Poker updates

Well, it has come to my attention that I'm busier than I thought I would be and therefore not able to keep playing poker daily. So I will get rid of the poker tracker on the right side of the screen but will keep you all appraised as to my progress. I will play when I can and hope to keep the minimal profits in a continuous climb.

As per some stats, for the month of January I did net a total of $354.00 USD. This was over 25 days of play, which works out to $14.16 per day. Didn't quite maintain my average it would appear! Haha, oh well. Pretty close.

I have been playing in a few online tourney's though. My best success to date is recorded below. Click on the pics to enlarge.

Here is the screenshot of me making it to the final table of a 377 person tourney. I was pretty happy to be there, and had a bigger stack then at least 4 other people at the table with me. This was just a $5 event, so the payouts weren't that great, BUT when you get into it this far, the return is actually pretty decent. It was a turbo event, meaning that the blinds were raised very quickly at 5 min intervals. This forced a lot of action that had been benificial to me in the previous half hour of the game.



And it was bound to happen. I was fairly even stacked with another player on the table but the other two players had the most of the cash. I decided to make my move and only lost out due to a smaller kicker. It was OK. I figured I had gone about as far as I was going on this whirlwind ride. It was great fun and I ended up winning $114 USD. So not too bad for just under 2hrs worth of play.



So it doesn't happen to often and I was pretty proud of this. This all occured yesterday and today I decided to enter into a couple more. It was going great in all three of the events I entered. And in the first two I was out within the first hour when my best hands were rivered!!!! Oh it irked me so. But this is poker and I can't get mad at the situation, as I had rivered somebody on my way up to my fourth place finish yesterday. And had it not been for me screwing someone over, the bulk of this post would never have been written.

In the last game I was playing today for a solid 10 mins I was actually the lead chip holder and dominating like nobodies business. Then in 3 progressvily horrible hands I had my ass handed to me! But again.. ALL BAD BEATS! My full house was busted by a higher full house, my KK was busted by AA and my QQ was beat out by some punk who called my preflop massive raise with 67 offsuit and managed to get a straight on the turn after I pushed him all in off the flop when I tripped my Queens. But, I'm not mad because it's a low cost tourney and these turkeys are everywhere! Sometimes it's a turkeyshoot and it's great, but more often than not it feels as if the turkey's have revolted and come after you pecking you to death. Ok, a little odd comment I aggree.

Anyone else wish to share poker great and poker horrible stories?

Back from Sin City

Well.. what can I say. It was a good trip. We were in Vegas from Tuesday afternoon until Friday afternoon. We were extra lucky that we didn't get called back to do more flying. So we partied it up pretty good.

The first night we walked the strip and hit up a couple casino's for some drinks. The first place was Treasure Island and we had a good 5 or 6 drinks there will playing some slots. No luck on the slots but we got downright shitty off the drinks. We were staying in the Excalibur hotel which was at the other end of the strip. So as we walked back to the hotel we made stops in many other hotels and plunked a couple of bucks in the slots and made like bandits on the drinks. By 1am we were back in our hotel and totally gooned. I passed out on my bed and awoke again at 5am with very sore eyes as I forgot to take my contacts out. Ouch, that was painful.

The next day we slept in and then met for lunch around 1pm. We walked more of the strip but we were quite tired of all the walking so we got some bus passes that were good for 24hrs so we could go up and down the strip and not hurt so much. It really is quite a walk. That day we toured around more hotels, including the Wynn which is a really really nice new hotel. We also checked out that mall that Nat was so quick to point out as a tourist trap :) It's okay though, I didn't buy anything. We decided we wanted to sit down on a cheap blackjack game. Most of the casinos just have 10 dollar blackjack and it's hard to find the 5 dollar blackjack except for in some of the older ones. Success, we found what we were looking for in the Barbary Coast Casino. It was an older casino but was full of life. It was smaller and didn't have as much "bling" as the bigger casinos but that was also a great attribute. The drink girls came by every 5 mins and once again, we capitalized. We got sloshed again while playing blackjack and we were doing pretty good. Not winning lots, but not losing much either. With all the free drinks we were having we were definatly ahead. We joked it up with all the other players at the table as well, it was great fun. Even the dealers were having a good time and the pit boss would come up every once and a while and join in on the fun.

Well we played for a LONG time. After about 5 hrs of playing there I started chatting up the pit boss for some free stuff! I don't know what came over me, but I have a feeling it had something to do with the alcohol flowing through my blood. He asked if we had "comp cards" which are those credit card things that you can get to track your play while you're at the casino and sometimes you'll qualify for some free stuff or coupons off of meals and things like this. Well we said we didn't have any comp cards so he asked for our licenses. I wasn't quite sure what the hell he was talking about but the other pilot Shaun did and he threw his drivers license at the pit boss and I followed suit.

Then about 10 mins later Mark the pit boss returned and handed us each a credit card looking piece of plastic with our names on it and that of the casino. Holy cow, now we've been tagged! Well after another few mins I again started talking to Mark about some comps and he asked if we were hungry, I replied "of course!" So he actually got us a couple of free full course dinners at their restaurant! A nice big steak dinner with soup, baked potato, hot dinner rolls.. the full works. An easy $20 dollar meal for free! Woo hoo! This Vegas trip was turning out to be not too shabby!

We headed back to our hotel rooms to regroup and have a couple more drinks (we brought some booze back from our plane stock too.. shhh..). We then agreed to head out and check out the club scene in Vegas. It was now already past midnight but our sense and reasoning was a little sub par now. We started the night by going across the street to the MGM Grand and waited in line for their big club "Studio 54". It was pretty crazy in there, multiple levels with cirque du soliel type acrobatics going on in the middle of the dance floor hanging from the ceiling. Confetti every once and a while and go go dancers. There really weren't many girls there though so we decided to split.

Next stop after consulting a cabbie on the best place to party that night was Treasure Island's "Tangerine". Now this place was happening. We still had to wait in line at freaking 2:30am because it was so busy inside. We chatted up the people in front of us and turns out the young couple was from Edmonton. After a little more talk we found out they had some free passes to get in without cover. They had an extra pass that was good for 2 free covers and so they gave us one. Once inside we returned the favor by buying them drinks. Wow, a pretty nice club. It was packed to the max and had many a hot girl dancing around. They had a nice patio area too that overlooked the strip, so it was nice to get out there for some air. We partied it up for a couple hours and then realized it was time to split. We headed back to the Barbary Coast to try out their $3.45 breakfast special. It was good! We took a cab back to the hotel and we were back in the hotel room around 5am. Now that was a night of partying.

The next day was much more relaxing. We checked out some more sights and the other pilot and I split up for a while. I took this opportunity to go and check out some poker! You knew it was coming at some point. How could I go to Vegas and not play poker!? I sat in on the Excalibur's 2/4 limit hold em game. My very first 2 hands each time I had pocket 8's and won both pots. I then played rather tight over the next 40mins of play but every hand I went in on, I won! In less than an hour I had made $110! That filtered down to $76 when my table split up and I then had to wait 20 mins for a spot on the other table to open up. I played for another hour and was down to a profit of $30 at one point, but eventually made it back up to $80 and called it done. It was great fun. The play was easy and I'm sure I could make good money if I lived in Vegas and just went and prayed on all the inexperienced players that sit down while they're there.

While waiting for Shaun to meet up afterwards I went and played some slots, I was down about $20 bucks when I hit a mini jackpot and made a cool $40 bucks in one pull of the machine. So I cashed out. Not too shabby! I met up with Shaun and we headed back to the Barbary Coast for more Blackjack. But it was incredibly busy, so it took a while to find a seat. We both sat down and Shaun ended up loosing some cash while I just broke even after a good 2.5hrs of play. We were both pretty hungry at this point and tried to get another steak dinner but it was too busy to even try. So we walked down the strip and eventually went to the famous "Fatburger" for a great burger at 1am. That place was packed, it took 20mins to just get our food. Afterwards it was back to the hotel for our last nights sleep in Sin City.

The next day was really mellow as we had lunch and pretty much just got ready to head back home at 3pm. We arrived early at the airport and it was sooooooooo busy. All the private jets and turboprops coming in for Superbowl Sunday. Holy cow it was madness. We got the heck out of there, flew right over the strip on our way out and made it back into Alberta late last night.

Now I'm back at home going through Vegas withdrawl. Not a shabby way to spend 3 days!

Final results:

Money in pocket going to Vegas: $360 USD

Blackjack Profits: $ 50 USD
Poker Profits: $ 80 USD
Slot Profits: $ 40 USD

Money in pocket upon return: $385 USD

Money saved on free drinks/comps: PRICELESS!!!

Haha, it was a good trip. Not to mention I also get my food allowance from work, so it was definatly a money making trip. Can't wait for the next one!

Viva Las Vegas!

Well, it was bound to happen again. Today I was in some recurrent company training classes and got an email from another pilot.

It simply read "VEGAS!"

Right then and there I knew that I had a trip to Vegas with him in the very near future. Little did I know it would be tomorrow! So yup, off to Vegas for a 3 night layover beginning Tuesday night and I'll be back in Calgary late Friday night. Woo hoo.

Time to party it up in Sin City. Hopefully we don't get called back for other trips 'cause it's looking to be a very nice few days with temps in the low 20's during the day! Current weather right now in Calgary.. snowing like a banshee! So I'll be happy to get out of the white stuff and into some nice desert heat (although it does cool off quite quickly in the evenings to around 5 degrees).

So yeah, c'ya later!

Pucker factor 10

And of course by puker factor 10 I'm referring to a scenario in which my ass is puckered to a very high degree. Stop trying to visualize.

Ok, so a couple of days ago while I'm in Portland OR I get my trip information for a flight on the 27th, and the only info on the airport I had at that point was it was to the CYXT airport. I mistook this initially for the Medicine Hat AB airport which has the identifier CYXH. CYXT is Terrace BC.

What's so special about Terrace? Well it's located in a tight box canyon valley on the west coast of BC. And it is easily one of the most difficult and unforgiving instrument approaches in Canada. Remember me talking about that approach I did around New Years into Kenora? Well that was a tricky approach because the weather was so bad. But it wasn't nearly as challenging as this one. Sure Kenora is difficult, but you just have to be on the ball. With Terrace, you have to make sure everything is set up properly or quite simply - you die.

Yes, you read correctly. Death. The appraoch into Terrace has claimed many aircraft and many lives. Some of you might recall a recent accident in Terrace where an MU-2 cargo aircraft operated by Navair crashed there shortly after take off last month. So what makes this airport so difficult? Well I already mentioned the unforgiving terrain in the area, and that combined with unforgiving weather and forces of nature make this approach a 10 on the pucker factor.

Click on this picture to see the full instrument approach procedure into Terrace. This is what we use to set up the aircraft's instruments properly to follow the approach in safely. You'll notice contour lines of all the peaks in the area and altitudes listed for "safe operations" within the area. I'll just say this, they're extremely high because of all the high terrain. The weather was bad with the cloud ceilings around 1000' above sea level, with icing conditions in the clouds and it was getting dark. Also, because the temperature was so close to zero we have to add extra altitude to the published information to allow for cold temperature corrections to our altitude sensing equipment in the plane. That by itself is a killing factor with many aircraft crashing into terrain because they did not adequtely adjust their altitdues to account for the cold temperature factors.



We approached from the east and intercepted the approach at 12,000 feet over the waypoint "DAVED", then flew down a glideslope and localizer right down to the airport. It is quite nerve racking when you're flying into the valley, without seeing anything around you but snow and precipitation being lit up by the aircraft's landing lights. Also knowing that terrain is all around you!

We land safely and offload our passengers. I then proceeded to "borrow" Air Canada's baggage cart to take all the luggage into the main terminal for our passengers. When doing this unfortunately we slightly "broke" said baggage cart when we accidently rammed it into a giant stuffed polar bear in the main lobby! It wasn't all my fault, it was a tight fit throught the terminal doors and my spotter on one side wasn't quite paying enough attention (read: drunk off his ass) and neglected to see the huge polar bear incased in a glass case infront of us. Well, we only slightly moved the polar bear display, but the top part of the baggage cart broke off... it appeared however it wasn't the first time it had happened by some duct tape remenants on it. So I didn't feel too bad. :)

Now we had to get the heck out of this valley and back up to a nice safe altitdue to get home. So the departure procedure is quite complicated but is essentially the reverse of how we landed. This time it was dark and snowing quite heavily. So the second we took off we no longer had any reference to the outside world and back to relying 100% on our instruments. I climbed that machine as fast as it was go up without stalling out of the sky so we could gain the required altitude as quickly as possible. Pucker factor 10 was finally reduced as we climbed through 12,000 feet and I knew we were clear of all the peaks. The flight home was uneventful and we took advantage of some very nice tailwinds at our cruising altitude of 27,000 feet and made it back in record time.

So if there are any questions on that instrument approach procedure just let me know, I'd be happy to answer any questions and maybe help shed some light on the whole subject for anyone that would like to understand it more.

Poker.. uggh...

If you've been keeping track of my "Poker Tracker" on the right side of the screen you might have noticed it has frozen at $314.00 for a couple of days. This is because I've hit a wall it seems.

I can't break it. I can't make any more than a couple of dollars, or nothing at all. I've been down and up and it's become quite painful and taking way too long to attempt to reach my goal of $15 USD per day. This was no problem for the first half of the month, things were going swimmingly. So I might have to re-evaluate. It will be too much work to continue to try this. I will keep going until I have a full months worth of results. Then I'll see how much effort was required to make that $$$.

It was a great idea, that likely will work for the most part. But these past couple of days have not been great. I have to walk away from the tables today as I've gotten too frustated with bad beats and stupid players. Bah!

Flames

As most of you know I'm still an avid Canucks fan, so don't get the wrong impression that I'm starting a blog with the title of "Flames".

I was waiting to go on a flight a couple of days ago and standing in the passenger lounge of our executive terminal when all of these guys in suits and some with toques and hats on kept walking through. I looked outside and saw a chartered Air Canada airbus parked outside and they were all walking up and boarding. It took a little while but we finally figured out that it was the entire Calgary Flames team getting ready to head up to Edmonton for the game they played there last night.

I only recognized one player and he was the last to board - Jerome Iginla. Pretty recognizable. Other people in the lobby where talking to them as they walked past, "good luck guys" and one guy shouted out "hey Jerome!" to which he did say "hey" back.

Too bad it wasn't the 'nucks!

24 - Jack Bauer is back!

So after watching the season opener for the Fox show "24" I must say... "WOW".

I have been a fan of the show in the past and tried to keep up with the storylines as much as possible. That will be no different for the now 5th season of 24. It started with a bang and keeps on going.

I've always referred to this show series as mirco movies, they've got it all in each episode. This season looks to be the best as they've really hit it off with a punch.

I prefer to download the episodes after they've aired. That way I can either watch them on my laptop in widescreen HD or on my roomates tv, which has all the inputs and a nice bose sound system that really brings out the best in the show... something that my standard cable and TV just can't quite do. Although it took me a long time to download these first few episodes that they've just aired. Sounds like Shaw is filtering out bit torrents more aggressively here in Calgary now. Grrrrrr...

So, any other 24 watchers out there?

Poker Tracker

Well, it's been a while since I've posted on anything poker related. Mainly because I have not been playing much and therefore there hasn't been much to report on. I have not been playing at the higher stakes like I was last year as I found the fluctuations were beginning to be too extreme. So I took my profits and ran! Well, not quite.

I withdrew most of the money out of my poker account into a US account for travel into the states and also for some US investing. I left some in my online poker account though because I wanted to keep the poker going, but at much smaller limits. I haven't found this to be anything profitable, but definatly entertaining.

Earlier this month I decided to start out on a theory after playing a few heads up winner take all tourneys. For a very small risk of $5.25 per player where $5 goes into the prize pot and the $.25 goes to the house. So if you win, you take home $10 or after you factor in the $.25 and your buy in, it's a $4.75 profit. I found that I would win far more than I would lose. With this information I decided to try a little experiment. Worst case the system would fail and I'd be out a couple of dollars, best case scenario is that I'd have a constant stream of income (albeit quite small, but free money nonetheless).

My theory is this, I play enough of these $5.25 games (each game can take anywhere from a couple minutes to as long as 15 or 20 in extreme cases - I'd say 5 mins on average) to take in at least $15 per day. Simply play everyday (if possible) and it should equal roughly $100US per week, $400US per month and $4,800 per year. Little bits add up! After a little while I can quite simply also increase the limits to the $10.50 games and then take all those numbers and double 'em.

So I'm right on track now after 9 days of making on average of $15/day. You can keep track of how my poker system works or fails just above the destination tracker to the right. =============>>>>>>

The hardest thing to do is stop after making the $15, but for my experiment I can't get greedy... need to stay consistant! I recommend this system to anyone and everyone! I call it little risk with nearly guaranteed results.. well.. in my case at least.. "your results may vary!" ...had to throw in the disclaimer there. ;)

Frequent Flyer Miles

If only I could get some sort of Frequent Flyer Miles while working. Unfortunately that is not the case. But the other day I was updating my flying hours and statistics. Since working for AirSprint I have accumulated approx 241,000kms while flying all over North America - from the Arctic Circle Down to Los Cabos, over to Florida and up to Ottawa.

Turns out that stastically speaking, I've flown around the world an equivilant of 6 times exactly! Cool eh?

Everying in the career of a pilot is based off of their flight experience. So the amount of hours in the airplane is what will determine your progression in the industry. And more importantly it's the type of flying accumulated in different aircraft, different types of flying and different locations.

Here are some rough figures to give you an idea of various stages of hour accumulation and what they're good for.

Private Pilot's License - 55 hrs
Commercial Pilot's License - 200 hrs
Airline Transport Pilot's License - 1500 hrs

Those are just the main milestones, each requiring more specific requirements and various other additional ratings.

I'm currently floating around 1300 hrs, 500 of which has been accumulated here at AirSprint. The most a pilot can legally fly in one year is 1200 hrs, but within my company pilots tend to fly around 500-700hrs a year. A career pilot can expect to end their careers with around 20-25,000hrs. So.. I'm on my way!

I'm in trouble

No I haven't gotten some girl knocked up... err.. hope not at least! ;)

I took the WRX in for the 42,000km scheduled maintenance and I wanted to check out the new 2006 models because they've done quite a bit of changes to it, the most noticeably being the new improved 2.5L engine as opposed to the 2.0L engine in my WRX. This helps to get rid of the horrible turbo lag that my car has (takes time for the turbo to spool up leaving a dead band of power when you first start out).

Well.. it took all of 2 mins on a test drive for me to realize how smooth and great this new engine is. So I say again - I'm in trouble!

I even went as far as to see how much my WRX would get for a trade-in and it essentially would be 2 years more of car payments and that would take care of the difference and I'd have a brand new car. My current car payments are getting close to being finished.. So I like the idea of having no more car payments... but I also like the idea of having a brand new WRX that has the whole turbo lag thing licked.

Woe is me.

SNL - "Lazy Sunday" skit

I laughed and laughed and laughed. Check out this "digital short" video that Saturday Night Live did a couple of weeks ago. This has got to be some of the funniest stuff that has been on SNL in the past decade!

SNL - "Lazy Sunday" Click me

Blog format updated

I wanted to change the format of the blog a bit. What do you guys think?

Happy New Year!

Holy cow, it's been a while since I last posted. Quite a few events have transpired since my last post and I figure I'd better get to it and place the updates into word format below!

The holidays were great. At 4:30am on December 23rd I awoke and got dressed in half zombie like fashion. I banged on the door of my roommate who the day before had agreed to take me to the airport prior to finding out what time my flight was.. sucker! So I arrive at the airport just before 5am for my 6am flight to Vancouver. The luggage check in went smoothly, but then I turned the corner to go through security. It was right then and there that I realized how much private travel can reduce one's stress in life. A lineup like nothing I'd seen before. It must have had a couple hundred people waiting and I ran to the end to start the process.

After a few minutes I realized that I was likely screwed and not going to make my flight. And then it happened, a holiday time miracle, gate agents came racing down the line asking if anyone was on a 6am flight. I immediately breathed a sigh of relief and started following the woman as she was going to wisk me and the other poor unfortunates to the front of the line to cut infront of all the other individuals who had shown up VERY early for their 7, 8 and even 9am flights! Yeesh!

So I get through security (us pilots use our security passes to help speed along the process.. when emptying pockets we just convieniently put them in our trays making sure the security people notice, that gives us a lot more credibility going through that line and less likely to be mistaken for the next Osama)

I walk swiftly all the way through the terminal and just barely make it on board the aircraft. I was crammed in the middle seat and the guy next to me had a baby, so it was a not so pleasant experience... the whole while I was once again thinking to myself how nice private travel is.

In Vancouver finally and I get picked up by my dad in the SMART car. Yup, in case some of you didn't know, my folks have a SMART car. Crazy eh?

I get home and quickly have a nap. Ahhh.. relaxing. My time at home is spent visiting friends and family. We had our big X-mas dinner on the night of the 24th because my sister had to work X-mas night. That was good, just like old times. I had a great time. I also managed to score another X-mas miracle through work by requesting an extra day off (Boxing Day) in order to fly home on one of our Jets that just happened to be heading back to Calgary from Vancouver empty that day! And success I was able to hop aboard! 2 other employees had the exact same idea and so we were all on board the plane with some family of one of the other pilots. Wow... now that is the way to travel! That jet is one smooth machine. We were back in Calgary in no time.

The next few days were spent flying to various places like Grande Prairie and Winnipeg. I was supposed to spend New Years in Ontario again like last year, but the flights all got switched around. I managed to avoid that gong show this year thankfully. For those of you keeping count that's 3 holiday miracles! :)

New Years was spent modestly at home with some beer and my roommate and one of his friends. Nothing too big. Nice and quiet, with copious amounts of booze consumed.

Yesterday I was in Ontario briefly. I did the pick-up for those folks that spent New Years in Kenora, ON just like last year. But this year the weather was looking to be something horrible!! All out in that area was forecasted crap and the weather we received for the Kenora airport as we approached was no good at all. The weather was calling for 300' cloud bases with remarks of "ragged" which means that it could be 200' in some areas and 400' in others. The best instrument approach we could conduct to get into the Kenora airport gets us down to 308' above the ground. You do the math, it's not looking good.

Well I'll tell you, that was some of the most challenging flying I've had to do in my entire career. Because the weather was so bad, our company procedures call for us to conduct a "Pilot Monitored Approach - PMA". This calls for the first officer (me) to fly the entire approach while the captain's only responsibility is to be looking outside of the aircraft towards where the runway should be and if he receives enough visual cues to safely land the airplane he then takes control of the aircraft and finishes the landing. This is because it would take too long for me to readjust my sights outside of the airplane instead of inside looking at all the instruments and that split second of adjustment could mean we would miss the runway and have to abort the landing.

So at exactly 0.5 miles from the airport and skimming the tree tops at 308' we found the runway and safely landed. Now that's flying! We certainly made our money on that leg. We then flew to Winnipeg to pick up one more person and the weather was just as bad there, but Winnipeg has a better instrument approach there and it's not as complicated as the "non-precision approach" we had just flown into Kenora. We then flew all the way home to Calgary after that where the weather was much nicer. It was quite a turbulent flight however due to the fact we were flying right next to the jet stream and the difference in the wind strength and direction when so close to it causes a lot of turbulence.

As for today, pretty laid back and relaxed. I went out in search of some specific synthetic oil for the WRX today but everywhere was either sold out or no longer caring it!? I was pretty shocked. The car goes in for service on Thursday so I've got one more day to try and track down some good oil for it.

And there you have it. A bit of updating if you were able to read through it all!

My company... AirSprint Inc.

Well most of you know the company I work for. It's Canada's largest fractional ownership airline. We also do executive charters and things of that nature. But our main business is in selling "fractions" of an airplane to someone who can then use it like a time share. There is an initial buy in cost, then monthly costs and hourly costs depending upon your usage. We have 2 main aircraft that we use to make these things happen. The aircraft which I fly is the Pilatus PC-12, and we also operate the Cessna Citation Excel bizjet. So people buy fractions of these airplanes and are allotted so many hours a year to use them. Great for business write-offs and people with lots of money.

Pilatus PC-12 more info
Cost: $6,000,000 CDN
Seating: 7 or 6 passenger executive design with fully enclosed lav
Engine: Single engine Pratt and Whitney Turbo-prop (PT6-67B) produces 1200 SHP
Cruise info: 260knots (530km/hr) at 28,000ft

Cessna Citation Excel more info
Cost: $17,500,000 CDN
Seating: 9 passenger executive design with fully enclosed lav
Engine: 2 Pratt and Whitney turbofans (PW-545A) producing 3804lbs thrust each
Cruise info: 430knots (795km/hr) at 35,000ft but can and does go as high as 45,000ft!

So those are our main aircraft that we operate. This company is growing quite rapidly, a heck of a lot since I've been employed here. The prospects for long term employment are also great at the rate things are going. We operate 10 Pilatus PC-12's and 3 Citation Excels across Canada. This number will just continue to grow and grow. All the machines come to us brand new and maintained very nicely. We have future plans to operate bigger jets to allow our clients international travel. Pretty soon no place will be unreachable by one of our aircraft. That will be an exciting time for this company when we start to travel across the oceans and that time is not far off by any means!

In January we are expecting the delivery of a brand spanking new Learjet 40 more info. We will be managing it for a couple of our clients who have gone in together to purchase the aircraft.

We are also about to move into brand new facilities here in Calgary. We'll have our own set of hangars for the aircraft and a reception/lounge area for all of passengers when they arrive. The upstairs is also filled with office space for management and our flight coordination department, and there will also be some facilities for pilots to sit back and relax in as well. We're all looking forward to moving in as it is a bit behind schedule and we're currently operating out of temporary office space in our old facilities... not so fun.

So yeah, big things are on the horizon here at AirSprint Inc. It is certainly becoming the place where someone can be in my position and make continually progression right up the aircraft ladder to international flying. So who knows, I might stick around longer with AirSprint than I had originally thought. It's exciting to see the potential this business has. And the best part of it is the security. Our clients own the aircraft and we operate them for them. So there's always work. Not like an airline that needs to have people fly, we are in no trouble if our clients don't fly... but of course we do much better when they do, and of course it makes sense for them to use what they're ultimately paying for anyways!

So there you have it. A little insight into my company. Our website is AirSprint Inc.. So take a further look if it interests you. Post any questions you have, and if it's something along the lines of how much to charter us from Vancouver to Calgary and return... you're looking at roughly >$6,000CDN! We aren't cheap, but we provide the best service out there!

Home for the Holidays

well.. for the most part.

Just a reminder to all that I will be coming home and spending December 23rd to 25th in Vancouver on my scheduled days off. So I'll hopefully get to see some of you!

Other than that... not much to report. Still in a bit of a slow slump here at work. I did have one flight to Regina on Sunday night, but that was a quick drop off and before that I hadn't flown for a week. Well it's Tuesday night right now and I don't have anything on the books at all coming up. I do see a couple of flights, one to Texas and one to Arizona that haven't been crewed yet. So I'm hopefully I'll get to see one of those sunny and warm destinations.

Well that's all for now!