Back from Toronto, straight into work

Finally some work! Although I wasn't a big fan of having to drive up to Edmonton yet again in a rental car, but it's worth it for my next destination.

Currently in Edmonton now at the hotel, just hanging out here for a departure tomorrow morning out to New York City! Can't wait! We fly into the Teterboro airport and will be staying at a Hilton hotel in New Jersey. I have all the tips and tricks from coworkers though on how to catch a quick and cheap bus right into downtown.

So I shall be spending quite a bit of time touring around New York. I'm really looking forward to it. It is high on my list of "to visit places" and there aren't many of those left these days!

As for my past weekend in Toronto, it was a great time! Bonnie is now a married woman to Jim and the ceremony and reception went off exceptionally well. Bonnie was a beautiful bride and I was happy to have been able to make it out for the occasion. The wedding was on Saturday and so the other days John and I toured around downtown and visited some other sites and had a good time. Howard was able to meet up with us on Friday night and show us around downtown a bit. We ended up at a cool little pub which had something like 250 beers from around the world. I've already forgotten the name of the beer I had but it was damn tasty, like a Kilkenney, but better!

My nose is a little red after getting a bit of sun on the sunny/high overcast day of the wedding. I imagine that I'll get quite a bit more sun in New York City this week too so I have brought along the sunscreen to make sure I'm well prepared. Looks like the temps will be close to the 30's.

My next post might be from New York, and if not, it will be upon my return. I plan to take many many pictures and will post them up eventually after I get back. Until then!

Wedding Bells

It's starting to happen, friends are marrying off!

This weekend I'm in Toronto to attend Bonnie's marriage to Jim Saturday in Richmond Hill. Weather looks like it will hold for a nice outdoor ceremony and then later it's off to the Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Toronto for the reception.

I just so happened to cash in some of my Hilton Honor points and am staying for free for 2 nights in the Hilton downtown Toronto. I priced it out, this should be costing me $250/nt. Not a bad deal for free! The Metropolitan hotel is an easy 10 min walk away so that's all good too. Also, Westjet footed most of the bill for this flight after having lost my bags prior to my Puerto Rico trip. So all in all, I'm coming out pretty good for this trip so far!

Rain, Snow, Hail, all in a holiday weekend

Well, May long weekend has brought all sorts of weather here to Calgary. We've seen bits of everything. Seems about right, first long weekend during actual spring time in Calgary and weather goes to shit.

Oh well. It didn't stop my roommates and I from going out during some of the dry times to crank up the mini bike. You may recall from last year having some fun on this miniature sport bike. It is just way too much fun, and I'm sure we've pissed off all the neighbours, but you can see that they can't help but laugh. My cheeks are sore just from that very simple fact, that you can't help but laugh.

Here are a couple pics from the weekend fun. I feel more confident on this thing than from last year, frequently taking it up to it's top speed of 45 km/hr - which is damn fast when you're only a couple inches off the ground!

Let the mayhem begin
Full speed coming up the hill by our house
My roommate Jeff taking his first turn on the bike, he opted for some protective hockey goalie headgear :)

Flying.. woo hoo!

So I finally get to do some flying out of Kitchener, I won't return back to Calgary having not flown anything. Except it's kind of funny that we fly empty all the way over to Las Vegas and then do a quick little hop over to Palm Springs. That's about 5 hours of empty flying just to do a quick little 35 min flight! Oh well. I fly where they tell me to fly.

I'll spend 2 nights in the nice Hotel Zoso in Palm Springs (the one with the 42" plasma tvs). Temps look very warm over there, I won't make the same mistake I did last time and not put on any sunscreen. Thursday we will end up flying over to Santa Ana California to take some folks from there up to Edmonton. Then I'll drive home that night and be in Calgary by around 10pm most likely.

I end up losing one of my "guaranteed" days off as a result. I'll be compensated, and it's not like I've got much on the go, so it's ok. I've got some days booked off to go to Bonnie's wedding coming up in a couple of weeks so there better not be any trying to take those days, they'll have to work something else out then! It's a very rare occurrence that they get stuck and need people to work a day off. Especially considering we have so many pilots right now.

Oh, a funny thing just happened. I bumped into another Calgary Jet First Officer who has also been out east for a long time. We're on the same hotel floor and everything. Our rooms are 8 ft apart and neither of us knew the other was here! We have been eating alone and hanging out by ourselves and on the last day that either of us are here, we bump into each other... yeesh, you'd think someone in our company would have mentioned we were both here. Oh well. We'll be heading out to dinner shortly.

Off to Ontario for a few days

Not much blogging lately, that's because not much is happening. I haven't been getting any flights as we have too many pilots in my position right now with some new guys who need their initial training. So they generally get a bit of priority so they can be fully signed off to fly with all the crews.

There is a plane in Kitchner, ON and my room mate Mike had been out there with it, but he goes on his days off tomorrow, so he's flying back on Westjet right now, and I will fly out tomorrow morning to take over hanging out.

So, no flights actually planned, just hanging out with the plane if any flights do come up. That means that instead of sitting on my ass not flying in Calgary, now I'll be doing the same out in Ontario. I'll be flown back on Wednesday if no flights come up that can bring back earlier than that. Thursday begin my actual days off, so if the plane is still out there I imagine they'll fly out another guy to cover.

Other news, I finally got my new tires mounted. I've kept the old rubber as I found a buyer who'll take them off me for $20 each, which helps pay for the mounting and balancing costs. I'm glad I had won 2 of the tires already because it was a hefty bill even if just for 2 tires and the mounting. The Yokohama AVSES100's do look mighty sexy and handle great though.

Well, off to Toronto bright and early tomorrow. So maybe I'll post from out there.

Mazatlan no more

Oh well, I couldn't really count on it, and the schedule changed around a bunch so I didn't get to go on the trip today to Mazatlan MX.

There is also nothing else on the schedule for me. In the near future I see some Las Vegas trips and a Chicago trip, so maybe I'll get one of those.

Did I wake up in Vancouver???

You think I'd be living in Vancouver with a forecast like this:

Nope, just a weird day in Calgary. Our annual rainfall here in Calgary is around 300mm (Vancouver is 1120mm!) so when it starts to rain this hard, it's quite unusual. We're essentially getting 10% of our annual rainfall over the next 24hrs!

As I'm typing this out our power just went out. Hmmm, something to do with all this water perhaps!? More likely somebody just drove into a power transformer after panicking from having to use their windshield wipers. Much the same way a Vancouver driver panics when the snow starts flying and they start driving into ditches all over town. Oh, it only last 10 minutes, the power just came back to life. Fewph, not much to do on a rainy day in Calgary, I needed the power!

One good thing that will come out of this nice heavy rainfall will be a bit of a road clean. Most of the neighborhoods have now had the street sweepers come through and clear away most of the left over winter gravel, but it is still pretty dusty and dirty around places. So hopefully this will help clean up some of these streets. That's one thing I miss about Vancouver, the nice clean streets, no gravel, no road salt etc.