1. We hired a new pilot, and he started his training course at Flightsafety earlier this week. In this business attitude is everything and he has a good one, so we are very hopeful for a successful outcome. His last gig was as a Training Captain on the Beech 1900, which is a 19-seat turboprop used by commuter airlines. I think he will likely find the Citation 550 anticlimactic rather than intimidating, at least compared to the Beech 1900 which apparently can be a handful during emergencies.
2. Kitsch flew his first line flight at Air Canada last Monday, and I look forward to hearing about his adventures as an Embraer pilot. It's a very different lifestyle, and it'll be interesting to see how it compares / contrasts to corporate life.
3. Lisa is still pregnant as heck, so that's cool. We are less than 6 weeks from our son's predicted arrival date and I'm enjoying every morsel of rest I get in the interim. Still no consensus on a name though, so keep those suggestions coming. Lisa has agreed to 'Balthor' as a middle name if I whine enough, but that's as far as we have gotten.
4. Lisa's hometown of Goderich (where her and I met) was hit by an F3 tornado and eaten for breakfast by mother nature, so that sucked. The devastation was truly amazing, it looked like a disaster-movie set. Her family is fine, but some of the buildings they own were damaged pretty badly, to the extent that demolition may be required. Again, that sucks. One nice thing was that the company Lisa and I work for donated a bunch of money for relief supplies, so we hit Costco, drove to Goderich, and were able to deliver a lot of good stuff to families who really need it.
Oh, and I continue to fly here and there. For example, I flew to California yesterday. Here, let's talk about that for a second.
Here's a pic I took yesterday afternoon, heading toward Van Nuys airport. You know what's disturbing? See all that white fog? That's not fog, but it rhymes with fog. Mental note: take shallow breaths when inhaling air in L.A.
California was nice, but it was pretty hot. We hurried home so we could ride the ILS into Newark NJ today, which is featured below. Nothing too weird, just an ILS down to 300' with about 2 miles visibility. You can skip forward to about 6:20 when we start to get the lights...
Oh, one last thing for now - here's a special quick video I took a couple of weeks ago and then forgot about.
