Pics are coming...

I'm still awaiting a bunch of pics from Colin (the other pilot) because he had a lot of great shots on his camera as well. Once I have all the pics together I'll likely load into an online photo album for easier viewing ability. Trust me.. some of the stuff is a must see! And I shit you not, but half of the stuff I have pictures of, I don't recall at all.... that's just the kind of experience that Mexico was!

I'll include a couple teaser pics here of the view out of our first hotel in Mexico right after checking in I walked out onto my balcony and my jaw dropped...

Back from MEXICO!!!

Well hello hello... I've been home now for a couple of days and have been quite busy upon my return and unable to post up until now. I warn you now that this will likely be a long post as I'll try and recount my adventures from down south!

It all begins last Friday...

Day One - Friday
Early out of bed at the wonderful hour of 5am I get ready and head out to the airport. The departure is for 8am and there is much to prepare for a trip to Mexico. For one, I'm gonna stock the crap out of the airplane and make sure we have lots of goodies on board, just in case we end up being called away for other flight while we're down in Mexico. We depart on time and it's a very nice and uneventful flight to Tucson Arizona, where we are to clear customs in the states and get some fuel before crossing the border and heading down to the very bottom tip of the Baha Peninsula. It is my leg to fly from Tucson to Los Cabos. It's pretty uneventful aside from hearing the Mexican air traffic controllers talking both in English and Spanish.. quite a surprise to us! So after about 7.5hrs of flying I bring us in and land at a very busy little airport. An Alaska flight has just landed before us and a private jet is lined up behind us. We taxi off the runway and park over at our special executive terminal area. We have arranged a handling agency that will help us through customs, getting fuel, arranging parking and so on. They are very helpful but that is because this entire business runs on tips. So tipping is everywhere. We have a lot of US cash on board the aircraft when travelling to Mexico just for this very reason. After a lot of tipping the passengers are cleared through customs and on their way. We get all of our stuff together and get a taxi to take us to our hotel. It was a Best Western and quite nice. However, our handling agent told us we could get a great deal at a better and fully all inclusive resort just down the road from the Best Western. Well, we were stuck for one night at the Best Western. But it was still pretty nice. We got some of the best rooms in the hotel, our view out of each of our rooms was of the sandy beaches and ocean just meters away! We check in and promplty head to the bar where the drinks are free (just not the food here) so we have a couple of beers and then find out from the front desk that there's a great little place down the road called the "Rusty Putter". So we find the joint and it's quite nice, and it's pretty damn cool. We each have a couple of Corono's (hey.. when in Rome!) And I order some fajita's. Very good! We head back to the hotel and it's still sweltering hot. Oh.. did I not mention it was to be 35 degrees in the day and 25 at night! Hot hot hot! Back at the hotel we have one more drink then off to bed, it was a very long day.

Day Two - Saturday
We arise and have a little breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Was great food and we ate on a patio that overlooked the Sea of Cortez. We toasted our Orange Juice to our tough life that day, haha. We had some time to kill before checking out of this hotel and then heading over to the other. So we sat down on some patio chairs beside the pool and ordered some drinks... by 2pm we were both already a little loopy. It's now time to check out and we walk down the road and check in at the Royal Solaris hotel in Los Cabos. This was what it was all about, a fully all inclusive pimpin' resort! After getting settled in our better equipped, but less view friendly rooms, we headed downstairs to the pool area to check it all out. Once again the drinks began to flow. Rum and cokes for me and Bloody Mary's for the other pilot. At one point he is hot and decides he's heading into the pool. After a few more drinks I find myself in the pool too! As most of you know I'm not a big fan of pools/ocean activities, but the booze took over all reasoning and I was in the pool in my shorts (I luckly had enough sense to take out my walet and money before hand). We chatted up some people and by this point I'm well onto my 12th drink of the day and it was barely 6pm. The other pilot is out of the pool and relaxing on the patio chairs.. I continue to chat up other drunkards in the pool for a little while longer and then make my exit out as well. At that exact moment I'm later told that the other pilot (Colin) turned sideways on his chair and puked out most of his booze pool side... nice. I think it was about 7:30pm and we were booth way beyond trashed. Up to the rooms, I took a shower and hit the sack.. was in bed quite early I guess, but I was in no mood to do anything else.

Day Three - Sunday
A little rough around the edges I'm not feeling so hot. We head down for the breakfast buffet which was incredible. ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING you could ever want for breakfast was offered. Even a chef waiting to make anything else you could think of that wasn't somehow there, or just a specialty like a custom made omelette. I didn't eat a whole lot of breakfast as I was still a little "off" from the night prior. We then head out to the lobby of the hotel and just relax and people watch for a while out of the sun. The day before we both got too much sun, and it was clear that we needed to be outta the sun for a while. After a couple hours we're now into the early afternoon and Colin heads to go to the "washroom", but actually he walked over to the bar and got us two Pina Colada's. That son of a... oh well.. it was actually quite refreshing. We each had a couple of those and then checked out the hotel a little more. Some more relaxing in the room and then it was time for Dinner. It was outside by the sandy beaches, what a great little buffet. Tasty tasty tasty. We headed to the lobby after dinner as we heard that there might be some sort of entertainment on the go. True enough, it was time for Kareoke! No, I did not partake, but quite a few ppl did. Some were good.. and some were not. But everyone was having a good time. I even caught myself singing along to a few of the songs. We also bupmped into another air crew, I guess we all kind of stand out. We never really looked like people on vacation and so it's easy to spot us out. I chatted with this other pilot and they were in for a couple of days out of Denver with a private jet. After the entertainment we headed up for some shut eye.

Day Four - Monday
More breakfast, yummy, more relaxing in the lobby. This time however we were determined to have a drink prior to 11am, just to be part of the Mexico experience. Well, I think it was actually closer to 11:45 but we sat down and were playing some cards and ordered a couple of Tequila Sunrises. Nice drinks, they even look like a sunrise! Well.. a few more of those and then we transitioned to Margarita's. After a few of those all of a sudden the freaking straight up Tequila shots some how started showing up.. after a few of these I was beyond loopy and was back on the Margarita's to try and "slow down". Yeah right.. we were both trashed. We ended our card game probably quite late at around 5pm and then headed back up to the room. I barely recall much of what then began to happen. The Mexico crazyness begins. We decide to go back to the Rusty Putter for dinner. Well, I don't even recall walking to this place and I ordered a beer and chicken wings, but couldn't stomach the beer at all. And actually, after about 1.5 chicken wings, I was heading to the bathroom to attempt to puke out some booze. It wasn't happening... back to the table.. nope.. back to the bathroom.. again no luck. I tried really hard too to get those vile toxins out of my body! Well we walk out of this place and Colin says "we're going to Cabo tonight, it's tonight or never!" Cabo San Lucas was a good 30min drive away, but that's where all the night life is and more of a touristy and Americanized part of Los Cabos resides. I vaguel recall us running through traffic trying to grab the bus. These buses will actually stop wherever, not just at bus stops.. So I flagged one down in my drunkiness and he never actually full came to a stop, so we had to jump on! Crazy! So now we're on our way to Cabo! Just enough time to sober up a little and get composed. We arrive in Cabo and man, what a place. We are looking for a couple of bars/night clubs we've been told about. We find one right away called "Squid Roe". But it's 8pm only and the bar isn't very full. The guy at the front says come back at 11pm and it'll be rockin. Ok.. now how to kill some time? We walk around the marina that's near by and get approached by all sorts of individuals.. it was crazy. One got kept on asking us if we wanted to get high! Others were trying to get us to check out the "naked ladies". It was quite the place, especially when I was already drunk. Somehow we kill enough time in the are and head back to Squid Roe which is definatly much more alive at 11pm. We get in and immediatly grab some drinks. This bar is freaking cool... It's two levels with a big dance floor in the middle of the main floor, and you can see it all from the second level. Oh, and there's no roof! Totally open air bar! So cool. Suddenly I'm attacked from behind, it's the shooter girl, she's just shoved a jello shooter in my mouth.. smacked me in the head and then pinced my nipples. I was shocked but was having a great time... it didn't matter at all! YMCA came on the speakers and the guys that work at this place are totally into pumping up the crowd so they're screaming into mics and totally getting everyone up on the tables and chairs and making sure everyone is having a good time. It worked! Some more beers and then all of a sudden they call out "Tequila Congo line!" The whole bar gets in a big congo line and at various locations they've got ppl with big flavored Tequila bottle pouring it into your mouth as you congo by! Now that's what I'm talking about! Another beer or two later and we decide to check out some of the other bars that we've been told about. We find them, but they're not as happening as Squid Roe so we head back. As we walk in the main MC guy is in the middle of the dancefloor on a stepping stool shouting out while holding a nearly empty bottle of flavoured Tequila "who's wants the rest!?!" I immediatly push Colin into the dance floor shouting "Him him!!" and the rest of the crowd joined in and Colin was thrust into the middle of the crazyness and downed at least a full cup of this blue liquid, it was crazy! Only in Mexico.. man the good times kept rolling. Some more drinks and we were dancing with all sorts of ppl. I even started chatting it up with some girl who's name I believe was Trisha.. but I couldn't recall! Around 2:30 in the morning the party was begining to die down and so we decided to head out. Now, no buses were running and the only way to get back to the hotel would be to cab it, quite costly. Colin wanted to sleep on the beach and wait for the bus in the morning, but I'm glad I had enough sanity to grab a taxi to take us back. Not too bad, we arrive and it's off to bed and some well needed rest. We really did party it up that day.. I didn't even really eat aside from a LOT of booze. I hit that bed hard.

Day Five - Tuesday
This day.. was a write-off. I couldn't move until 3pm. And even then I wasn't moving much. Just little bits here and there. It wasn't until 6pm that I left my room. We had a little bit of dinner at 7pm and then it was right back to bed to recover some more. What a gong show the day prior had been. We checked out our camera's and couldn't recall half of the nights events until seeing the pictures again. Ouch!

Day Six - Wednesday
Another chill day. Some breakfast in the morning, but still feeling ill from the bender from Monday night, not much was consumed. We wandered up the road to check out a huge grocery store nearbye. Just like a superstore this place had lots of stuff and it was all super cheap. We would come back here again for sure to get some goodies to bring home. We then wandered over to McDonald's.. haha.. yup.. that's right, just had to check out the Mexican McDonald's. They had jalapeno's next to the Ketchup! We walked back to the hotel on the beach with the crashing surf at our feet. It was very refreshing. Felt great. The ocean was so nice and warm, but was too rough to really swim in. Showered up and ready for dinner we found out that it was a dinner theater event! Pretty cool, we now realied the place had a little theater that also had a dinner buffet that night. We grabbed a plate of food and headed into a big showroom. First they just had a big screen showing some Cirque de Soliel acts. Then the main event came on. A bunch of the workers acted out a lot of famous Musical numbers from many differnet movies like Grease, Chicago, West Side Story and Moulin Rouge. Really it was quite a great little show. We had a few drinks (now that I was able to stomach them again) and enjoyed the free entertainment. After the show it was back up to the room for some shut eye.

Day Seven - Thursday
Up for breakfast and mmm... now I was able to actually fully appreciate it all with a healthy stomach. After that we relaxed some in the lobby and just chilled for the first part of the afternoon. The plan was to head back to the superstore to pick up some goodies, but we'd also check out some of the local stuff around that was more outside of the resort area. We walked into the streets of the towns and went into a couple of little shops. Very different place I must say. I grabbed a bunch of goodies from the superstore on our way back including some cheap booze and some hot sauces too. Everything was super cheap!!! The dinner that night was a great grill night. Everything was fresh off the grill... so tasty! Afterwards it was back to the room after a few last drinks of the trip. It was time to pack up and prepare for our travels the next day. It was quite the challenge to communicate with our office from there. Our blackberry's and cell phone's did not work at all. So email was really our only option and we tried to have some documents faxed to the hotel, but that didn't work out. In the end we had to transfer some files via floppy disk from a hotel computer to another hotel computer just to get some freaking paperwork required for the next day! After it was finally all sorted out it was off to bed. Have I mentioned the language barrier at all yet? Most people spoke some broken english, but that made things interesting.. I learned a little bit of Spanish while there and was able to communicate a few things effectively, and some not so effectively! Really, all you need to know is "cervesa por favor". BEER PLEASE! :)

Day Eight - Friday
Time to go home... shucks. We are picked up at the hotel by our airport shuttle driver and we get there early to make sure we have everything arranged perfectly. It is early in the morning but the temps are already soaring into the hight 20's! The passengers arive and we load up and depart from our awesome little all expenses paid vacation! It was sad to see the Mexican landscape below us become smaller and smaller, but it was time to go home and get back to the normal life. After another fuel and customs stop in Tucson we were back in Calgary after close to 8hrs of flying. That is a lot of flying for us in a day. Quite exhausting. Back on Canadian soil where the temperature was 7 degrees! Not the same as the 35 we had just left that's for sure!!!

Well, this has been a crazy post for me. Looking at the time it took me an hour of pretty much continuous work to produce it! I hope you stuck through and read it all.. it really was an amazing trip, and a very rare occurance to have stayed as long as we did. I will be posting pics up soon... that'll help shed some light on a lot of the crazyness that happened in my Mexican adventure.

Well.. until another time!

M E X I C O !!!

Incase some of you didn't know already, I've got what is likely going to be my best trip ever approaching rapidly! This Friday I'm off to Cabo San Lucas Mexico! Right next to Los Cabos, MX. And the best part is that it'll be for a full week! The chances of them bringing us back out of Mexico is VERY slim as it is a very tricky process to arrange for all the proper customs and handling agents in Mexico. So we'll be staying for the whole week.

Hmmm... what to do in a resort town in Mexico for an entire week... hmmm... :)

Sounds like they're going to put us up in an all inclusive resort for our stay. So I'm essentially going on a full week long, all expenses paid vacation! One of the girls that works in our office has been to Cabo many times in the past and will be giving us all the "must see" and "must do" list of activities. I will take lots of pics and I will have my laptop, but not sure if I'll get around to use it... :) What happens in Mexico.. stays in Mexico!

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.