Couple pics

My Dad just emailed me some pics of when he came out here this past week. Here are a couple of shots he took on the flight over where he got to live it up in luxury on an empty repositioning leg from Vancouver to Calgary.

Leaving Vancouver climbing out:

Another climb out shot by Pitt Meadows:

Phil and I in cruise:

My Dad at the controls! Eek!! Haha - the autopilot was on, don't worry! :)

So where's Phil?? Hard at work of course... and that's an Orange Juice he's drinking if you were wondering. Haha:


So yeah, it worked out great that he was able to quickly hop on the flight. He really enjoyed himself. I even let him hit some buttons on the autopilot after our course changed while heading towards Calgary.

Back home and burnt... with a bit of news

Well.. I guess I'll start off with the news. It was our last day in Scottsdale and the other pilot and I had just finished eating at Earls on the patio in the gorgeous Arizona night warmth when my phone rang. It was my immediate boss. A couple of scenarios rushed through my head. 1. I was fired. :) 2. I did something really stupid. Or 3. It was to be good news.

It was 3. I was offered the position on the Jet (Citation Excel) and after a couple of minutes confirming some details in that regard, I accepted! So, this summer I will be going on a 2 week course down in Texas somewhere to be trained up on the plane. All of the flying is done in full motion simulators and even the tests and exams are done this way. Once that's completed I will be licensed to fly the plane and can officially begin flying it with AirSprint.

So yeah, should be great. Good plane, gets me all sorts of good experience, great destinations (read - more Mexico, Arizona and even further south trips). It also is a decent pay raise, but it also locks me into the company for 2 years on a "training bond" which is simply an agreement between me and the company that if I leave before those 2 years are up, I'll owe whatever is leftover for the cost of the training. Which is UBER expensive. But I don't foresee leaving anytime soon.

So yah, that's the good news! And now onto the layover! We spent an awesome 4 nights there. The flight down sucked though, we were bucking headwinds and turbulence in and out of the tops of some nasty clouds the whole time. Not a very pleasant flight by anymeans. And a windstorm had been developing in Phoenix that day and so the descent into Scottsdale was pretty wild. A bit of a dust storm even picked up a little bit later and left the plane covered in a thin layer of dust and crap when we returned back to the airport on our departure date.

We had a rental car and a good hotel, and the only day that was bad weather was the first day. And that was only because it was windy. The temps were great hovering just below 30 degrees celsius in the day and then a very nice 22-25 degrees in the evening. We toured around quite a bit. Did the whole touristy thing in and around Phoenix. We went out to a couple of parks on the outskirkts of town and really got into the desert and did some hiking on some neat trails. Lots of Cacti and cool desert landscape.

We listened to a Latin vibe music station down there that was really quite good! It had a lot of great Latin beats in both English and Spanish. The new Shakira song (Hips don't lie) was always playing and slowly developed into the anthem for our trip. It would come on the radio and we'd turn up the volume and groove out to the tunes.

All in all this was a great trip, mainly because we had the ability to drive around and check things out and weren't stuck to walking to places just around the hotel. I finished reading The Da Vinci Code which was good, and we also spent some time just chilling outside by the pool. Now I'm on days off and my Dad is in town visiting. How'd he get here? Haha, he hitched a ride on his very own private aircraft. :)

The people we flew back from Scottsdale were going to Vancouver, so we dropped them there and we were to reposition back to Calgary empty. So I made some arrangements and my Dad was able to fly back with us. My Mom was not as willing, as she HATES flying and so she stayed at home. But yeah, so my Dad hoped on board and after we got into cruise the other pilot went back and chilled out in the back of the plane and my dad came up and sat in the cockpit with me for the majority of the flight up until about 2 mins before descending into Calgary. He even got to input a bunch of the waypoints into the GPS and select the autopilot to fly them. It was also a great flight back up all the way from Scottsdale. No clouds to be found except over Vancouver. We even flew right over Las Vegas on our way back and had a clear view of the strip. A much more pleasant experience than our trip down. And the flight into Calgary was great too, a nice view of all the mountain ranges which my Dad enjoyed seeing from a different perspective.

Well, off to a family get together. See the relatives that I haven't even seen since I've been in Calgary all this time. No excuses now!

More desert heat coming!

But first I have to sit through a lot of rain! I'm in Vancouver right now. Just had a nice home cooked meal (my dad's taking a bunch of Indian food cooking classes) so that was good. I'm watching the Canucks game right now on the big screen while checking weather for tomorrow's flight.

We're just here for a quick stop overnight and then take off for Scottsdale Arizona tomorrow morning. Where I'll be spending 4 glorious nights at a great hotel by the looks of it. We'll be living it up in style and also in 25-30 degree celsius heat! Can't wait to finish reading The Da Vinci Code poolside over the next couple of days. :)

New Destinations finally

Back from my 3 day stint, which finally included some destinations that I haven't been to before. It's getting harder and harder to go to places that I haven't already been to.

Friday started with a hop over to Vancouver for a drop off and then we headed to Edmonton for the night. The next morning, bright and early, we departed for Bandon Oregon (just south of North Bend). A very famous golf course is down there and while I've flown into North Bend before, I hadn't flown to Bandon before. It was just a small little airport 20 miles south of North Bend. We did have to make a customs and fuel stop in Spokane first though.

The guys we took down were obviously going down to golf and entertain. They brought quite a haul of booze with them as well. We weren't even 30mins into the flight when the other pilot and I looked at each other as we recognized a very familiar smell wafting up from the back. They were having Bailey's in their coffee at 7:45am! Haha, whatever floats their boat I guess.

Approaching the Oregon coast the weather was a little... turbulent. Low clouds and good winds off the water proved to be as ugly as they looked. The last 10 mins of the flight we were getting bounced around all over the place. After dropping off the folks we needed fuel for our next trip, but the tiny little airport in Bandon didn't offer jet fuel, so we needed to do the quick little 10 min flight up the coast to North Bend. We buckled up tight anticipating the bumpy ride down the coast low level below the clouds. It was uber bumpy and actually got me a little nauseated, enough that I didn't eat anything for the next 3 hrs!

Full of fuel we departed empty for Scottsdale Arizona! Woo hoo, warm desert weather! Somewhere over the middle of Nevada the cloud layers below disappeared and we had good views of the landscape below us the entire flight. It was a 3.5 hr flight and so we each spent over an hour in the back of the plane relaxing. :) Ahh the perks of empty flying. Man, it really is the way to travel! I was all stretched out and had my laptop going, watching some episodes of the Trailer Park Boys and also doing a Sudoku puzzle from one of the papers in the back. We flew directly over Las Vegas and got a good view of it. I had reception on my blackberry and fired off an email to another crew that was spending the weekend there. I told them to "look up!" and their reply was "do a barrel roll!" Haha, I had a good laugh.

It was 30 degrees when we landed in Arizona and was just what the doctor ordered. We took our rental car and headed to the hotel, where we went straight to the pool and just lounged out and got some sun. A nice meal at a local restaurant and then back to the hotel room for some Zzzz's.

It was already 14 degrees in the morning when we woke up to a beautiful Arizona day. Just as we're about to leave the airport we get word that our passengers are already enroute the airport and that they'll have "lots of bags". Well they actually beat us to the airport and holy cow they weren't kidding. The 3 passengers completely filled the plane with luggage and various goodies. They were moving back to Kelowna for the summer months (they have a winter home in Arizona). It all fit, amazingly, and we were out of there and headed direct the BC interior.

A quick drop off and we were off to Vancouver. After a little wait we were off to Edmonton for a drop off and then to Red Deer (just north of Calgary). The flying day had now hit a whopping 15hrs of duty! Now in Red Deer we left the plane for another crew who were taking it out of there really early in the morning. We took the rental car they had used and drove the hour home to Calgary. It was one heck of a long day, finally finishing about 17hrs after departing the hotel room in Scottsdale.

A good set of days, some pretty decent flying and new locations to add to the destination tracker.

Brushing off the shoulder bars

A flight! Finally a flight! Who knows if I still remember how to fly. :)

Got a three day stint starting tomorrow. Off to Vancouver for a drop off then a night in Edmonton. Saturday I'm off to North Bend Oregon and then we go down to Scottsdale Arizona (Phoenix pretty much). Sunday we go Scottsdale to Kelowna to Vancouver to Edmonton and end in Red Deer which is just north of Calgary. We leave the plane there and take a rental car (1hr drive) back to Calgary. As another crew will be spending the night in Red Deer and taking the plane on a super early flight at 4:30am Monday.

So yeah, will be great! Originally was supposed to have a night in Vancouver but that got changed. Oh well, just happy to be flying again. Today is day 18 of zero work. Hopefully this set of days available will be more productive!

General Updates

Well I've got a few things to report on, so I'll just squish 'em all into one blog entry and call it good. :)

Apache: The white Terror-ier

Some not so great news came in email format from the homefront the other day. Apache, the family Jack Russell Terrier wasn't feeling so hot. He's getting on in his years, but you wouldn't really know it by seeing him. He's still got quite the spark in him and acts like a puppy all the time. Well, it would appear this has caught up with him. He had developed some pain and the inability to jump up on furniture or even negotiate the stairs. So off to the vet, and after some lengthy tests it was quite evident that he has some pretty bad back problems. He has a compressed disc in his back which has been causing him all the pain.

The good news however, other than this, he's in crazy good health. Like stupid crazy good. :) I attribute this to the fact that since my parents retirement a couple years ago, he gets many long walks and lots of play and attention. I recall coming home at one point from Calgary and feeling him and exclaiming "he's all muscular!" And he was, he's very fit and all the tests proved that as well. Not even any arthritis, which we had all expected.

Anyways, so he's on some medication and initially this didn't do a whole lot. He was not a happy camper and was still in considerable pain. They didn't want to put him on steroids, because he is an older dog and therefore his liver isn't likely operating at 100%. But upon a second visit to the vet, they decided the liver was secondary seeing he was in so much pain.

Another email arrived with the latest status report, 20hrs after the vet visit. A new dog! - it rejoiced. He was feeling much better and able to walk around quite easily. So hopefully this added boost will help him recover a bit from his back problems. If necessary however, there is likely to be a visit to the doggy chiropractor and even possibly surgery. It's actually quite coincidental, my sister has had the exact same problem a few years ago and underwent back surgery to fix her up.

So hopefully he's gonna pull through all of this. He's on all sorts of drugs right now, but still quite "Apache-like". The next few weeks will tell.

Poker

I continue to play in feeder tourney's and today got so close to a seat I could taste it. After a couple of hours of play I was headsup for the only entry chip available. I had about 1/3 the chip stack of my opponent who had dominated the entire final table. I was fighting back quite nicely. Then the fateful hand. I'm dealt JJ and he is first to act and does his usual raise. I just go full all in and he calls without hesitation. His had is AJ offsuit. I'm pretty ecstatic as only an Ace or some lucky card combinations is gonna stop me from doubling up and taking the lead. The flop had an Ace. And my miracle Jack never came to save me. Dang! So close.

Other than that, I've been playing in other little heads up games and small 10 seater tourneys to keep my poker account growing and to also help pay for all the entry fees into all the feeder events I've been entering.

Car Stuff!

It's been a while since I've done anything with my car. And the good weather we've been having in Calgary finally meant I could go out and at least clean and wash it. That felt good. One thing that has been irking me for quite some time is the Boost gauge that I have mounted on my dash. It was originally setup using doublesided tape, but after a couple of summers in the hot hot sun, it had given way. So last summer I went and re-did the tape. But it didn't last too long. So for the entire winter I've had my Boost gauge just more or less hanging by it's wires next to my drivers side airvent.

Today I decided it was time to fix this problem. I did the same double taping but this time I'm applying pressure for a greater period of time so the glue on the tape really has some time to make a good bond. Here's my method of vice clamps, pieces of wood and even my leatherman being used to apply even pressure on the base of the gauge mount.



Hopefully this time it holds! I'll release the clamps later today or tomorrow, as the car isn't quite drivable with that all in place.

Also, I've added a very large device to the trunk of my car. My roommate Mike used to have a subwoofer/amp in his old car but had taken it out. His new car that he's getting (the new Honda Civic Si) will already have a factory sub so he asked if I wanted to put his old sub in my car. Hell yeah!

What should have taken maybe 2 hrs, took us pretty close to five freaking hours! Haha, the interior of the Subaru was ripped apart so we could run wires and the dashboard was dismantled so we could plug in wires to the back of my stereo unit. The end result after much cursing, bruising and even some electrical jolting is pretty good. The sub booms really nicely and you can't even hear it from outside aside from some small rattles from the trunk. But once you're in the car, holy, bass city!

The one problem I came across was how am I going to secure it in the trunk so it doesn't slide around. I did some research and was thinking I'd likely end up having to drill some holes and mount it with brackets and bolts. But then I came across what one guy had done with his sub in the back of his Subaru. He had taken the car jack and simply put it on top, and extended it. So I thought hmmm.. and followed suit. It works perfectly! Doesn't move at all and I didn't have the sub is easy to take out if need be. Pics below:



That's all for this update!

Flying, I can barely recall what that's like...

Thank god I'm on Salary. I haven't touched the controls of a plane since my 5 day crazy stint earlier in the month. I then went on my scheduled 3 days off. Then had 12 days on call. I'm now on the night of my 11th day of no flying!

Tomorrow is day 12, there's nothing on the books for me and then the next day I'm back on scheduled days off! And even better, is that we've now transitioned into a 12 on and 4 off schedule. So I'm going to have Monday thru Thursday off. That means that if I manage to get a flight on Friday, and that is best case scenario, I will not have touched a plane in 19 days!

I'm going insane! I've been playing a lot of poker and going for a lot of coffee, some long drives, playing with Mike's pocket bike. Always attached to the Blackberry, hoping that it will buzz away with someone informing me of a flight... but to no avail!

So, not like I need the days off, but at least I can put the Blackberry down and have a beer with dinner and not have to worry about work.

So for the majority of this month, I've been paid to kill time. :) Now for all of you out there that might be saying, "wish I had that kind of job", it's all fine and dandy, but I need the flight hours to further my career! This dry spell of a slow flying schedule with an overage of pilots is just not conducive to my career advancement! Here's hoping for some work!

Close, but no cigar

Well I did better on yesterdays tourney (which ended up having a prize pool of $90,400)than my previous venture into the high limit tourney on Sunday.

I placed 69th out of 452. Unfortunately, this was 19 spots away from the money. I was plagued with bad hands all night and the only way I survived was when I would get a great hand such as KK (3 times) and AA (once) which would hold up in the "all in" scenarios. I lasted 3.5hrs and was eliminated on the first hand after the third break in the tourney. I was down to nearly no chips with blinds that were through the roof, so I pushed all in with K7 of hearts while in good position, hoping to steal some blinds (which would have doubled me) and was caught by the small blind who had AJ diamonds. His cards held.

So that was it for me. I was more comfortable at this table than on Sunday and feel that I should be able to at least start placing in the money once I can get back into one of these large prize pool tourney's. That of course requires me to win some more feeder events. Not an easy task, but not impossible either. Hopefully I can win another seat and get into this Sunday's event.

Oh, and a side note. I did last longer in this tourney than ALL of the pro's that were playing. :) This included Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke.

$75,000 Poker tourney Wednesday

Well, I said I'd continue to play in the feeder tourney's so that I could keep on getting the entry chips into the largest tournaments played on my poker site. And I was successful - barely 48hrs after I was eliminated from Sunday's big event.

I will be playing in the big event held on Wednesday night, which is also at 9PM EST. The guaranteed prize pool for this event is at $75,000 which is lower than the $125,000 from the Sunday games, but I'm not complaining. The money is still darn good in these games too.

Extra incentives with this tourney are the pros also playing in it. I'll be up against two poker greats "Phil Hellmuth" and "Annie Duke". The players that knock them out of the tournament also receive a host of other goodies such as: Tournament entry fee refunded, poker player prize pack (lotsa goodies) and a free entry into an invite only tourney later in the week for a chance to win a seat to a huge event at the Bellagio hotel in Vegas.

So, I'm pretty stoked again. I had an awesome run of good cards and great fortune in this feeder tourney that I just played. I beat out 75 other players for this opportunity. Turning my $9.30 of entry fees into a $215 direct entry into tomorrow nights big event!

If you want to come and watch and wish me luck, just follow the instructions posted 2 blog posts earlier. The event is listed as: Wednesday 9PM EST $200+15, $75,000 Guaranteed

341st out of 571

At least I lasted the first hour! And did better than 3 of the poker pro's that were playing in the same tourney.

If you haven't guessed it yet, I didn't do so well in my big poker game. Ended up going out on a hand that I knew I didn't have the best hand with, but with so many of my chips already in the middle I stupidly called. I had KQ and the flop came Q rag rag with 2 diamonds. 3 guys in it, I'm in the middle position when it gets checked to me, I bet the pot up and get called by the guy behind me, and then the guy in first position goes all in. I stupidly called and I KNEW he had trips. Bah, I would have had a pretty small stack had I just folded there, I guess that was my rational. But I should have dropped the cards and tried to build back up with my small stack instead of hoping to beat this guy.

Of course now the other dude is out of the hand and it's just me and the first position better. Cards get flashed, he has tripped 7's and now I need a Q to save me. It doesn't come. So I'm out... in 341st place. About 281 spots away from the money! :)

I'll continue to play these feeder tourney's to get into this big games and I'm quite confident I'll start placing in the money. At these levels, even the crappy pay levels are still not much less than $400.

Big Poker Tourney attempt #3!!!

Ok, so hopefully I'll get the chance to play for the $125,000 prize pool this time around!

The big event is tomorrow, SUNDAY MARCH 26th at 9PM EST.

You can come watch me - "Drifting", at the tables on www.ultimatebet.com

Just download the free software and load it up. You can just be an observer and you don't need to sign up at all.

So once it's all up and running just follow these steps:

Click on "Play Poker / Go To Tables"

Then select starting at the top of the screen: "Real Money", "Scheduled Tournaments", "All"

Then it will list a bunch of poker games. Look for the table that starts at 9PM and shows in the remarks section "$125,000 Guaranteed". Once you've double-clicked it will bring up a new menu with all the tourney details. You can search for my name in the player listing and double-clicking my name will bring up my table.

I'll likely be on MSN too, so come check it out and wish be luck!

Pocket Bike Fun!

All I can say is what a hoot!

My roomate Mike bought a pocket bike. Perhaps you've heard of them? These little 49cc scooter 2 stroke engine type devices that are meant to look like mini sport bikes. These little things are all over the place these days and Mike had a good lead on a cheap one in Victoria.

Last week I picked it up for him in Victoria and flew it to Edmonton during my crazy 5 days of flying. It was then picked up by one of our jets which was in Edmonton that day and flown into Calgary. This little bike had quite the journey! But worth it for the deal that Mike got through a buddy of his from Victoria.

Anyways, today the weather was somewhat decent here in Calgary (read plus temps and sunny!). So we hopped in Mike's car and headed for a deserted stretch of road so as to not disturb the neighbours. :)

Here are some pics!

Here we are setting things up, check out that little rocket!



Here's my roomate Mike zooming by.



And here's me getting the hang of this little machine. Quite awkward to sit on it, you feel like one of those circus bears riding a small tricycle!



And another of me.



So now it's almost got me convinced to get one too! They're $350 and are a screaming good time. At full speed they hit about 45km/hr which is DAMN FAST on this squirrely little bike. It vibrates like crazy and you go numb after a little while. But the whole time you're riding it, and the whole time you're watching others ride it, you can't help but just laugh outloud. My throat is actually a little sore now 'cause of all the laughing!

So... what do you think? Should I get one? I'll have to play a little more poker, but what a good time it was. Totally going to ride up to the Starbucks around the corner from the house and go through the drivethru! :)

Here's a little video clip of me zooming by.. at less than half speed, but you get the idea.

POCKET BIKE VIDEO

Jet position officially offered

Last week an email was sent out that put my world in a spin ever since. It stated that 3 positions were available for bidding on our Citation Excel Fleet - The Jets!

Now I know I've already made my position clear a few times stating that I'd rather hold off for a few more months and then take a Captain's position on my current aircraft the Pilatus PC12, but I didn't believe they'd be offering so many spots.

Some of you seemed to think I was already flying jets! So let me clarify for ya here and now. My current aircraft I'm flying is the Pilatus PC12 pictured below. It is a single engine turboprop (jet engine spinning a propeller).



The Citation Excel pictured below, is what makes up our jet fleet. A very sleek machine that I see myself eventually moving into in the future.



So I did a lot of talking with other pilots here at work and my boss as well. And after all my thinking, I decided to apply for the position. I should know within the week. It's between me and one other pilot as I know 2 of the positions have been filled already. The other pilot has slightly higher seniority than me and if wants the position it's his. But from what I gather he's been doing a lot of the same soul searching as me lately trying to figure out if he wants to take it or not. He too is in a position to go into a Captain's seat on the PC12 soon, so he has to make the same tough choice as I.

Either way, I see this as a win win situation. Either I advance onto a very nice jet (almost unheard of at my current level of experience), or I hang on for a few more months and get to go Captain on my current bird - something I'm really looking forward to.

Time will tell!

Flew my ass off!

I'm on days off now after my busiest flying stint since last summer I think. And the fact that it was winter added to the headaches. Winter weather equals added headaches and stress. Having to deal with icing and snow and poor weather adds a lot to the flying experience. We had pretty much every weather phenomena known to man over the 5 days of flying. My schedule looked like this:

Day 1
Calgary to Edmonton
Edmonton to Victoria
Victoria to Edmonton

Day 2
Edmonton to Regina
Regina to Victoria
Victoria to Edmonton

Day 3
Edmonton to Regina
Regina to Edmonton
Edmonton to Grande Prairie
Grande Prairie to Calgary

Day 4
Calgary to Edmonton
Edmonton to Grande Prairie
Grande Prairie to Edmonton
Edmonton to Victoria

Day 5
Victoria to Edmonton
Edmonton to Calgary

So yeah.. it was busy!!! With weather varying from beautiful blue skies on the coast to full on blizzard conditions in Regina and 1.5 ft of snowfall in Edmonton. It was intense.

Unfortunately I did not get to participate in the big poker event, we didn't make it back on time on Sunday. So next week I'll be playing in the big $125,000 event.

I did get to test out my new headset a lot and it worked great. So quiet and comfortable. I'm very happy with my investment.

Big Poker Tourney take 2

Well I've finally received word that the tourney has been rescheduled for next week. My entry fee was refunded and they've added some extra coin to the guaranteed prize pool amount.

It will now be a prize pool of $150,000!

So I'm looking forward to entering it this coming Sunday. Again, it'll be at 9PM EST.

I however am flying for 5 days straight starting early Wednesday morning and only getting home in the late afternoon of Sunday. So I'll have to hustle home in order to make the start time!