Happy New Year!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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