I feel like death

Well, I didn't even get to finish my day today. Had to call in sick halfway through the day as we passed back through Calgary and another pilot took over for me.

My stay in Vancouver was uneventful, everyone was busy or not in town, haha, just my luck! But one memory I took back with me, and still haunts me now, is the cold/flu that I think I picked up from my Dad.

I feel like absolute crap, and hopefully now that I'm on days off until Thursday, I'll have some time to recouperate. It would appear I've got a rather juicy trip booked in a week. Off to San Juan Puerto Rico! Hopefully that sticks, I'd love to check it out for 5 days.

Vancouver, nice and relaxing, until...

...my blackberry buzzed as I was having coffee with Ian this afternoon and I saw that my Sunday trip had changed considerably! Instead of a nice easy afternoon flight out to Edmonton and then Calgary, we have been tasked with another flight prior as one of the jets has gone mechanical and unable to do the trip.

This means that my day tomorrow begins with a 3:00am wakeup call for a 4:45am departure to Spokane, then to Napa County CA, then back to Calgary, then back to Vancouver to do the original trip to Edmonton and home to Calgary. All of this will make for a 13.5 hour work day. That's only 30 mins short of our daily maximum as jet pilots for our company. Also, all on probably 2 hrs sleep tonight. What a joy! Oh well, that's just some of the perks that come with the job.

At any given point tomorrow I'll likely be in the air, so just check here on this website and track my progress in the gong show of a day!

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ASP298

Feast or Famine

Well my work schedule seems to always come in waves. Waves of either lots of flights, or no flights at all. This set of days has been very busy, and it looks like I'll be flying right up until my days off, marking 11 of 12 days worked.

Today I was doing some rather fun flights in the jet, just hitting up a lot of small airports in northern Alberta. Each of the flight legs was around 25 mins long which made for some quick flying, but very action packed as there is not a dull moment at all. I was in Edmonton, Slave Lake and Edson Alberta.

Tomorrow it would appear I head out on a 4 day trip, and so for, it appears it will be a 3 night layover in Vancouver. So fingers crossed that it remains as such. Maybe see some of you folks during my stay, but at the rate things are changing with our schedules I expect to end up in Mexico in a day or two.. haha.

Back from LA

All back from Los Angeles from my weekend layover. We were blessed by some great weather with record high temps too. It was quite warm while we were there, which was great!

The flight in was very very busy. It was likely the busiest airspace I've ever flown into. Trying to negotiate the busy coridors in took a lot of concentration and diligence. At one point, a rouge aircraft somehow ended up in the airspace and caused a couple minutes of tension as we had to make a couple of maneuvers to assure he wouldn't get too close. We lined up on 1 or the 3 parallel runways that were active that night and we had airplanes all around us on the approach to landing. It was pretty intense.

After we got on the ground we were held up as customs took almost 1 full hour to show up! We sat waiting and waiting and waiting on the airplane. When they finally arrived they apologized and cleared us very quickly, then they let it slip that the reason we were held up was because they had to take some extra time clearing Avril Lavigne at the next building over on her private jet.

We stayed at the Sheraton right at the airport and my room had a good view of one of the runways, I enjoyed the view. No free internet though, so I was able to steal a very weak signal a couple of times to check emails and schedules.

The next day we went for a walk around the hotel and airport and had some great views of all the big aircraft coming into land. We were mesmerized by all of the international activity at this massive airport.

Saturday was our day for exploring and we decided we try and take the bus down to Hollywood and check out some of the touristy stuff. So I looked up online which buses to take (as we'd have to take transfers). Well, this kind of worked. First off we missed our very first bus 3 times! Haha, we finally got on the bus and then missed our transfer drop off, so after talking with the bus driver we just stayed on the bus until downtown LA, and we would then transfer over to a subway and take that straight to Hollywood. Well, as we got closer and closer to downtown we realized we were in some rather sketchy areas of town. Myself and the other pilot (Mike) stood out quite obviously as 'not from around these parts'.

We got onto the subway and then missed a transfer there too, then when finally on the right subway we got off one stop too early and had to walk quite a distance into Hollywood. We finally got there and walked the "walk of fame" up and down Hollywood Blvd, checked out all the Hollywood Stars, and also the hand and foot prints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. They were also starting to set up for the Oscars at the Kodak Theater, so that was pretty cool to see. That Kodak Theater is quite the venue! We toured around a bit more, saw the Hollywood sign, took some pictures and then it was time to head it back.

The sun was just starting to set as we got onto another bus to take us back towards the hotel. Once again, we missed our transfer! This time we were in some very sketch areas of town, it was dark out, with some interesting individuals walking around the streets. We finally got back to the area where we could take a bus back towards our hotel and we finally arrived back to the Sheraton in one piece.

That night we ate at the hotel restaurant which had a very tasty burger which was named "best burger in LA 2005". The next morning it was up early and off to the airport for our return to Calgary. A fairly uneventful flight home to a windy Calgary which did cause some good turbulence on the way in.

Here's a photo album (164 pics) which has some shots from my hotel view, trip to hollywood, and some shots from the airport before we departed (and on the departure) from LAX. Oh, and the shots with me and the Donald P Bellasario star are in reference to an episode of JAG which had one of the characters mocking the producer of the show, haha, kind of an inside joke.

click on Hollywood sign to view picture album

From the city of freeze, to the city of angels

It has been very very chilly here in Calgary as of late. -25 chilly. It keeps snowing too, which is slightly unusual for such cold temperatures to allow all this snow to fall. I had to dig my car of about 8 inches of snow in the -35 windchill late last night. Brrrrrr

Now that I'm back from my days off I've finally got some flights booked. I was beginning to think they forgot I worked for the company! Tonight I'm off to Palm Springs and back. Tomorrow I'm off to the city of angels, Los Angeles! I have never been there and I'm even looking forward to the flight in, because that is some of the busiest airspace on the west coast. We get to spend 3 nights there, so hopefully we get put up in a nice hotel that's near some stuff we can check out and explore. The weather looks like it will be nice too, I'm looking forward to some 20 degree weather and sunshine after the deep freeze we've had lately here.

However, our schedule keeps changing every hour, so I'm not sure if this trip will remain in it's entirety. Yesterday I was anticipating spending 5 nights in Scottsdale AZ but that changed too. So, hopefully at least some place nice and warm for a couple of nights. We'll see, things seem to be quite busy at work!

Bugatti Veyron - Fastest production car in the world

Some of you may recall the days when the McLaren F1 was the fastest production car in the world. But now that title belongs to the Bugatti Veyron, which I also like to call the Bugatti Sexerosa! This is one slick automobile which has a top speed of 253 miles per hour, or 407 kilometer per hour. It has 1001 horsepower, 60 cylinders, 4 turbos, 10 radiators, and one heck of a price tag.

The TV show Top Gear has done a few specials on this car, and in one particular episode they take the Veyron out to a test track with a 5 mile straight to attempt to get the top speed out of it. It is quite the achievement!

I've only done 205 km/hr on the ground, 460 km/hr close to the ground, and 960 km/hr at 40,000 ft. And none of that compares to what this test driver must have experienced during his test drive. WOW.

Another visitor to Calgary

Jon Sy stopped by early this week after taking part in a conference at Lake Louise. I managed to use some days off that were owed to me, and make it so I was guaranteed to be off when he visited. Jon's main itinerary for while he was in town was to experience some Calgary poker action, like Justin and I had done last year.

Monday night I picked him up at the airport and we went straight to Joey Tomato's, a very nice and 'scenic' restaurant here in Calgary. After a steak dinner for Jon and a Roast beef dip for me we headed straight to the Casino. It was 8pm when we arrived and a couple of tables of 1/2 No Limit Hold 'em were on the go, plus a tournament which had started earlier in the evening. As people were knocked out of the tourney, they progressively started filling up more and more of the 1/2 tables. Jon and I were at the same table side by side. Jon had some early success getting up to about plus $100 on top of his $200 buy in. I however did not see any nice cards and I floated around -$50.

The one hand of the night that made the evening for me was when I was dealt QToff in the small blind. 4 callers around the table and I limped in. The flop came QcTc2h. I checked and it was checked all the way around until the player in last place (who had been lucking out and playing very loose all night) bet out $30. I wanted the pot right then, and wanted it known that I had some cards so I re-raised to $60. Everyone else folds, and loosey mcloose called. On the turn came a Jd. Which concerned me slightly, but I didn't think this guy was on a freaking straight draw and at best had top pair, crappy kicker. So I bet out $60 and got a call. The river however came a card I didn't want to see, it was a 8d. This now made it one card to the straight, a nine. And that's exactly the hand I was putting this guy on, Q9. So now I figure, great, I've got tonnes of cash in the pot and he goes and catches his freaking straight! I check in disgust and he grabs $100 and pushes it in. My heart was racing. My rationale at this point was I had to see his freaking lucky cards. I had to pay him off now, and I'd rebuy chips for another $200 and I'd most likely get another good hand up against this clown where I could make my money back and then some. After a lot of though, I pushed my $100 into the pot (I only had $115 total at this point). He flips over his cards to reveal a T8. 2 pair?! Which he made on the river.. and wait a minute.. I had 2 pair as well, but I had a much better 2 pair! I flip over my cards and in great relief grab the mountain of chips from the middle of the table. I was happy, lucky, and happy. I was just shy of $500 at this point and held onto those chips pretty tight. I did luck out with a couple of other hands including one very nice nut flush, which was hard to squeeze money out of people after 4 spades were showing on the river. But I brought my total up to $575 before leaving the table, for a profit of $375 over a 4 hour poker stint.

Sy however was not so lucky. He got into some big pots, and made some big lay downs when less than stellar cards started showing up. Poor guy, came out to Calgary to have some fun, and he did end up loosing his full buy-in of $200.

The next day Sy slept in quite late and we played NHL07 on the xbox for the better part of the afternoon! We then did some shopping and it was back to Joey Tomato's for dinner. Where we saw the first period in the Vancouver/Edmonton game. We opted to not go back to poker that night and to cut losses. I showed Jon our hangar's and he got to see a couple of the planes, but it was rather busy in there as they were changing the engines on one of our turboprops and planes were also arriving. So he didn't get to have the full tour, but got to see some of it at least.

The next morning I dropped him off VERY early and he was on his way back to Vancouver and out of snowy Calgary. I think he had a decent time, he even wanted to take one of the cats home with him, I tried to encourage him but cat and house owner Shelley wasn't too keen on the idea and squashed my attempts. :)

So, who's next to come visit?

Gratuitous shot of the bankroll upon returning home. This includes the $400 I took with me to the casino and the $375 in profits.

2 great movies in 2 days

Well, the flying is still pretty slim pickings. Still nothing since my last trip to Vancouver and back, and that tease of a trip that never did end up happening. I do however have an upcoming trip that will depart mid February and has me spending time in Los Angeles, Scottsdale, Mexico and Palm Springs. So I'm looking forward to that 6 day trip and hoping it stays with me crewed on it!

At any rate, to help fill the days I went and saw a couple of movies recently. The first my roommate Mike and I went to was at the cheap theater in town which has movies that are just about to come out on DVD and cost only $2.50 to see. Not a bad deal, so we went to see "Stranger than Fiction" with Will Ferrell. I really enjoyed this movie, it was not the standard rat pack comedy that Will has been doing as of late, this was a serious movie but with great comedic undertones. It was Will Ferrell, but it wasn't. I thought it was superb. It's all about a lonely IRS tax agent who suddenly one day realizes that someone is narrating his life, he hears a voice narrating various parts of his days. He eventually finds out that it is an author who is the middle of writing a story about him, but to the author it is all fiction, but to Will's character it's all too real. Especially when he finds out she's trying to figure out a way to kill him off. I laughed a lot at this movie, but just because it was so well done. I highly recommend "Stranger than Fiction" to everyone.

The other movie was on Friday night when our other roommate/house owner Shelley asked if Mike and I wanted to go and see a movie. We had been sitting around all day and decided that we needed to get out of the house, so we all piled into the car and headed off for the normal theaters. We went and saw "Blood Diamond" with Leo DiCaprio. I'm not really a fan of Leo's, but I have to say he did a great job in this movie because I totally forgot that it was the same guy who once stood up at the top of the Titanic and declared he was 'King of the Word'. After seeing him in "The Departed" and now "Blood Diamond" I have a new found respect for his acting. This movie was very powerful and takes you deep into the diamond trafficking in Africa and shows the horrors of child soldiers and corruption at all levels. I knew of the existence of this type of diamond trafficking but was still surprised to see a close up view of what really is going on. I will also highly recommend this movie. It has a very good background story and is also action packed leaving you on the edge of your seat at times hoping and cheering for the characters involved.

So all in all a couple of great movies. I was happy to pay for both of them and definatly got my money's worth.

What a tease

As I'm driving home from having coffee with my room mate Mike my phone rings.

"How quickly can you be at the airport, but of course, I will give you your full 90 mins as required, but... how quickly 'could' you be here?"

I reply with "Where am I going, with whom am I going with and what airplane?! I'll be there in 50 mins!"

I learn it's a quick trip to Vancouver and back, possibly a layover in Vancouver. Score! I get back home, hop in the bathroom and quickly shave and freshen up, down to put on the uniform and grab my suitcase. I'm at work exactly in 50 mins and I go to find out more about the flight.

Turns out that we had one of our clients trying to get to Vancouver and he was booked on an Air Canada flight, however they had cancelled it. Why? Fog. Well, this doesn't really mean we can get into the airport either. The forecast was bad, but other airports like Victoria and Abbotsford showed good forecasts, so if he really wanted to get to the lower mainland tonight, we'd be able to at least get him somewhere relatively close to Vancouver. We are told to standby as the Air Canada flight might be going after all. So the plane was all ready to go except for fuel, and then the phone call came in, the flight was cancelled.

What a tease! Barely any work and I was excited to go, and the possibility of a layover in Vancouver is always great. But alas it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.