Back from Dallas, now in Napa Valley

Well jet training went well and I arrived back into Calgary late last night. It was straight to work though, and this afternoon I headed off for Napa Valley via Spokane for customs.

So far so good, however I must say.. as soon as you get a couple miles out of Napa it is a bit of a shady area around these parts! I'll just say that we've been locking the car as we drive around town. Haha. We're thinking of maybe driving down to San Fransisco (45mins away) but it looks like our schedule is changing every second. We may be off to Mexico on Saturday, then back to Calgary with a stop in San Diego. Then on Sunday we'll do a bunch of hopping around California, ending up back in Napa to take these folks back up to Calgary. They asked me how much wine we could fit in the airplane - this trip is all for a big wine auction going on. So I've limited them to 12 cases of wine for the way back.

As for Dallas, it was a good time. We had lots of fun in the simulator. I'll post up some pics soon from the training. All set in that regard for another year.

Heading back to Dallas

Time for my recurrent Jet training in Dallas TX. I'll be attending Simuflite at the DFW airport for the Citation Excel Friday until Tuesday, with travel days Thursday and Wednesday. It's only 1 week this time and not the 3 weeks like I had for my initial training. This is a much more manageable time away from home.

I'll take some pics again while down there of the sim unit, it is a big toy that is fun to play with. However this year they're going to try their hardest to kill us in that thing. Should be good times.

On a side note, I got a call from Ian as he was just traveling back through town after a family get together out in the prairies. He and his sister Carla had flights booked today to go back to Vancouver and spent last night with family here in Calgary. I met up with them this morning and we had coffee. I also happened to see we had an empty flight on one of the jets flying to Vancouver today, so I made a couple calls and got them on our jet instead! They got to live it up in style for an hour on their way back to Vancouver. It's great when things work out like that, sounds like they had a good time too.

Spent some time on 8 mile!

Well, not quite. But I did spend all of yesterday in Detroit, MI. Or as most seem to call it, "Detoilet". I can't say too many bad things about it though, we only saw the airport in Pontiac, MI and then to the hotel room to spend the day.

I finally got me a flight to help cure some of the boredom, however, I was flown out on Westjet all the way to Kitchener in order to just do this one flight (totaling 1hr of actually flying to Detroit and back). So, 8hrs of commercial flying for 1 hr of me actually flying. Not too impressed. Oh well, it was "something".

Anyrate, the early morning flight over was uneventful but we knew the flight back was going to be challenging based upon the weather reports for severe thunderstorms between Detroit and Toronto. After having a nap at the hotel the other pilot and I grabbed a coffee and went outside underneath the car park at the entrance to the hotel to watch a massive storm pass directly overhead. I had seen it on the radar on my laptop approaching so we went to see how 'severe' it really was. Well, it was the most intense storm I have seen. Torrential downpours and the lightning was SO close that we could feel the shock waves off the sonic booms the bolts themselves were creating. Twice I was nearly knocked right off my feet by the intensity of some of the strikes which were mere hundreds of feet from where we stood (under cover). We knew then that it was going to be a challenging flight home.

Once at the airport we, along with about 4 other aircraft crews spent nearly 1 hr studying 3 or 4 different radar sources watching the storms all around us and trying to plan our trip home. For us it appeared the weather that had passed over Detroit was due over Kitchener right upon our scheduled arrival time. So we ended up putting off our departure until the storms were right over Kitchener, which should then have just moved off by the time we arrived. We had to plan it like this, because more storms were due to hit Detroit pretty soon. After a brief complete ground stop of all air traffic out of the Detroit area(lots of storms and lots of planes = delays), we finally got approval to depart. We blasted off with our weather radar lighting up with all the storms nearby, but our direct path to Kitchener didn't look too bad. We anticipated this based upon the radar images we watched before departing. We did have to make some deviations (as seen on the image below of our flight path) and we did get into some bumpy air and gusty winds from some precipitating clouds, but the timing worked out perfectly as we approached Kitchener, the storms had just left. We followed Westjet into the airport and landed without much concern. A heck of a lot of work for a 32 min flight!


So after one day of flying, I am now waiting in the hotel lobby for my cab to come and take me to the airport so I can commercially fly back to Calgary tonight. Exciting. The long weekend does look like it's getting pretty darn busy though, so there's a good chance I could end up with some flying.

In other news - I made a rather large purchase last week, not quite an impulse buy, but certainly didn't suspect buying it that day. I now have in my house a Sharp Aquos 42" LCD HDTV. One word to describe it, SEXY. I'll post up my comments and review in the near future when I have more time to play around with it and really tweak some settings and get it operating to it's maximum potential.

Nothing happening = no posts

Well.. simple as that. There is nothing going on here, I'm not working at all, and more or less just hanging around the house in Calgary. We're getting some good weather right now, so lots of time outside and the BBQ is getting a good work out too.

I did manage to get to Vancouver last week for 2 nights, but did get called away in the middle of the trip to go back to Calgary then over to Victoria, before hopping back into Vancouver for the 2nd night.

I have a flight to Seattle booked for 5am on Thursday, but other than that... NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

I'm bored.

BORED

Oh my. Not working very much is driving me insane. Today consisted of waking up at 10:45am, lounging in bed until 1:00pm, making some "lunch", lounging some more, going to grab a coffee and lotto ticket, calculating out possible ideas for winning the $40,000,000 Wednesday draw, watching Ocean's 12, having some dinner and currently struggling with my laptop.

"And that's Tuesday" - in the Joey-esque fashion when he and Ross prank called Chandler at work when Ross wasn't working and Joey was showing him how to occupy all his free time.

As for my laptop, it appears to be a common problem with a bad connection between the dc power connector and the motherboard. Step by step instructions online tell me how to crack it all open and resolder the crappy component. I am a little apprehensive to attempt it, but I really have to choice. In order to get a charge on the laptop I have to hold the power cord just perfectly to ensure a good connection. It irks me greatly.

My boredom will hopefully be extinguished as I do have a scheduled flight to Vancouver this Thursday, hopefully it sticks!

New York Picture Album

Well I loaded these up quicker than I had originally thought. So here they are, 164 pics from my tours around Manhattan.

Check out the photo album by clicking here!

New York!

Wow. New York rocked.

I've always want to go and see the place and finally got the opportunity for free! It was a lengthy 4hr and 25 min flight to New York direct from Edmonton (we were watching the fuel gauges pretty darn closely). But we arrived to perfect weather. 28 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. There wasn't even any haze to be seen either.

We stayed in a Hilton near the Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. This is a very popular private and corporate airport that serves New York. All the major airports are very, very busy and this one is just a little more convenient. The day after we arrived we were awake pretty early and headed out to a bus stop and bussed right into times square. It was another glorious day and we took full advantage. We walked all over the damn place, probably close to 15miles by the time it was all said and done with. We checked out Times Square, the Ed Sullivan Theater (where Letterman does the Late Show), Central Park, 5th Ave, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (didn't actually go in though aside from the lobby), Trump Tower, Rockefeller Center/Plaza, NBC Studios, Empire State Building (didn't go up), Bryant Park and a bunch of other little areas all in between.

On the way back I accidentally had us jump off the bus 1 stop too quickly and that added about 15 more mins of walking to our return to the hotel. That was a tough walk back as we were already exhausted from all of our travels that day already.

I will post up a photo album in the next couple of days to showcase our walking tour of New York. If I get to go there again soon I'd like to check out Wall Street, Canal Street (China Town) and Ground Zero. All of those places were quite far down south of where we were and it was rush hour madness, so we opted to skip out.

As for right now, I'm on days off enjoying the awesome weekend weather in Calgary. Was out biking around the rivers downtown, had a beer on the patio with roommates and friends, lots of BBQ'ing and other summer activities. A great weekend!

Back from Toronto, straight into work

Finally some work! Although I wasn't a big fan of having to drive up to Edmonton yet again in a rental car, but it's worth it for my next destination.

Currently in Edmonton now at the hotel, just hanging out here for a departure tomorrow morning out to New York City! Can't wait! We fly into the Teterboro airport and will be staying at a Hilton hotel in New Jersey. I have all the tips and tricks from coworkers though on how to catch a quick and cheap bus right into downtown.

So I shall be spending quite a bit of time touring around New York. I'm really looking forward to it. It is high on my list of "to visit places" and there aren't many of those left these days!

As for my past weekend in Toronto, it was a great time! Bonnie is now a married woman to Jim and the ceremony and reception went off exceptionally well. Bonnie was a beautiful bride and I was happy to have been able to make it out for the occasion. The wedding was on Saturday and so the other days John and I toured around downtown and visited some other sites and had a good time. Howard was able to meet up with us on Friday night and show us around downtown a bit. We ended up at a cool little pub which had something like 250 beers from around the world. I've already forgotten the name of the beer I had but it was damn tasty, like a Kilkenney, but better!

My nose is a little red after getting a bit of sun on the sunny/high overcast day of the wedding. I imagine that I'll get quite a bit more sun in New York City this week too so I have brought along the sunscreen to make sure I'm well prepared. Looks like the temps will be close to the 30's.

My next post might be from New York, and if not, it will be upon my return. I plan to take many many pictures and will post them up eventually after I get back. Until then!

Wedding Bells

It's starting to happen, friends are marrying off!

This weekend I'm in Toronto to attend Bonnie's marriage to Jim Saturday in Richmond Hill. Weather looks like it will hold for a nice outdoor ceremony and then later it's off to the Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Toronto for the reception.

I just so happened to cash in some of my Hilton Honor points and am staying for free for 2 nights in the Hilton downtown Toronto. I priced it out, this should be costing me $250/nt. Not a bad deal for free! The Metropolitan hotel is an easy 10 min walk away so that's all good too. Also, Westjet footed most of the bill for this flight after having lost my bags prior to my Puerto Rico trip. So all in all, I'm coming out pretty good for this trip so far!

Rain, Snow, Hail, all in a holiday weekend

Well, May long weekend has brought all sorts of weather here to Calgary. We've seen bits of everything. Seems about right, first long weekend during actual spring time in Calgary and weather goes to shit.

Oh well. It didn't stop my roommates and I from going out during some of the dry times to crank up the mini bike. You may recall from last year having some fun on this miniature sport bike. It is just way too much fun, and I'm sure we've pissed off all the neighbours, but you can see that they can't help but laugh. My cheeks are sore just from that very simple fact, that you can't help but laugh.

Here are a couple pics from the weekend fun. I feel more confident on this thing than from last year, frequently taking it up to it's top speed of 45 km/hr - which is damn fast when you're only a couple inches off the ground!

Let the mayhem begin
Full speed coming up the hill by our house
My roommate Jeff taking his first turn on the bike, he opted for some protective hockey goalie headgear :)

Flying.. woo hoo!

So I finally get to do some flying out of Kitchener, I won't return back to Calgary having not flown anything. Except it's kind of funny that we fly empty all the way over to Las Vegas and then do a quick little hop over to Palm Springs. That's about 5 hours of empty flying just to do a quick little 35 min flight! Oh well. I fly where they tell me to fly.

I'll spend 2 nights in the nice Hotel Zoso in Palm Springs (the one with the 42" plasma tvs). Temps look very warm over there, I won't make the same mistake I did last time and not put on any sunscreen. Thursday we will end up flying over to Santa Ana California to take some folks from there up to Edmonton. Then I'll drive home that night and be in Calgary by around 10pm most likely.

I end up losing one of my "guaranteed" days off as a result. I'll be compensated, and it's not like I've got much on the go, so it's ok. I've got some days booked off to go to Bonnie's wedding coming up in a couple of weeks so there better not be any trying to take those days, they'll have to work something else out then! It's a very rare occurrence that they get stuck and need people to work a day off. Especially considering we have so many pilots right now.

Oh, a funny thing just happened. I bumped into another Calgary Jet First Officer who has also been out east for a long time. We're on the same hotel floor and everything. Our rooms are 8 ft apart and neither of us knew the other was here! We have been eating alone and hanging out by ourselves and on the last day that either of us are here, we bump into each other... yeesh, you'd think someone in our company would have mentioned we were both here. Oh well. We'll be heading out to dinner shortly.

Off to Ontario for a few days

Not much blogging lately, that's because not much is happening. I haven't been getting any flights as we have too many pilots in my position right now with some new guys who need their initial training. So they generally get a bit of priority so they can be fully signed off to fly with all the crews.

There is a plane in Kitchner, ON and my room mate Mike had been out there with it, but he goes on his days off tomorrow, so he's flying back on Westjet right now, and I will fly out tomorrow morning to take over hanging out.

So, no flights actually planned, just hanging out with the plane if any flights do come up. That means that instead of sitting on my ass not flying in Calgary, now I'll be doing the same out in Ontario. I'll be flown back on Wednesday if no flights come up that can bring back earlier than that. Thursday begin my actual days off, so if the plane is still out there I imagine they'll fly out another guy to cover.

Other news, I finally got my new tires mounted. I've kept the old rubber as I found a buyer who'll take them off me for $20 each, which helps pay for the mounting and balancing costs. I'm glad I had won 2 of the tires already because it was a hefty bill even if just for 2 tires and the mounting. The Yokohama AVSES100's do look mighty sexy and handle great though.

Well, off to Toronto bright and early tomorrow. So maybe I'll post from out there.

Mazatlan no more

Oh well, I couldn't really count on it, and the schedule changed around a bunch so I didn't get to go on the trip today to Mazatlan MX.

There is also nothing else on the schedule for me. In the near future I see some Las Vegas trips and a Chicago trip, so maybe I'll get one of those.

Did I wake up in Vancouver???

You think I'd be living in Vancouver with a forecast like this:

Nope, just a weird day in Calgary. Our annual rainfall here in Calgary is around 300mm (Vancouver is 1120mm!) so when it starts to rain this hard, it's quite unusual. We're essentially getting 10% of our annual rainfall over the next 24hrs!

As I'm typing this out our power just went out. Hmmm, something to do with all this water perhaps!? More likely somebody just drove into a power transformer after panicking from having to use their windshield wipers. Much the same way a Vancouver driver panics when the snow starts flying and they start driving into ditches all over town. Oh, it only last 10 minutes, the power just came back to life. Fewph, not much to do on a rainy day in Calgary, I needed the power!

One good thing that will come out of this nice heavy rainfall will be a bit of a road clean. Most of the neighborhoods have now had the street sweepers come through and clear away most of the left over winter gravel, but it is still pretty dusty and dirty around places. So hopefully this will help clean up some of these streets. That's one thing I miss about Vancouver, the nice clean streets, no gravel, no road salt etc.

Mexico, Mazatlan MX to be exact...

I'm off to Mexico for a week! A very nice upcoming trip to Mazatlan Mexico from May 6th to the 12th. I hope this trip sticks, as my last nice layover didn't quite happen.


Mazatlan isn't quite a resorty town like Cabo, Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, but it still is a rather nice piece of real estate. I imagine we'll be put up in a decent hotel and or all inclusive resort. I'm not working much, so if I'm not going to be working, I may as well not be working in Mexico! :)