding her baby. She comes over to take back possession and the little girl nearly jumped out of my arms to get to mom. I quickly explained that her husband was using the facilities. Phewph... The flight home was great and uneventful. I even had a greaser of a landing. :)

So that's been my last few days. My buddy Mike a.k.a. "Crazy Mike" has been in town for a couple of days while his plane is having some upgrades installed on it here in Calgary. He flies for a medivac company in the bush in northern Manitoba. It's been great with him visiting and catching up on old college times.

Regina and Edmonton

Ooooooooo... such exotic locals! :)

I kid.. I kid. I'm happy to be flying... wherever the destination. Although there are a couple of trips to New York on the schedule that my name isn't next to. Ah well... next time.

So it's Regina for Saturday night and then Edmonton for Sunday night. Then off to Kamloops on Sunday morning and back to Calgary to finish off this little trip.

I'm quite fond of my schedule. It can be quite hectic at times, but it certainly isn't a 9-5 job. If I'm not flying, I'm on call. So I'm pretty much getting the best of all worlds. When I'm not doing what I love, I'm not doing anything else! A little win-win if you will. :)

Ticket renewed... what a day..

After a good hour of grueling interrogation on aircraft systems, company procedures and air regulations, I finally stepped into the aircraft.

Myself and another pilot were going to both be tested at the same time on a new procedure our company has recently been approved for (GPS approaches to airports). The examiner (a company pilot) would be in the back of the plane observing and telling us what to do for the testing. The plan was to go and have the other pilot do his flight test up in Red Deer, AB (20 min flight north of Calgary). After that we would land in Red Deer and I would then become the pilot flying and do the same procedures for the GPS approaches, and then I would continue with the rest of my recurrency training at the Red Deer airport and then transitioning back to Calgary.

Well holy hell. Bumpy as shit, bad weather in the area and a very busy airspace everywhere we went. It all amounted to a very stressful couple of hours, we were really sweated out during the testing, during my section especially because it was my yearly retraining. Imagine every possible thing that could go wrong on a flight, roll it all into one, and you've pretty much got what I went through. Multiple systems failures while attempting to execute tricky approaches to airports without the ability to look outside until the last couple of hundred feet.

In one scenario we attempted an approach to the Red Deer airport but upon reaching the lowest safe altitude the approach goes to (318 ft above the airport elevation) the examiner told us we had no visual contact and so we initiated a missed approach procedure. Simple enough procedure, where we abort the approach and climb away from the airport and go to a fix to either try again or head off to another airport. Well, as I was climbing away from the airport, the examiner reached forward and pulled the throttles back to idle and informed me that I just had a complete engine failure. Training kicks in and I cranked the aircraft back towards the airport while at the same time running through the emergency memorized checklist to properly set the aircraft up for an emergency landing with no engine. It was great to see that it all worked out as I was able to maneuver the aircraft back to the reciprocal runway at the airport successfully.

After finishing at Red Deer we head back to Calgary dodging growing thunderstorms and showers in the area, we were being vectored all around by the air traffic controllers because of a crazy amount of air traffic around Calgary. Then on the approach into Calgary I had all of my navigational systems failed on me except the very bare assed minimums to complete the approach.. a stressful event for sure. However, I must say, my landing back in Calgary was one of my best!

In any event, the flight test was over and we went back for a debriefing.

The end result (if you hadn't already figured it out by the title of this blog entry) is that I passed.

-GPS approach certification PASSED
-Company/Aircraft yearly certification PASSED
-Bi-Annual Instrument rating RENEWED (this was an added bonus, a very costly thing to get done on one's own.. we did enough training and flight testing that the examiner was able to also renew this... woo hoo!)

So.. there you have it... safe to fly the skies again. Legally that is... always safe... ;)

Now I'm absolutely exhausted... off to bed for me!

Time's running out on my ticket!

What's my ticket you might ask? My ticket is just simply my yearly currency for the type of aircraft I'm flying.

So as of September 1st I will no longer be current to legally fly the plane. It will take a flight test for me to continue to be current. Not really a problem, except that time is running out! The weather needs to be good so we can do some certain training items (steep turns, stalls, emergency maneuvers).

So, I'm tentatively scheduled tomorrow.. so lets hope it gets done!

If only you guys could see the training that goes into a pilot's recurrency and initial training on aircraft types. It should comfort ppl to know that they put the plane's completely thru its paces. To have the planes nearly falling out of the sky and sometimes nearly sideways just so they know what to expect in the event of a real emergency. Of course with most larger aircraft this is all done in a full motion simulator, otherwise it would be WAY too expensive to just take a 737 up to do some training. Whereas our Pilatus is very cost effective and we do all the training in the actual aircraft... which is usually lots of fun for us, but would likely scare the crap out of even the most seasoned flyer. :)