California... not so hot!

Literally. Back from my adventures down in Cali.

We left last week when the weather conditions in the morning here in Calgary were horrible. Wind, snow, cold. We depart, get above the clouds and weather and it's a beautiful flight down to Salt Lake City where we dropped off our passengers.

It's really nice there in Salt Lake City with all the snow capped mountains around. It was sunny and warm there and we hung out at the airport for a little while until we needed to depart for Santa Rosa, CA. Another great flight, flew over top of Lake Tahoe and we didn't see many clouds at all. It got a bit hazy as we landed in Santa Rosa but was warm and pleasant. As we were waiting for our taxi I overheard someone talking about the storm which was about to hit California... great.

And storm it did! We were slammed with a couple of back to back systems which produced lots of rain and wind. So we didn't really get out too much. Forget about going for wine tours, we were lucky to run half a block down the street to grab a bite to eat. We hung out at the hotel the majority of the time.

Then when it came to leave the clouds parted a bit, but that was very misleading! Now thunderstorms where brewing all around us. We saw many mean looking clouds around us so we plotted our departure and had it all organized when we started to taxi out to take off. The air traffic controller then proceeded to tell us about weather warnings just issued. Massive thunderstorms were causing chaos just south of us near San Fransisco. A 747 had been hit by lightning and tornado's had been reported nearby as well. We confirmed it was all south of us and decided to give it a shot. We took off and climbed through some blue sky directly above the airport before proceeding northbound for our Vancouver stop. A few bumps on the departure, but overall not a bad flight. We had been warned about some more possible thunderstorms up the coast that could pose some problems for us, but they never developed.

Then the gongshow of the day began. We arrived in Vancouver and customs had met the airplane. They asked for everyone's declerations and were told about some cash goodies and 16 bottles of wine (the maximum allowable for their stay). One of the agents boards the plane and notices all the gift bags and all the other bags (a lot of luggage!) and wants to look at it further. So the passengers are lead into the customs building to be out of the way and the other pilot and I unload all the bags and they are ALL searched! We were stunned as they found a total of 51 bottles of wine!!!!!

So the customs officers tell us that the passengers have to go to another building at the airport and fill out some paperwork, and that all of the wine but 16 bottles will be seized! So yeah, crazy. We load up the plane again minus all the wine, the passengers all go to another building to get all that stuff figured out. It took an hour to just search all of the stuff. The other pilot and I kept looking at each other hoping to god we weren't going to get in any trouble, or worse yet, our company! But thankfully they were not concerned with us and dealt only with the passengers. In the past, situations like this can flag the aircrew and the aircraft and cause problems in the future. One thing for sure is that whenever this client travels into Canada, customs WILL meet him EVERY SINGLE TIME!

The flight back to Calgary was uneventful aside from the blizzard like conditions we returned to.

It is currenlty very chilly outside and will remain that way for another couple of days. I guess we're getting punished for our super mild winter up until now.

Oh, and my poker cheque came in the mail so I'm off to do some shopping this weekend. It's new headset time, BOSE!