No more Florida layover, but what a trip

Well, I don't get to layover for a week anymore in Florida. Instead we are going to be doing one heck of a flight over the next 4 days. The map below helps to illustrate how far we'll be travelling!

Saturday (RED) - Calgary to Wichita, KS to Marco Island, FL to Kitchner, ON. (~14hrs flight time)

Sunday (GREEN) - Kitchner, ON to Calgary to Pasa Robles, CA. (~13hrs flight time)

Monday (YELLOW) - A quick hop north to Montgomery Bay, CA. (~1hr fliht time)

Tuesday (BLUE) - Montgomery Bay back to Calgary. (~5.5hrs flight time)

So as you can see it's gonna be a lot of flying, especially the first couple of days.. we're pushing the legally allowed amount of flying in any given 1 day period. It should work.. just barely! Then next weekend I'm scheduled to fly back to Marco Island to pick up those folks we dropped off, so it will be another couple of crazy hour days. Very good for the logbook though, lots of time building which is good.


Click on the picture to see full size

Oh, and don't forget to check out my Mexico pics.. check out the last post below this one!

Mexico pics finally!!

Took me some time to get them done, but here they are. Take a look, if you don't have an imagestation account, just sign up for a free one and enjoy!

MEXICO PHOTO ALBUM

post some comments here of what you think!

Back from out East

What a trip... I did quite a bit of flying and not a whole lot of sleeping.

Once we got the plane there (5hrs and 12mins of flying) I called the office to find out what was on the books for me. I was supposed to do that Phili trip but things were totally chaotic and the whole reason we positioned the aircraft to Toronto was just cancelled and it didn't need to have made the trip. Wow.. what a piss off.

Well, now I was there so they slotted me in to do a trip the next day which was to leave Kitchner, ON (our main eastern base) at 5:35am! So I had to catch a ride with one of our maintenance guys that happened to be out at the Toronto airport and he drove me to Kitchner which was a good 45min drive. Once there I pretty much crashed at the hotel room 'cause I hadn't slept much the night before. I awoke after about 4hrs of sleep and couldn't get any more sleep before it was time to get up and get ready for that stupid early flight out of Kitchner. I took a cab to the airport and saw our eastern base facilites. Pretty cool. So we left for Ottawa to pick up some business folks and took them to the downtown city center airport in Toronto. Pretty cool, it's on a little island right next to downtown. We stayed in a hotel for the afternoon in downtown and then flew them back to Ottawa in the late afternoon. Then it was back to Kitchner for the night.

Once back at the hotel room again I get my finalized plans for the next day. One of our jet pilots was also landing in Kitchner and needed to get back out to Alberta so he and I had flights booked on Westjet at the same time (I was going to Calgary and he was going to Edmonton). At 7:15am out of Toronto, so at freaking 4am we were on the road out of Kitchner to make the flight.. crazy. I tried sleeping on the Westjet flight but only got a couple of mininaps in. Back in Calgary it was super warm. It ended up being 20 degrees here in the afternoon. These chinook winds are great sometimes.. talk about a mild couple of days.. we should be at -5 easy by now! And there's no snow around here either, which is totally odd too.

Oh well, not my problem, I'm loving it! Now I'm on days off getting ready to head off to Marco Island, Florida. I will be leaving on Saturday morning and will stay until the following Saturday afternoon. Woo hoo! My second 8 day trip in a matter of a month! And it's another beautiful location. I'll likely spend a few more dollars down there, being that it's not an all inclusive like Mexico, but I think I can afford to spend a little bit of money down there!

Off to the East Coast!

So tomorrow morning bright and early I hop in one of the planes and head straight for Toronto. The plane is an Eastern based plane that had been brought out to the West to help cover some busy flying. Well, that busy flying has subsided. So we are repositioning it there tomorrow.

Once there, I will spend a night in Toronto and then stay there an extra day to do an Eastern flight! Woo hoo. So I'll meet up with another eastern pilot and we'll be flying to Philidelphia on Monday. Cool. I've always wanted to do some of the flying out east. So now I'll get my chance. Then either Monday night or Tuesday morning I'll be flying back to Calgary with Westjet or Air Canada.

Should be fun!

Alarm problems and upcoming layovers

Well I'm just at the end of my 3 days off and I'm proud to report that I've done sweet fudge all! Haha... every once and a while ya just need to relax and do nothing, and I did one heck of a good job at it.

I've been having some problems lately with my paging alarm system for my WRX. I've had it since I got the car back in April 2003 and in the past couple of months it has started to act pretty quirky. The most annoying of which is it doesn't always work properly when locking/arming and unlocking/disarming. I will go to lock the car and arm the alarm and it will only arm the alarm, but the car remains unlocked. And sometimes I'll go to unlock the car and it will disarm the alarm and lock the car! Quite frustrating! So I managed to track down the guy who did the install and he's always been exceptional with customer service and his work is amazing. He informed me that the alarm brain is malfunctioning and happens with about 1% of the units (lucky me). So thankfully it's still under warranty and he is mailing me out a new unit which I will have to have professionally installed and reprogrammed by a dealer out here, they have referred me to a shop nearby that will do it for about 50 bucks in labor costs. Had I still been in the lowermainland they would have done everything for free, but c'est la vie. I'm quite willing to pay the cash to get this thing resolved. So as soon as it gets here am having that all done.

Tomorrow I'm off to Winnipeg and back, just a quick trip unlike the last time I was in Winnipeg over New Years for 5 days! A Kelowna layover is up and coming as well as another week long layover in another warm destination! I've got a trip coming up at the end of November to Marco Island in Florida (Lower west coast of Florida just south of Naples). That should be interesting if it stays. Time will tell.

Well that's the latest, back to continue my last day of nothingness!

Home for X-mas!

(The pics for Mexico are still coming.. taking some time to track down Colin and get his pics!)

But as per the title of this blog entry states... I'm coming home for X-mas. I was looking through my days off schedule through December and found out that my 3 days off run over Christmas.

The days in question are Friday December 23rd to Sunday December 25th.

So I will be leaving Calgary early early in the morning on the 23rd taking advantage of a seat sale with AirCanada and returning on the last flight on Sunday Evening. So this time I will actually get to spend X-mas at home with family and friends rather than working night shifts in our company office like I did last year! So.. just confirmed all the tickets online 5mins ago so it is a go, nothing better screw this up work wise, but it should be pretty solid. I'm one of the lucky few to have his days off fall over the holidays as we have holiday blackouts from December 21st to January 5th that no employee is allowed to take off as it is a very busy time for us as our clients fly all over the place visiting family and going to company parties and stuff like that.

On a side note, my last few flights have been crazy early in the morning and I've been getting some really crazy sleep. I've had 3 05:00am flights and even one that was scheduled for 04:42am! Keep in mind that's the time that the plane takes off and us pilots need to be at the airport at least an hour before departure to prepare for the flight. So add another 15mins for travel and 45mins to wake up, shower, shave and get dressed... and you're looking at a freaking 2:42am alarm clock setting! I believe I got about a whopping hour and 15mins of sleep that night. Thankfully we then had a day room booked at a hotel so we could go and sleep and relax for a few hours before the return flight home in the afternoon.

Well there we go... so hopefully I see some of you over Xmas! Woo hoo!

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!