This sticker briefly explains my retardation.

So we got back from a long flight a few nights ago. I had put my overnight bag in the nose for the return flight, forgetting that I had put some of my shaving kit in it. Long story short, at the end of the 3 1/2 hour flight in the unpressurized nose compartment, the aftershave skin lotion in my bag exploded, covering all my clothes.

I got home discovered this, then threw all my clothes in the washing machine. To be effiecient, I figured I'd throw the clothes I was wearing into the laundry also. I guess I forgot to check my pockets...

That makes 2 passports through the laundry in the past 2 years. At $117 each for rush replacement service, it's starting to add up. Passport Canada was nice enough to tell me that if I do this again in the next 5 years, I'm going to have to do an interview w. the RCMP to explain why I keep torturing my passports to death.

One unfortunate thing is that I had to surrender my laundered passports to get replacements, so I wasn't able to keep any records of the various passport stamps I have accumulated over the years.

Thankfully the plane is down for inspection at the moment so I didn't miss any flights, and got to keep my job :)

I have now bought a waterproof passport case and will be keeping my passport in the airplane full-time - the only time I use the passport is when I'm in the plane, so I'm hoping that those 2 preventative measures will ensure that my passport is allowed to become dirty and dusty without me needing to run it through the laundry every 6 months.

It's been 40 years to the day since the Boeing 747 first flew. I'm not really going to talk about that, but it's as good an excuse for a post as any... :)



This Wardair 747 is a -200 series aircraft, essentially the same as the original Jumbo Jet, but modified a little to carry passengers and/or cargo.

I haven't flown as a crewmember in a 747, but I have some really fond childhood memories of spending time in them, so I'm gonna go with that. When we moved to Canada in 1977, every couple of years afterward we'd go to Ireland and England to visit friends and relatives. Luckily for us, an airline called Wardair offered direct flights from Saskatoon to London Gatwick, and so we were introduced to Wardair, arguably the finest Canadian airline ever.

Wardair was founded by Max Ward, back in 1953. He started with a single DeHavilland Otter and eventually wound up with 19 heavy airliners in 1989, focusing on exceptional customer service coupled with relatively low prices.

From a little-kid-passenger perspective, Wardair seriously rocked.

I remember having a great time aboard the absolutely spotless 747, drinking free pop and eating real food and sneaking the occasional small bottle of wine - one of Wardair's taglines was "Steak and Champagne" so you know the customer service was good and the attitude toward giving little kids booze must have been quite permissive back then, which was awesome. Sure they had free booze for the adults, but it takes a special airline to give free booze to the kids :) Now that I think about it, it's genius on their part - give the little brats a shot of hooch and they sleep the entire flight - though I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to use that technique on any kids I might have. The aforementioned steaks were freakin' great also, each one was served on Royal Dalton china with a carnation, cooked to order and big and juicy and filled with the flavor and promise of vacation days yet to come! I'm not even kidding about the part where they asked if we wanted our steaks rare, medium or well-done.

After the steaks came the separate dessert trolley - again I'm not even kidding. I remember getting a piece of black forest cake that the flight attendant cut from the main cake and served to me on a china plate. Oh, in case you are thinking we were rich or something, I'm talking about coach class, not first class. Godzilla only knows how they were treated in first class - I'm guessing hot stone massages and complimentary oil portraits.



One funny thing I remember as a sign of the times was listening to music through headphones that were literally hollow tubes that you'd plug into the armrest - if you put your ear over the noise-holes in the armrest you'd hear the music just fine, and the tubes just conducted the music back to your ears. You'd flip a lever to direct the particular sound tube from the armrest into your headphones, from a choice of about a half-dozen.

Three times I was allowed up front in the cockpit to see out the windows and ask goofy questions- the Captain would let a herd of us file through sequentially in between meal services, sometimes more than once per flight - this was 20 years before 9/11 so we weren't even tased.

It's funny how some of those memories have stayed with me. You know, every time I hear a pop can open in the background, it brings back memories of the Wardair flight attendants opening a can for me and bringing me the ENTIRE can with ice, usually with an extra bag of cookies thrown in because, you know, what the heck. Then sitting in my window seat looking out over the endless blue, the soft hum of the engines in the background reminding me that we were doing 8 miles a minute across the waters. Good times, good times.

What happened to Wardair? Kinda sad story, so I'll be brief. Basically around 1986 they attempted to go from 7 heavy jets to 45 heavy jets in 2 years. That didn't work out so well, and as a result of the scaling difficulties and crushing debt, Max Ward was forced to sell his company to PWA International, which rolled it into Canadian Airlines, which eventually merged with Air Canada. Chomp chomp.

On the bright side, Max Ward is still around, flying up north. He was reportedly the oldest Canadian jet pilot 12 years ago, and doing the math I'm guessing that's still the case. Good on ya, Max.

Oh, and the Boeing 747 celebrated its first flight 40 years ago today.

So we went to Teterboro a few days ago. Teterboro is in New Jersey and it's the main business-jet airport that services NYC. We arrived late at night, cleared customs and went over to the Signature FBO, which is our usual FBO in Teterboro. When flying around we normally use a cheaper FBO, but my boss loves the Signature in Teterboro so when we go there we spend the extra money on fuel and ramp fees to make him happy.

Anyhoo, we show up at 11pm and it's cold and a few snowflakes are falling. Our jet really doesn't like being left out in the cold for very long - all sorts of hilarious and inconvenient electrical problems show up when she's been in the deep freeze for more than a couple of hours - so I asked to have the airplane hangared overnight. For those of you who aren't familiar, it generally costs more to hangar the airplane overnight than it does to put the flight crew up in a hotel. In the case of Signature FBO at Teterboro, they charge $265 US to open the hangar door for us, but it's still a lot cheaper than having to de-ice the airplane the next morning after frost has formed over the entire airplane, and the passengers sure appreciate stepping into a warm airplane a lot more than a cold one. Have you ever sat on frozen leather seats? Not fun.

I grudgingly agreed to the price of the hangar and then the nice lady behind the desk at Signature said "Oh, you will have to taxi the airplane across the airport to the hangar. We aren't allowed to tow the airplanes there any more. Not after all the trouble..." Her voice trailed off and she looked away.

Okay, I hop in the plane and fire her up and head over to the other side of the airport, where the lady assured me that people would be waiting to put the jet inside.

I'm going to cut the details of that evening short, except to say that it was a complete gong-show and I was stuck at the hangar for hours before the plane made it into the hangar and it was entirely their fault.

The next afternoon was no better - I showed up expecting my plane to be pulled out of the hangar and it wasn't, and the hangar was abandoned. That took about 45 minutes to sort out, by which time I was thoroughly frustrated and enraged at the prospect of delaying my passengers because Signature didn't have their act together enough to open the hangar door and tow a plane outside without agonizing confusion and delay.

When I was finally able to taxi the plane from the hangar area back to the main terminal to pick up my passengers, the supervisor on duty at Signature immediately came out to the plane and talked to me.

"I'll be honest. I know we screwed up and wasted your time last night and today. I have no excuse and I'm really sorry. We are canceling your hangar fee and your ramp fee and giving you a gift basket and we are also changing our procedures regarding communication so this doesn't happen again. I know you guys come in here all the time, but I'd feel just as bad if this was your first visit. We can do better and I take full responsibility for the screwups on our part. Oh, we also got sandwiches for your passengers because it's suppertime and we thought they might be hungry. No charge."

Now few things get me angrier than incompetence, but few things impress me more than someone taking responsibility for their actions and being straight-up about it.

Oh, and did she mention something about a gift basket?

I looked at what she brought. It had fruit and nuts and t-shirts and some LED keychains and chocolates and most impressively, a couple of USB thumbdrives for my laptop. The t-shirts were both XXL which really says something bad about corporate pilots, but that wasn't what I was focused on.

"Sweet! I love usb drives!"

She brightened visibly. I'm thinking that maybe the last pilot who got the mea culpa speech and accompanying gift basket from her must have been allergic to nuts or something, and she was expecting me to get psychotic on her anyway.

Long story short, I got the plane ready in record time and had flipped the last switch on the before-engine-start checklist about 2 minutes before my pax showed up, and we flew home and the weather was fine and the passengers were happy and I had a good landing in a howling crosswind, so all's well that ends.

Again, I understand that screwups happen, and that some days you just have to grit your teeth and get through it, but the way that Signature FBO in Teterboro handled the recovery of a bad situation really impressed me. We'll be back, if only to hope for a minor inconvenience that results in more free gear :D

Here's what happened in 2008 at my job:

- We moved into a new office at the airport and also started a friendly business relationship with a much larger scheduled carrier. The carrier now does our maintenance and we rent hangar space from them, and things are working out well - they are straightforward and honest and I trust them.

- The high price of fuel kicked our butts for the first half of the year. The insane prices we had to pay for Jet-A 6 months ago effectively raised our Direct Operating Cost (D.O.C.) by $200/hour for the entire year. In other words, we spent about $40,000 more on fuel for the same amount of flying. Not fun.

- The airplane behaved and we didn't have a single major unscheduled repair. One thing I absolutely love about this job is that my boss is a pilot too and he's not afraid to spend money where it's needed, like making sure the plane is in top condition at all times. We have a deferred defect system in place that allows us to put off fixing certain items if they break - we have never used it as we have never deferred a defect - we just get it fixed before we fly again.

- We went carbon-neutral, and I posted about it here and promptly got mugged for it, so I'll just shut up about that now and quit while I'm behind.

- We behaved and passed audits from Transport Canada (operations division), The Canadian Transportation Agency, The Canadian Business Aviation Association and one from the good folks at Transport Canada (maintenance division).

- The economic recession in the last half of the year has certainly affected charter flying, and we will finish the year with about 25% less charter hours than last year. Thank goodness our primary mission is to serve our company's management personnel on company flights - that means charter revenue is nice, but it doesn't make the difference between being able to put food on the table or not. Our parent company is in sound financial shape, and their business strategy is rock-solid, and I don't anticipate our paycheques bouncing in 2009.

In my personal life:

- Lisa and I celebrated 8 years together, and got married a few months later. My parents both attended, along with relatives from Ireland and all around Canada. I will remember walking with my mom and dad down the aisle until the day I croak.

- Lisa and I moved into a nice neighborhood, into a house with a back yard. It didn't take long to figure out that we are the bad neighbors with our parties and lax attitude toward mowing the lawn and refusing to put robotic blinking-LED-enhanced reindeer on our front lawn from November 1st to January 1st, so that's fun.

- My 21-year old brother came to live with us, and is currently surfing the web upstairs as I write this. It's good practice for when we have kids, and I'm learning new words every day.

- My best friend's dad passed away, only a few years after retiring from his job as Training Captain on the Boeing 747 for Air Canada. That really sucks, and my heart goes out to my friend for his loss - my mind short-circuits at the thought. I'm halfway done a post about the average lifespan of retired pilots - contrary to what you might think, retired commercial pilots actually live longer than the general population - there's a little more to the story of course, but again, that's a subject for another upcoming post.

- I went to my high school 20th anniversary reunion and was amazed at how people change when you drop 20 years on them. I'm 37 but feel 15.

- I lost 15 pounds. I'm sure I'll find them again, I just have to retrace my steps.

Here's what I intend to do better in 2009:

1. Donate at least 10% of my take-home income or 10% of my free time to charity. I have it pretty good, and I will try to never forget that I enjoy a level of privilege that the vast majority of people do not.

2. Quit drinking energy drinks. Why am I paying $3/can to feel nervous and irritable? I can do that just by turning on Fox news and watching Neocons explain the need for more war.

3. Grow a garden in our back yard. My mother has an incredible green thumb and I'd like to see if I can at least get a green pinkie going.

4. I really have to quit giving people the finger in traffic. I don't want to end up running into someone even crazier than myself and getting on the wrong end of a baseball bat because I flipped someone off for cutting me off.

5. Knock Lisa up. Don't worry, she knows about this plan. Lisa is very organized, and she says we are having our first kid in May 2010. Doing the math, that tells me that July 2009 is going to be a productive month. Mom, if you are reading this, I'm sorry for oversharing :)

6. Fly an airplane I have never flown before. In 2008 I flew the Citation 550 and a Cessna 172, and that was it (I flew a Gulfstream IV also, but it was in the simulator, and even though the simulator was a 20 million dollar one, it's not the same as the real plane.) They are both great machines, but I want to spread my wings a little further, variety being the spice of life and all that. That doesn't mean I want to quit my job - I love my job and fully intend to stay there until I retire or get fired - it just means I will likely end up paying some outrageous amount of money to rent a plane I have never flown before.

7. I want to spend some time on this blog and gather and clean up some posts for eventual publication. I don't know about a book, maybe just a magazine article or two. But I want some sort of ink-on-paper record of some of the stories, in case the internet gets unplugged by accident.

8. I want to travel to another continent in 2009, I don't care which one. Well, maybe not Antarctica, maybe I'll save Antarctica for 2010.

9. I want a freakin' cat already. Who said all resolutions have to be onerous? :)

10. I want to show more kindness, both to my loved ones and to strangers, because that's really what life is all about.

A friend of mine by the name of 'sky's the limit' is in Afghanistan right now, writing and taking pictures. He's actually staying in a house that Osama Bin Laden owned and lived in. In STL's own words..."Talk about a theme room.... It's actually quite difficult to believe it, but I'm staring at the same ceiling he did, just used the same bathtub he did, and I can only wonder what thoughts he had while in here. I have issues with time and space sometimes, but to know he was in here at one point in history, or several actually, sure has a way of playing with one's mind."

He has made a detailed post on AvCanada, and I encourage you to read the text for an interesting take on the conditions there.

Clicking makes the pictures bigger.

This is 20 miles Northeast of Bagram



A Chinook helicopter that will shortly be transferred from the US Army to the Canadian Forces.



The business end of an Apache attack helicopter.



An A-10 tank killer departing Bagram at sunrise




A Sikorsky HH60 Pavehawk search and rescue chopper, ready to go on a night medevac.




The night medevac flight was for an Afghan National Police officer hit by an improvised explosive device.




An amazing shot out the back of a Chinook




STL, looking brave and not scared.



What's the number 1 rule of armed conflict? Don't die. I hope and pray STL will obey this rule and post more pics soon.

It's video day today!

First we have a go-around in a large jet. I have posted other go-arounds before, but this one is a new one so I'm gonna add it to the collection. The one-line description says "SATA aborted crosswind landing in Ponta Delgada airport, Sao Miguel Island, Azores"




Now this one is a recent landing by a Cessna 310 with bad nose gear. The video quality is great, so that's cool too. I don't know if I would have feathered both engines before touching down - you never know if you'll need to go-around - but once the pilot has feathered the engines, watch as he/she hits the starter motor a few times to move the propellors to a horizontal position, where they are less likely to be damaged by the gear-up landing. I thought that being able to do that while in the flare was pretty slick.





The details on that one:

"AN NUYS AIRPORT, Calif. -- A small plane with a dangling nose gear glided to a safe landing today at Van Nuys Airport and both people aboard appear uninjured.
The twin-engine Cessna 310 was heading from the San Fernando Valley airport to Camarillo when the pilot realized the nose gear had only partially deployed and decided to turn back."

Whaddaya think? I'd personally rather sacrifice the engines to leave myself more options, but then again I don't pay the maintenance bills on our plane...

This is a new scam to me...we got this fax at our office an hour ago. I'm only bringing it up because it's an aviation-related scam, so that's kinda cool.



Some guy says we owe 80k for airspace fees in the UK from a few years ago. Interesting, as we have never been across the ocean in our planes. Also interesting that they don't seem to know our company name or contact info. To complete the awesomeness, this was faxed to us rather than emailed, and the FROM: name of Pietro Ferrara isn't even the same name as the person allegedly signing the notice, who goes by the made-up name of John Daniels.

Whaddaya think? Should we shoot them a cheque for 80k, just to be good neighbors?

I'm a trusting faun, but it is suspiciously similar to an email alert we got from Nav Canada a few days ago, which I'm cutting n' pasting here for your enjoyment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


ATTENTION NAV CANADA CUSTOMERS: FRAUDULENT BILLING SCHEME SENT BY EMAIL
This is to inform you of a fraudulent billing scheme targeting our customers.
If you receive the following email notification about outstanding debt, please DO NOT reply.
Instead, disregard the message, which is NOT from NAV CANADA.
NAV CANADA has contacted the authorities and is investigating. If you would like to enquire about the status of your account, please contact Accounts Receivable at 1-800-209-0864 or Customer Service at 1-800-876-4693.
We would appreciate it if you could forward a copy of the fraudulent email that your company received, in order to assist us in our investigation. The fraudulent email should be forwarded to alert@navcanada.ca.

The text of the fraudulent message follows.

From: Richard Vaughn [mailto:no-reply@nav-canada.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 1:46 PM
To: no-reply@nav-canada.com
Subject: UNPAID INVOICE

Dear Sir,

This is to notify you of an outstanding debt in the area of air
navigation service (ANS) Charges for the year 2007

If we do not receive payment within the next 48 hours, your flights will be grounded and cannot operate within Canadian domestic airspace and international airspace assigned to Canadian control.
If you have any questions relating to this warning feel free to contact
my desk. Your reference [Incident ID: 4962664].


John Daniels
Debt Collection/Unpaid Invoice Department
NAV CANADA
77 Metcalfe Street
Ottawa, ON K1P 5L6
phone: 1-866-954-6999
http://www.navcanada.ca

-----------------------------

Man, good thing Lisa supervises me on the internet, otherwise we'd be 80k poorer...

50 years ago, this was an ad for Pan Am's Boeing 707 jet service. This ad features rare footage of the -121 "short tail" series, and the original Pratt and Whitney JT3C straight turbojet engines.

It sure looks like a glamorous ride...



Things have changed somewhat since then.

I'm up early tomorrow - I'll post some night flying pics when we land at our destination tomorrow morning.

Ahh, a pilot's life. Traveling all over the planet, staying in fine hotels and eating in fine restaurants, meeting beautiful people and having a 'friend-with-benefits' in every port. That's the cliche, but it ain't entirely a cliche.

So there's this pilot I know..

This pilot has an ongoing romantic relationship with 2 other people at the same time. Neither person is aware of the other one's existence. This tells me that my friend pilot is a bit of a sociopath, and is also well-organized. The pilot uses a spreadsheet to make up flight schedules, then shows the fake schedules to each partner, and the schedules are set up to explain the pilot's absence through work. This has been going on for some time, as in years.

This person isn't the first pilot I know who has run two relationships at the same time; the nature of our business is such that random, extended absences are pretty common, so it makes it easier for a cheater to come up with excuses for a liaison. For example, I nearly did a trip to Texas this morning, which would cause me to miss the Hallowe'en party that Lisa and I have been planning for a while. Lisa didn't even bat an eye when I told her last night - she knows it's a part of my occupation / career / passion.

I do admit that from a purely clinical perspective, running two simultaneous and separate romances takes some genius. It also fails a basic risk management test - failure is inevitable, and the consequences of failure will be spectacular but not in a good way.

The thing is, in this particular case, it's worked so far and it's been quite a while.

I couldn't handle a life like that. First of all, I'm not too big on betrayal - I would drink poison for Lisa anyway, and the thought of hurting her on purpose is horrifying. Second, eventually the jig will be up, and I don't have the energy or inclination to worry about whether every incoming phone call I get is a loved one, distraught and furious after having unraveled some small lie that caused the whole big lie to come apart. Lastly, I value my time alone, and a quick peek at this pilot's master schedule (detailing time allocated for work, and for each partner), shows this pilot has zero time alone. To me, it sounds like a private Hell, but clearly I'm missing something. It's gotta be the sex, right? I just wonder how satisfying it can be when it's all based around a lie.

When I think of my pilot friend, the word that comes up a lot is 'selfish' - to me that's doing something that hurts loved ones, but choosing to continue anyway because it gives some sort of gratification. The thing is...

I have had to no-show to lots of important events and occasions with friends and family due to flying, and it is extremely likely that when I have kids I will miss important moments in their lives because I'm away on a trip. Just thinking about it makes me really sad, but it's a price that I will pay, and make them pay, because it's what I want, and because I'm selfish. Really, the only major distinction I can make between my behavior and my pilot friends is that I am honest about my selfishness to my loved ones, while my pilot friend chooses to keep that information private. Is that actually enough? I really hope so.

Skip foward 60 seconds for an example of just how wild a rejected takeoff can be.

A rejected takeoff is one of the most dangerous situations you might encounter in aviation - it's not easy to slow a large heavy object from over a hundred mph to zero in a few thousand feet. We use thrust reversers which help a little, and we use speedbrakes to increase our drag and slow down faster, but the job mostly falls upon the aircraft brakes, which are usually made with all sorts of high-tech expensive materials like carbon fiber ceramic and Kevlar (same stuff they use in bullet-proof vests), but can still be completely demolished in a single rejected takeoff. Brake temperatures can reach 1,800 degrees Farenheit due to friction, which which is on the high end of the temperature found in a cremation oven at a funeral home (thanks to Google for that morbid little search result).

Anyway, when we push the throttles forward in our jet, we have already computed and marked several airspeeds on our airspeed indicators. One of them is V1, which is also known as "Decision speed". On the take-off roll, once we accelerate past V1, even if an engine blows it's safer to continue the takeoff than it is to stomp on the brakes and attempt to stop on the remaining runway. If our plane is heavy or if it's hot outside then it will take more runway to come to a complete stop. Before we attempt any takeoff we have done the math (actually a computer program does the math, but you get the point) and made sure that the runway we will be using is longer than the runway we actually need. If we are doing a charter flight, we need a 60% distance buffer on top of the minimum distance calculated by the computer program.

There are some things the calculations can't take into account, the main one being if the pilot decides to reject the takeoff at a speed above V1. If that happens, then there is no data out there that tells us how much runway it will take to slow down, or if we will slow down at all - at a certain speed our kinetic energy is such that the brakes will fail before they absorb enough forward motion to keep us from going off the end of the runway. In our training, we get it pounded into our heads that after we reach the V1 speed on takeoff, we are going flying unless a wing comes off. But I have heard more than a few accounts from pilots of them rejecting takeoffs well above V1 for various reasons, and most of the time the runway is still long enough. Most of the time.

Now, this accident happened a couple of weeks ago in Cabinda, Angola. We don't know the details, but from an accident-investigation or "armchair quarterback" point of view, I can see several things that *might* have resulted in the calculated accelerate-stop distance appearing less than the distance it actually took them. How many factors do you see at work here?

A night flight to Montreal recently. I have flown roughly as much at night as I have during the day, thanks to a stint flying night cargo and another stint flying medevacs. I like night flying - the air is usually calmer, and the airspace is less busy. The major downsides are fatigue and the fact that you can't see bad weather as clearly at night, but overall I prefer night flying.






Hanging out at the Starlink FBO, keeping the electrics on and warm. I love the Starlink FBO - the crew car is a BMW and the FBO staff make a wicked cappucino. Oh, and fuel is cheaper than in Toronto, so what's not to love?



A nice big green light on our right wingtip will protect us from other airplanes running into us, in theory.



After a nice supper at Le Biftheque, I am ready for the trip home. Thanks to a large can of Diet Red Bull, I am fully alert, like a puma if pumas drank Red Bull.

There is nothing like travelling for a living to make a person feel lonely. I'm sitting in Boston as I write these words, and I miss Lisa but that's not what I mean so I'm gonna try to explain it a little better.

I mean that it's easy to end up driving aimlessly around a strange neighborhood in a rental car because I don't know where the locals go for fun, but I do know I don't want to sit in my hotel room all day.

Try driving aimlessly around in a strange city and you'll see what I mean about feeling lonely. Maybe that's the wrong word - I feel like I'm just skimming the surface, like I'm most likely missing out on the uniqueness of the place I go to, and that if I only lived my life in more depth, I would be able to somehow absorb more of my environment.

I try to get out and about in our destinations, and for the most part I succeed - when we check into the hotel my first words to the desk clerk are usually "Where would you go if you were hungry" or "What do you do for fun on your time off". When I have overnights with Kitsch he has usually already scoped out the best restaurants in the area, and we are pretty proactive when it comes to exploring, and that helps.

But getting out and about isn't the same thing as feeling like part of the community, or like part of the same species. There are lots of times I feel like an astronaut in my little rental car bubble - I feel outside in some strange way, like I'm a reporter from another planet come to do a story on the bizarre customs and habits of the locals.

There are lots of times I see things at my job and think "Man, I wish Lisa was here to see that" which somehow actually makes things better - it would be a lot more lonely if I wasn't able to go home and tell Lisa all the minute and pointless details of my trips, so I am grateful for that. Sharing it with someone else makes it real, and I guess I must need to do that more than most.

Don't get me wrong - the occasional feeling of loneliness is a tiny price to pay for the incredible satisfaction I get out of my job, and I certainly wouldn't give up flying as a result of it.

...I just wonder if other pilots feel like ghosts once in a while as they are walking down the streets of a layover town, waiting for the next flight to take them back home so they can become people again, with friends and families.

The conga-line of hurricanes and tropical storms is bringing moisture to a whole lot of the continent this week. That's fine by me - the plane could use a wash.

We flew mostly east today, ahead of the worst of the rain. It's a great day outside, and I'm enjoying the last few days of warmth before the leaves turn color and I feel the first icy wind blow down my back. The flight was uneventful and the US Customs guy was pleasant, so all in all the morning was a complete success.

We head back home later on, and will be flying through a whole pile of the aforementioned rain. It's nothing serious - no thunderstorms are predicted or observed - but it's still a spooky feeling when we fly into a dark cloud and start to hear the rain hitting the windshield at a few hundred knots. Depending on the airplane, a wet windshield can be really hard to see out of due to the water streaking all about. In my car I use Rain-X to clear the windshield, but I am worried it would eat the plexiglass in the plane, so I mostly use furniture polish (lemon-scented Pledge, actually) in an effort to keep the windshield slick and the water beading nicely.


Not much else is new here - Lisa and I have been married for over a month now, and I think it's going to take, so that's nice. We also are moving into a house at the end of the month, with a real back yard and a fence and everything, so that's cool. We haven't bought a house, it's just a rental, but it will let us know if we are up to the challenge of mowing lawns and shovelling snow, things we haven't had to do at our previous apartments.

Gas prices are starting to lower, which is a welcome change and also bodes a little better for my job security ;)

Oh, I do have something to mention actually. My parent company has said they will pay for me to obtain a non-aviation qualification, in case I stick a salad fork into my eye one day and lose my medical, or in case the price of fuel goes up to $20/gallon and I lose my airplane.

That in itself is an amazing offer, and this only reaffirms that I am really lucky to be working for them. Kitsch is going to work on his MBA, but I'm sort of stuck for ideas.

What should I study? What do I want to be if I can't be a flyin' guy? My parent company is involved with alternative energy sources, so I'm thinking maybe something to do with wind turbines or hydro dams, or maybe engineering, or maybe accounting or something. What do you do at your current job that gives you satisfaction? Anything I should avoid? I'm still in the very early planning stages and am open to any suggestions.

Wedding pix in the post below this one.

And now a few honeymoon pics. We went to Nice, France.

After an overnight flight I got to watch the sun come up as we started our approach into Nice.




A shot of the beach by our hotel.




I really love this shot - It was night and Lisa was getting her portrait done, so she was holding still. Everyone else wasn't holding still, hence the ghosts.




Second angle, watching the portrait take hold.





There were lots of street performers, including these guys. Watch the last 30 seconds for all kinds of awesome. Apologies for the sound quality.





More street performers, these ones of the "hold really still, then move suddenly and scare passersby" variety. The one on the left took a hankerin' to Lisa, while the one on the right held me at bay.




We walked to the top of a medieval fort to take a pic of the beaches below.





At night, the streets light up.






We had a great time swimming




We stopped to smell the roses a lot.



And had lots of awesome meals.




It was such a relief after the wedding frenzy and pressure - I swear I came back from honeymoon at least an inch taller, and certainly more relaxed.

Next, back to flying posts :)