Back from Limbo after a year

Last Post, August 2007!? Wow! I guess Crackbook has chewed up more of my online time these days, I shall have to remedy that.

Truth be told, I'm rather sick and tired of Facebook, each time I log on I have to wade through a pile of stupid requests for applications ranging from "boob of the day" to "smack talk". If it wasn't so convenient I would have deleted Facebook long ago. Oh well, I'll give it another month and see.

What is new in my life? Hmmm, let me think for a minute, surely there must be something new and worth mentioning. Oh yeah, we have a new addition to the family, a girl, Morgan Jean born January 22nd. She's a beauty, just like her mom. She turns 1 year old this month! Time sure flies.

Check out her site for pictures and details: http://www.babysites.com/sites/flynfiddle/default.asp?page=home&seq=2

Liam is still a funny little man and pretty damn smart too! He's obsessed with trains, monster trucks and mighty machines. It's amazing how much information kids take in; every night before bedtime we have milk and a snack and watch Baby Einstein videos with the kids. Some of the videos have sign language, recently Kim pointed out to me that Liam does the signs to the video.. I was blown away! Like I said, he's a smart 2 year old!

The other big "newsworthy" item in my life is that I'm starting a new job this month. After almost 5 years I'm moving on from Air Tindi to fly for First Air here in Yellowknife. I just spent more than a year flying the Dash 7 (finally starting to get good at it too!) and now I'm going back to school to learn a new plane, the ATR42.

Leaving Tindi is bitter sweet, I've made some truly great friends, had a lot of fun times, got to fly with some great Captains (and do some crazy shit) but most of all I had the best boss anyone could ask for in Zenko. It sounds corny but I'll always consider myself a Tindian.

Having said all that, I'm really looking forward to getting things started at my new job. First Air's moto is "the airline of the North", I'm looking forward to seeing alot more of the high North, places like Resolute Bay. I predict I will get into taking pictures again.

Time for bed.Ciao

The Life

It's official, I am in semi-retirement .. at least that's what it feels like. I have been on the King Air since July 25th, had 12 trips for a grand total of 34.9 hours .. that's less than 4 or 5 days of flying on the Twin Otter! LOL. The time off over the summer has definitely been nice though, I got to hang out with Liam a lot and enjoyed summer for a change instead of working my ass off.


Most of the King Air flights have been pretty boring, short little trips to communities like Wha'ti, Rae Lakes, Lutsel'ke and Wekweti. I did have one longer trip up to Sachs Harbour, on Banks Island, the East side of the Beaufort Sea. I also had one trip to "Big Smoke" (aka. Edmonton, or the land of cheap spirits). Of course we hit the Beer Superstore and stocked up .. everything is CHEAP compared to Yellowknife.

I'm looking forward to getting busier again when I get back from Flight Safety in November, also looking forward to a bigger paycheque!

Liam turned 1 year old on September 1st. It's hard to believe a year has passed so quickly, I remember every minute of the night/day he was born. He's grown so much too, he used to be so small he fit in my hand and forearm, now he's this little giant and running all over the place. It's going to be crazy when baby #2 arrives in January.

WOW!

What a difference a month makes.

Well since my last post a LOT has happened....

I finally finished my King Air training and passed my ride yesterday. It felt like it took forever because I was crewed to fly the Twin Otter steadily and the training Captain for the King Air, Wes Hilton, was flying medevacs every day so either I was available and he was not or vice versa. It took a while but we finally got it finished. I should rotate into the King Air schedule tomorrow, hopefully.

I also got some GREAT news this week. On Tuesday I was at the floatbase passing in some info to HR when I was hailed in to Kim Zenko's office. Kim is the Chief Pilot for the Dash 7 operations. Basically he said he was sending 2 guys to Flight Safety in Toronto in October to be trained as f/o's for the Dash 7. He already knew he was sending Pavel, now he had to decide who was #2. It was down to Steve MacQuisten and I, Zenko said we were twins on paper: we started at Tindi the same day, we were both Loady/FAs on the Dash, we both started flying the Twin Otter the same time and both have over 1000 hours which was part of the bid requirement. The only difference was that I had the IATRA, which was also part of the bid requirement, Steve still did not have it, almost a month after the bid closed. Kim said, "Decision made" and tossed me the book to study.

I had to contain myself from jumping out of my skin and screaming "YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!". I thought about the Dash bid now and then since it closed but I was more focused on studying and training for the King Air, I was not expecting to get the position this early with 2.5 months before Flight Safety. So, it looks like I'll fly the King Air for just over 2 months and then move on to the Dash when I get back in November.

I felt bad for Steve, both Pavel and I told him within the last week to get his ass in gear and write the IATRA, I even told him he was making Zenko's decision easier by the day by not having the exam written .. I guess he figured it did not matter or he had more time. Hell, I even gave him a list of questions from the exam to help him out. A lot of guys said I was crazy for helping out "the competition" that much. I saw it as helping out a friend. On the bright side, Zenko also said there will likely be another bid this winter for a 3rd spot.

Keeping with good news .. it would appear that Monica is going on the Caravan! Congrats Monica, you deserve it!

What a difference a month makes ....

Envelope Please ...

And the Winner is ......... NOBODY!?!?!

Yup, it turned out to be a dud. The bid was a big pile of shite. Well, actually it was interesting what all went on .. long story short, the bid was premature, the next possible date at Flight Safety for initial training is not until October, and A LOT can happen between now and then, so nobody was awarded the positions.

One thing I do know for certain is that I did NOT get the Dash, I did however get the King Air, I finished the ground school last weekend and start my flight training this Friday. I think I'm going to enjoy the change from the Twin Otter .. low and slow vs. high and fast. Having said that, I will definitely miss the Twin Otter, it's a wicked plane! It was just time for a change.

I've been experiencing the sting of Karma since getting the King Air .. for the last year I've razzed the Beech guys calling them "Beech fags", it's a part of the "bush vs beech" rivalry. I guess I'm a "Beech fag" now. DOH!

Another perk of the King Air will be the time off, I'll be able to enjoy a summer in Yellowknife for a change.

On that note, I have to get back to the studying.

Waiting ...

It turned out to be a rather eventful week. After my last post I was getting ready to start studying for King Air ground school then Monday rolled around and whaddya know, a Dash 7 f/o bid comes out at work! "Requirements: 1000 hours Total Time and IATRA written and passed. Closing Date: Friday, June 29th". HOLY!!

I figured there would be a Dash bid sooner or later but certainly not that soon. I was kicking myself in ass immediately because I farted around about getting in the books to study for the IATRA, now that procrastinating might come back to haunt me unless I crammed and wrote it before the bid closed.

So that's pretty much what I did, Monday afternoon I booked to write the exam on Thursday, I got a Culhane book Monday night, studied Tuesday and Wednesday, wrote and passed the exam this afternoon (Thursday), passed in my bid sheet minutes later and now I wait until tomorrow or whenever to find out who got it. By the sounds of things it could be down to me and a friend of mine .. I have all the requirements, he's short on the total time but has been with the company 3 weeks or so longer. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Anyway ... it's Thursday .. POKER NIGHT! God, I'm glad I got all this study/exam crap over and done with for a while, I can enjoy some cards and beers with nothing on the go for tomorrow, except maybe a headache!

The Crossroads

Summer is here! Finally temps in the high 20's and I think I am going to melt! I don't know how I survived the heat and humidity of down South. Yesterday I did my first trip of the season on floats, we went to a place up by Great Bear Lake and held for 5 hours while our customers did whatever it was they had to do. It was 28C, not a puff of wind and swarms of persistent bugs! Funny thing is less than a mile away was one of the largest lakes in the world and it was still mostly frozen over!

I've had a lot of days off this month, Tindi has implemented some kind of a computer program to keep track of all the pilots hours/miles and apparently I was leading the pack by a large margin early on (Go figure, everyone else had their days off at the beginning of the month and mine are at the end of the month! lol), so I was not crewed for most of the month and tomorrow I start my 5 days off. By months end I will only have flown 9 days! Quite a vacation.

All those days off gave me a lot of time to think about family and flying, etc. After much contemplation, I've decided not to pursue the bush pilot route, or at least delay it in favor of making some money. The Twin Otter is a lot of fun to fly, it's also a lot of work for not a whole lot of money. With a growing family (Kim is due with #2, January 20th) and shrinking income I better get some other type of flying experience, be it PIC or IFR or heavy/705 time to open more doors. At this time I am just waiting to hear whether or not I'll be going f/o on the King Air or possibly an upgrade.

In other news, my folks were up to visit Liam again. Every time they see him he's changed a LOT. My dad saw him last in March when Liam wasn't even feeding himself, now he's crawling all over the place (Liam that is! lol), almost walking and feeds himself very well.

Dad and I tackled a few home improvement projects, mostly things to keep dad busy otherwise he'd go crazy with nothing to do. We built Liam a new yard to play in this summer .. a new set of steps off the deck, laid sod for a new lawn, built a sand box and a new fence to keep Jake and Tulita from making a mess of the play area. It all turned out quite nice.

I am about to do the unthinkable .. I am packing up my digital cable box, taking it to the cable company and cancelling our cable tv subscription! YIKES!!! No cable. Kim and I decided, $100+ a month for channels we never watch is not worth it, in fact we hardly ever watch tv other than movies. We'll see how going cold turkey goes .. missing hockey will suck. We'll see how it goes.

What I've learned.

Holy crap! It's been a while since I added any new posts here. I've been busy busy busy with work.

This Jun 15th will make it one year that I have been flying the Twin Otter. Before I was online I figured I would fly roughly 800 hours in the first year, that was the norm. By April 11th I had only 600 hours and was a little bummed out thinking that to get 200 hours in 9 weeks would be a stretch .. was I wrong! As of yesterday I have logged 770 hours with 2 weeks left to go before my 1 year.

Looking back on my first year flying with Tindi I realize how little I knew about what and how we do things up here. The learning curve was steep for sure and the times I made a complete ass of myself or displayed abissmal flying skills were plentiful (and still are!), not to mention the elevated pucker-factor some of my Captains experienced.

So what have I learned? Too much to type on here. What do I still need to learn? Too much to type on here.

My biggest mistake? In the race to get ahead and fill in logbook pages I lost sight of what I should have been doing this past year which should have been observing, studying, learning and practicing. I have been very fortunate to fly with some of the best and most experienced Twin Otter captains in the entire world, what a waste it is to not fully tap into that source of knowledge and experience! In the beginning I would just jump in the right seat and go for a ride, I never really asked a lot of questions or really observed how the Captains flew the plane or learned the little tricks of the trade, I just sat there and shot the shit. What a waste. If I had any tid-bit of advice to pass on to the next guy it would be have fun and enjoy what you are doing BUT observe and learn EVERYTHING you can. Oh also, forget about who is ahead or behind you, it'll just give you skull cramps.

Anyway .. enough of that stuff. On to other topics.

I'm having trouble trying to figure out exactly what is so addictive about facebook. It's cool for looking up friends and acquaintances and friend's and acquaintance's of friends and, you guessed it, acquaintances, yadda yadda yadda .. especially ones you've lost touch with. It's also great for checking out friends' pictures. So what else is there?? Be damned if I know.

In other news, Steve and Michelle finally tied the knot in aviator style on board a Twin Otter buzzing around Yellowknife and Cameron Falls. Steve followed up the unique wedding by forgetting his wedding band at home when they went on their honeymoon in Cuba. Nice one Steve! Just kidding ;)

Liam has changed a lot in the last month, he's crawling all over the place and even trying to walk! I'm quickly discovering the old saying "be careful what you wish for, it may come true" is bang on the money. Liam is covering a lot of ground fast and is getting himself into trouble at blistering speed! Funny little guy.

That's all for now, if things stay busy it may be another month before my next post. Yikes.