November holidays in Vancouver

Just a heads up to all you lower mainlanders, I'll be in Vancouver on holidays November 4th-11th. A nice week off to relax and all that good stuff. I'm sure there'll be some poker action and other fun stuff.

Keep you schedules clear!

Back in Calgary.. for a few hours

Today was a lot of flying. The plane was fixed in time for us to depart Washington, DC and travel enroute to a fuel stop location in Salina Kansas, and then off to Scottsdale AZ for the pickup.

From there we brought the folks back to chilly Calgary. It was 25 degrees in Arizona when we left.. it was -5 degrees in Calgary when we arrived. Brrrr!! I walked back into the hangar only to find out I would be flying nonstop over the next couple of days as well.

So tomorrow (Wednesday) it's off to Port Hardy, BC and back to Calgary, then immediately off to Palm Springs, CA and back.

Thursday morning is another Palm Springs and back. Pretty exhausting. Then it would appear I have Friday off which I'll need, so I can prepare for my upcoming vacation back to Vancouver!

Still in Washington, DC

The plane we were in yesterday was only in Calgary for a few hours and then another crew took it bright and early to fly down to Florida to continue the trip that we were originally to do.

So.. that means I'm still here in Washington (actually Virginia.. right on the border). Not quite sure what is happening with the plane, but if it gets fixed tonight, then we're off at 7am to Scottsdale Arizona (with a fuel stop somewhere... damn westerly winds are killers) for a pickup and then back up to Calgary.

We'll see if that happens or not.. I'm giving it 50/50 at this point. One thing's for certain. We're not making lots of money by having our jets flying all of these empty legs, it is VERY pricey. That's the price of doing business though - $hit happens. :)

Oh, and we went and checked out the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum which is right near the airport. It is a very cool place that costs $0! It is a must see in this area, they've got all sorts of goodies inside ranging from SR-71, to the Concorde, to the Enola Gay, to one of the Shuttles.. and it goes on and on. Check it out if you're in the area, you wont be disappointed!

Florida was nice... for 30 mins.

Then it was off to Washington DC, which is where I type this message. One of our other jets had some landing gear issues when they took off out of here on their way back to Calgary. So they had to come back and land and the plane is now at a maintenance facility getting looked at.

So we brought our jet up so they could take their passengers back to Calgary. We now sit here with a broken jet, unsure of what tomorrow has in store for us. We're supposed to be in Florida tomorrow to take some people from Orlando to Tampa, but it's all kind of depending on what happens with our jet tonight.

I'll post again tomorrow night from wherever we may be!

Toronto and Florida

I got a call yesterday while lying in bed to get to the airport and hope on an AirCanada flight out to Toronto. Now in Toronto, today I do a couple of quick hops around here (in very very windy Toronto) to pick up some people and take them down to Florida. We'll be hitting up Orlando, West Palm Beach, Tampa and Miami. Then returning to the Toronto area on the Nov 1st. After that I'm not so sure what's going to happen, likely a commercial flight back to Calgary on the 2nd.

Sunny weather and warm beaches here I come!

48,934 kms young

Took the WRX in for it's 48,000 km service today. The BIG one as it's referred to. That's because it's the most extensive and also of course, the most expensive. I was not looking forward to today in a monetary frame of mind, but glad to get this service done.

When the dust settled it was a whopping $690 expense. Ouch! But it had to be done. Now she's all refreshed with all new fluids everywhere and new filters everywhere, and a few other goodies. I was not shocked at the hourly labor rate, but still a little surprised.. it just keeps going up and up! It was $98/hr and that constituted nearly $350 worth of the service.

Well now I've got another 6,000 kms before I need worry about anything else.

Our newest jet

Here's a few pics on our newest jet. It hasn't quite arrived yet. Nor has it even finished being built. One of our pilots was down in Wichita a couple of weeks ago on a seminar and he managed to get over to the Cessna plant where they make the Citation Excel. He had the opportunity to tour the production plant and got some pictures of our new jet. It is scheduled for a December 8th delivery date. I'm optimistic that it will arrive on time, but it still looks like they've got a ways to go!

Excel being built

San Diego was great!

We had a good time in San Diego. They put us up in a very nice area of town called the Gaslamp district, which had restaurants and shops all around. We spent 4 nights in the Hilton Gaslamp which was a very nice hotel.

When we checked in, we were given breakfast coupons for our entire stay. I looked at the tickets a little closer later and realized these were for Netjet pilots. Netjet's is a popular airline which is very similar to ours but is based in the states. They obviously have a big agreement with this Hilton to give their pilots free breakfasts. Well, I wasn't going to say anything because each breakfast would have been around $25! It was good eating!

The food all around town was great. We didn't have one bad meal. We had Mexican food twice and it was great both times. We also ate Thai, and it was the best Thai I've ever had! The whole trip I was either hungry or stuffed to the max. We ate way too much, but it was just all so good!

The shops were neat to see, but probably the highlight of our trip was going to check out the USS Midway which is anchored permanently right there in the San Diego harbor. They've turned it into a great museum piece with lots of history. You get a headphone set and can punch in numbers as you approach various parts of the ship and hear audio commentaries about what you're seeing. Overall it was a great way to spend a few hours. I highly recommend that anyone visiting the area should check it out.

I ended up actually buying some cheap cheap beer while I was there too. I'm not a fan of American beers, but there is one that I'm quite fond of. Coors Original. Not the Coors light you're used to seeing, but the very very rare relative.. which I've only found in select US cities. So I picked up a 30 pack which ended up costing the equivalent of $0.60 per can. :) I also grabbed a couple of packs of the Starbucks Doubleshot drink which is not available in Canada. So essentially my shopping consisted of buying and stocking up on items that are too rare or contraband within Canada. Haha. Here is a pic I took of my loot.



After our great stay in San Diego it was off to Cabo San Lucas to do a pickup to return some folks to Calgary. Some of you may recall that it was about this time last year when I had my week long layover/vacation in Cabo. Ahh memories. Well, this time would only be for an hour or so. It was nice and warm and beautiful there, and I wish we could have stayed, but we had to head back. It was a 4hr and 20min flight direct back to Calgary. Which was nicer than the 7.5hr trip flying with my old plane.

Here is a photo album of some shots from the USS Midway and also some snaps from our flight from San Diego, down the Baja peninsula to Cabo San Lucas Mexico.

San Diego

Pics from Justin's visit

After Justin told me about Google's photohosting site and also about their software for editing photo's called "Picaso", I decided to look into it a bit further. I want a place were I can easily share photos via this blog, that takes little to know time to upload and resize pictures (as all of my photo's are north of 5mb each). This program does a great job of it! I suggest you take a look, Justin is pretty impressed with it's photo editing abilities as well (I'm sticking with Photoshop though).

Anyways, here's a small collection of shots from his visit, all from the Banff area. Click on the album cover below!

Justin's write up and pictures can be found here.

Banff with Justin

San Diego for 4 nights

This jet is too fast. Tomorrow we fly from Calgary to Palm Springs, then back to Calgary then up to Red Deer then down to San Diego. It's just a lot of distance to cover in a day, and thanks to this jet it can all get done in one day.

We'll then spend 4 nights at the Hilton in San Diego, looks like it's in a great location. Can't wait to check things out a bit down there. Then on Tuesday we hop down to Mexico to pick up some folks and bring them back up to Calgary.

Should be a good few days.

New York Yankee pitcher crashes plane into NYC skyline

I was quite shocked when I heard the news that another plane had found it's way into the Manhattan skyline in New York. I quickly turned on CNN and was greeted with the latest news of the time reporting that a small aircraft had crashed into a 50 story residential building in New York. CNN news article here

It was later discovered that the pilot was New York Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle, flying in his new Cirrus SR20 aircraft.

The plane is a state of the art machine which has just as many bells and whistles as the business aircraft that I fly! I've seen a few of them around and have always admired them. With a sticker price though of nearly double some of the competition it is only available to some fairly wealthy people. Angelina Jolie is another celebrity that has one, and I saw it first hand here in Calgary last year when she flew it up to visit Brad Pitt who was shooting for his new movie The Assassination of Jesse James".

The biggest feature on this aircraft is that it has a ballistic rocket parachute system which can be used if the pilot/plane gets into a bad situation such as a total failure of some systems, or break up of the aircraft, or even if a pilot has gotten himself into some real bad trouble in bad weather (which has occurred before with successful parachute deployments). For some information on the aircraft and it's parachute system you can visit the Cirrus website here: Cirrus Design

So of course the speculation is out as to what could of happened. But weather at the time of the accident wasn't great, and certainly not the best for a fresh new pilot (7 months newly licensed). However, reports are that there was a flight instructor on board as well. So it's anyone's guess as to what was happening at the time of the accident. I wont go into much speculation, but for 2 pilots to get themselves into such trouble as to be in the New York skyline it would have to be something pretty catastrophic. Perhaps failure of the airframe itself.. we really don't know at this time. Just as I type this I can hear on the news, one woman reports not seeing any wings on the plane. Eyewitness reports are pretty sketchy at best, but if what she is saying is correct perhaps there truly was an overstress in the aircraft and the wing(s) did separate from the airframe. That is precisely the reason what this parachute is designed for, however, being this close to the ground it's unlikely that they would have had time to deploy the 'chute. But like I said before, it's all speculation and we can anticipate a more detailed report in the weeks ahead.

I will however go as far to say that this is a dangerous plane for the simple reason that it can give a pilot a false sense of security. That is to say that they might push themselves past their capabilities as a pilot because they feel they have all of these systems to help them along. The plane is an amazing piece of equipment, but the type of people flying it are going to be weekend flyers, that have a significant amount of extra pocket change, so usually only partially experienced flyers that shouldn't be pushing things like weather and other bad flying conditions. So by feeling so safe with all of these systems it gives people a false sense of security which can really get someone into trouble.

When I used to fly traffic reporters around the lower mainland and over downtown Vancouver we used to fly in almost any weather condition. So it really pushed my skills to the limit sometimes, and you have to make the right judgment calls because you don't want to get yourself into a situation where you lose your situational awareness be it because of getting into some clouds or rain showers.. the fact that I was so low to the ground all the time, adds to the equation. If I was flying in a plane like the SR20, there's a chance I might have been tempted to fly it into worse situations than I would have felt comfortable with one of the other aircraft. So it really can happen to anyone. Every pilot needs to be continually aware of their situational awareness and also know their own capabilities and limitations and not push them.

What happened today is not necessarily a direct result of pushing capabilities, we'll have to wait for the NTSB reports or more detailed news before that kind of information can be determined. This aircraft would not have had any "black box" devices on board, so they won't have that information to aid their investigation.

Regardless, a sad day when any aircraft doesn't land safely.

Insomnia

It's currently 3:30am and I'm just starting to feel tired. I've been trying to sleep for the past hour, but to no avail. So I ended up surfing the web while trying to induce sleep.

It's been like this for the past couple of weeks, my sleep schedule has shifted something horrible. This is due mainly to the fact that I haven't had a lot of work lately, and the flights I have been doing have all been in the afternoon. That is not the case in the coming week so I'm trying to get myself back on track so that I'm not too screwed on some big days of flying which are approaching.

The poker weekends obviously aren't helping, but this is ridiculous. And if I try to wake before 10am I find myself falling asleep on the couch around 2 or 3pm! Well, tomorrow I have some errands to run and tasks to accomplish so I plan on waking up earlier (10:30) which will only be less than 7hrs of sleep when I finally do fall asleep, and hopefully this will help me sleep earlier tomorrow night and I'll just continue this cycle and hopefully by Friday I'll be better off for my 8am flight across the continent.

Where are some damn sheep to count when you need them?

US bans online gambling

In a very surprising series of events, the US has banned internet gambling. Hidden within the pages of a "Safe Port Act" they have made it illegal for banks and financial institutions to transfer money to online gaming sites. This primarily is affecting the online poker industry which has seen a massive uprising in the past couple of years.

It seems you can't turn on the tv these days without seeing coverage of some sort of poker event. Then at every commercial there are adds for all sorts of different online poker sites.

This new law will make it extremely difficult for these businesses which rely heavily on the patronage of US residents. Here's an article describing what's going on:

Royally Flushed

To see that the stocks for some of these companies take such a downward swing is crazy. I recall reading many articles about people encouraging the purchasing of stocks related to online gaming as a direct result to the ever increasing popularity. Any of those folks that listened are now in a world of hurt. Not too mention the thousands of people who play poker online professionally for their livelihood.

People are already finding ways to bypass the new legislation, but it still is going to put a massive damper on the online poker boom. A sad, sad week for online poker.

Thanksgiving Poker

Well I've been all alone here this Thanksgiving weekend. Mike, my other pilot roommate was away in Florida and Shelley (half owner of house) and her brother (new tenant addition) drove into the BC interior to visit with family.

So it was just me and Shelley's 3 cats. Fun and exciting eh? My days off fell Saturday to Tuesday, so I've had the entire weekend off and to myself.

I decided that after last weekend adventures at the casino, I'd give it another go and take advantage of the weekend poker crowd. It's a mix of pros and newbies all in one. It's pretty easy to see who knows what they're doing, and who's there for some fun. The idea of course being, take advantage of the inexperienced and stay clear of the pros.

Friday night was night 1 of 2 that I spent at the casino. I played a solid 6.5hrs of Poker. The night started slow and my $200 buy in had wilted down to the $150 range when I came across a 54 offsuit in early position. I was big blind so no matter, I saw the flop. It came up QT5. I paired my 5. There were 2 others in this hand and the small blind bet $5, so I called and so did the other guy. The turn came a 5, which also made for 2 clubs on the board. The small blind checked and I bet $15 with my 3 of a kind. The other guy folded and the small blind check-raised the bet to $30. I called. The river came a 4. Also a club. So a flush hit the board, BUT, did ya see it? I made my full house. The bet was checked from the small blind and I bet out $30 which was reluctantly called by the small blind. He had tripped the 5's as well with a high kicker, but my full house took it down. A decent little pot that put me into the profit area.

Another round of cards later and I find myself with Q6 in the small blind. It was a cheap flop so I decide to call and see what I can make of it. The flop is a very nice looking QQ2. Trips, I like it! I check the bet and it goes around the table to the guy acting in last position who ups it to $25. I call and everyone else folds. The next card is a 6. Hello! Another full house! I bet out $50 and get raised another $75 by the other player. I'm trying to milk this for all she's worth. I look at my chip stack and at his, he definitely has me covered, so I move all in. He hums and haws and thinks about it for a couple mins before folding his hand. He had tripped the Q's as well but wasn't confident in his kicker. I then proceeded to flash my full house and got some Ooo's and Ahhh's from the table.

Now my stack was well in the profit at about plus $250 on top of my $200 buy in. This didn't last unfortunately. I hit cold cards the rest of the night and hovered around plus $100 for the last couple of hours of play and decided to call it quits when a heated argument began at our table when a very inexperienced player made a questionable call and won the hand which a much more experienced player had been bluffing at. I can't see how the new guy made the call thinking his little pair was good... but he did, and took down a monster pot as a result. So it was time for me to make an exit with exactly plus $100.

I then opted to head back again Saturday night. A quick stop at Starbucks on my way there and I was off to what was going to be a very entertaining night. And it didn't have to do with a lot of poker hands, some, but not many.

9.5 hrs of play occurred in this eventful evening which started out just like my other nights with me sitting down with the max buyin of $200. The table was very loose when I first sat down with big stacks at the table bullying people around. So I tightened right up and didn't play a lot of hands. I had made a few hands and had put myself into the plus $100 range, when I look down to see cowboys (KK). I'm in early position and raise it up to $25 and get 4 callers. This is looking nice, already 100 in the pot, hopefully no Aces on the flop. I was rewarded with a nice flop of J85. I didn't want anyone drawing and would be happy with the $100 in the pot so I bet out $50, which is folded around to the player on the dealer button. Who raises me $50, so I go all in which he quickly calls. The cards are flipped and I'm ahead of his AJ with my KK. The turn is no help to him, and then the river hit... a freaking Jack! I couldn't believe it. He tripped his Jacks. The massive pot went to this idiot! He was a weak player which I had already determined, but what can I do. He rivered me, and rivered me hard. I was not happy, but also humbled at the same time. I watched as he stacked his $450 in chips.. which should have been mine!

I called for chips, and reloaded my remaining $40 with another $150. I ended up loosing another $70 when I was betting heavy into a great pot, but got reraised heavily and I rightfully folded my top pair with ace kicker, and later found out the player had KK. I would have been destroyed. I reloaded with my final $50 and played very very tight for the rest of the night.

Now the night was not all about poker, some of the characters that night made for a very memorable night. There was a younger American who had been drinking for quite a while with his buddy who was sitting at another table, and then a female friend who was also drinking but not playing poker. She had obviously took her visiting friends out to see what Calgary had to offer and she reluctantly came to watch them play poker for hours and hours. What ensued was some of the funniest banter I had ever heard between people. The guy kept berating this hot girl because she had a bit of a mouth on her and there was a fair bit of friendly swearing going on. The guy kept on making reference to how he was going to show her the time of her night later on, so she best be quiet and things of this nature. It was all in good fun and she would reply back with quick remarks mocking his manlyhood and things of this nature. It was some funny stuff. At one point she had blurted out a few too many swears and the drunk American commented on how nice and friendly she was, to which she told him to "Fuck off". Jokingly, but still, she said it quite loud. The older female dealer wasn't too impressed anymore and told her to cut out the language. To which the young girl apologized and looked a little embarrassed. But then the dealer says this classic phrase - "You may not be a lady, but I certainly am one." The table went quiet, and finally someone yelled out "BURN!". Holy cow it was funny. We were all having a good time of it and they were all good sports and kept going at it. It made for a very entertaining couple of hours. I ended up knocking out the American at our table when my pocket 5's made a set on the flop and he moved all in. So it was sad to see him go, but the girl had made a friend at our table who she had recognized so she remained to talk to him. The whole time the American's want to go and she wouldn't give them the time of day because she had been wanting to go the whole time before that. So this made for a lot more comedy, this time getting more vulgar when the American's suggested that she should just get up on the poker table and that way the whole table could have their way with her. I was truly sad to see them go, they had provided great banter.

This wasn't the only thing happening that night though. What transpired next was actually quite a frightening experience. One of the players at our table had accidentally bumped the chair of another player at a different table and after a couple of behind the back comments, the other guy stands up and starts berating the player at our table. Now let me explain to you whom these individuals are. The player at our table is a big black guy who was very mild mannered and very calm, cool and collective. The other player looked like he was right out of the streets of east LA. He was a Latino boy who had on a baseball cap slightly sideways, with big baggy pants and shirt, accompanied by lots of bling. After some more heated words coming out of the gang member they were both standing up. The black guy was very calm about it the whole time while this kid kept shouting his mouth off. The poker room which is usually a buzz of all sorts of sounds of people talking and chips clinking is now totally silent with all eyes glued on this escalating situation. The talk between these two guys quickly turns to taking it outside to the parking lot. The gang member starts yelling at the black guy telling him he doesn't know who he's messing with and starts pointing to his tatoo's. At this point the poker room manager is yelling at them to sit down and shut up, but they're just about on their way to the parking lot but are in close quarters to each other and surrounded by others and closely packed in chairs. The poker manager gets inbetween them when suddenly they start to push and he is thrown to the side. Security is called as they get a little more heated and then suddenly the gang member starts reaching into his pocket! Holy shit, at this point I was quite concerned just waiting to see what weapon he was going to be pulling out! He never did pull anything out, but I'm sure he was armed with some sort of clapped out device. Yikes. Even when security finally arrived you could see that even they were a little scared about the situation and it took about 3 or 4 of them to escort them out of the room where statements were taken and then they were both booted out of the room. Wow, what a stressful couple of minutes. Poker returned to normal, and then the black guy returned to grab his chips and leave and apologized while everyone in the room was yelling out "you woulda kicked his ass!" and things like that. Haha. He would have, but I was a little concerned with what that guy had in his pocket. Poker continued, and throughout the rest of the night you could hear at least once an hour someone getting into a friendly argument which inevitably ended with the joking words of "you want to take this outside?!" Haha, we can all laugh about it now. :)

The rest of the night was filled with good conversation and decent poker. I was down as low as $70 at one point after saving myself from some deadly hands. And did manage to make my way back up. Primarily thanks to one hand which I am proud of how I played. I looked down to see KK, and cringed. This was not my favorite hand of the night after having lost that huge pot earlier. So I up the bet to $25 right away and get one caller behind me. This guy was a good player that called me so I had to play this one right. The flop came up QQ6. YUCK! I bet out $25 and immediately get raised to a total of $80. I hummed and hawwed, disgusted that he might have a Q or AA. But after watching him for a minute and thinking about his other plays, I was certain he didn't have Aces and pretty damn sure he didn't have the Q either. Perhaps Jacks or something equivalent. I push all in, this was my gutsiest move all night and my heart was pounding as the other player thought long and hard about the hand. He finally ended up folding and I took down the nice sized pot. He had AK. So that was a good hand for me and I got great respect from that player based on that play. We ended up talking quite a bit throughout the night and later when we left at the same time he even asked if I smoked weed. Haha, needless to say that I don't but we chatted up a bit more and parted ways.

The night ended with me recovering up to a -$140. So based upon the previous night I was down $40, but I was also up from last week by $95, so my poker outings are still in the plus. I'm confident I can grind away and make money in that poker room and I'll likely return back there every once and a while to see if I can make my thousands.

Well, there you have it. Lots of boring poker talk, but man what a weekend. When you factor in the free food and drinks I also consumed during my stay it also made for a very worth while adventure. Now if I can only recover a normal sleep schedule I'd be a lot better off!

Quick updates

I've been a little busy lately and haven't had the opportunity to post.

The main reason being that Justin visited this past weekend. So I decided to show him around and let him experience what Calgary had to offer.

After picking him up at the airport we were off to Banff on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. We stopped along the way in a trendy little tourist town called Canmore for some lunch and then continued on to go and check out the incredible views and features that some of our Canadian Rockies have to offer. After checking out the sights in Banff we headed back towards Calgary, but not before driving a little bit into the Kananaskis Country which has some incredible views of it's own.

That night we went out to Joey Tomatoes for a late dinner. Justin was itching for some good beef as it's hard to come by in Japan. So he had a great steak and seemed to enjoy it immensely. I think he also liked the scenery within Joey Tomatoes which is also a well known fact about Joey's in the Calgary area.

Then we headed off to check out some poker action in Calgary. He was also wanting to sit down on a poker game. We sat down from 11pm until 5:15am! We were definitely in the right spot for weekend poker in Calgary.. about 8 tables were going and we played for a long time. Justin actually cleaned me out at one point! It was a max $200 buy in and that's what we each bought. When I was down to my last $88 I was dealt pocket 6's. I made a small raise (we were playing 1/2 No Limit Texas Hold-em) and got some callers. The flop came 6QQ. Hello! I bet $20, everyone folded then Justin raised to $40 and I went all in for the remainder. Cards were flipped. I was ahead, Justin had AQ though, and on the river, of course.. an Ace came! Bah! So I had to rebuy for another $200 and began working my way back up.

Justin managed to take down a MASSIVE pot against a rather unique individual and doubled up when he had a full house against another guys trips. The pot was over $900!!! So at the end of the night I was up about $95 and Justin was up a very nice $630ish!

We left quite happy. The next day Justin and I went out and met up with a friend he knew back from elementary School days and who lives right near a very popular stretch of Calgary, 17th Ave. Lots of chic, trendy places, many bars and clubs and clothing stores etc. So we went bar hopping all the way down, having a round of drinks at each location. At our final stop is where we gave Justin some good 'ol fashioned Calgary hospitality. We had him drinking 4 Irish Car Bombs and a couple of big glassed (25oz) Hoeegardens. At this point he was not so coherent and was speaking in an Irish accent. :)

We got home and he was in rough shape, but survived. I dropped him the next day off at the airport as he continues his journey to Vancouver. I doubt he'll be able to top off the experience he had here though.. Hopefully he remembers some of it!