Back from Chicago

Back in Calgary now, just in time to start my set of 5 days off. Our new work schedule is a period of 10 days "on call", followed by 5 days guaranteed off. We don't normally work all those 10 days, so it's not a bad schedule at all. I might get scheduled to work 7 to 8 of those 10 days, and that would be a busy time for us. More likely than not, I'll expect to work around 5 days during that period of 10. I need some more hobbies to help fill all the time off I'll have coming.

We fought headwinds all the way home, but not a big deal to me, just means more time in the logbook and that much quicker to the next upgrade. It has certainly been a very slow summer however, haven't been logging much of any flying. The winter time flying should pick things up, I'll expect to spend some time down south in warmer destinations throughout the cold season up here in Calgary.

My folks sent me a text message while I was in Chicago, they're currently on a vacation out to London and then down to Africa for a big Safari tour kinda thing. They sent me a message that said they had just landed in Kenya (good cell reception there at least) and were heading off to meet up with the rest of their group for the Safari. Sounds quite exciting. My mom hates to fly however, and I know for a fact they'll be taking some charter flights into some small areas only accessible by air, so she'll have to put up with some "small" airplanes hopping them all over the African countryside. That is one thing I always thought about doing, traveling to Africa to do some work as I see the job ads quite frequently. However, it's not all in the safe areas and something about flying as low as possible so the locals don't have as much time to shoot at you, kind of puts me off that idea and I'm suddenly pretty happy to be cruising around North America at 40 some odd thousand feet. :)

Tomorrow on my first of 5 days off I will meet up with my old room mate Mike, who has since moved in with his fiancee. We are going to go on a driving day trip (me in the WRX and he on his sport bike) which will take us south of Calgary and then west to the rockies, then up in the back way through Kananaskis country and then up through Canmore and back into Calgary from there. Around 300 some odd kms that should have some nice twisty sections and also some great views. I'll be bringing my camera, and my radar detector. A map below shows our intended route.