A week in Montreal

My family has come to shop. I'm not much for shopping. I search out bars.  Not just any bar will suffice.  Bars with history and atmosphere, with brass and dark wood and chandeliers and uniformed staff and jazz and stone mosaic floors, and a selection of fine single malts.  Preferably someplace Mordecai Richler or Leonard Cohen had a drink or two.  I did buy something;  a Tilley Safari vest. Its pretty darn cool. I think I can pull it off.

A Super Puma has crashed in the North Sea and the pilot's forums are abuzz with inane observations and bruised egos. Four passengers were killed, but most survived and the crews aren't talking. Recent Puma crashes due to a gearbox fault has the offshore oil workers, our passengers, in an uproar and calling for all Pumas to be grounded.  It was just announced that it was not mechanical, no fault of the Puma specifically, but supposedly pilot error.  I'm sure changes to procedures are forthcoming.

I worry.  Not about flying or Super Pumas, but why I'm so anxious to get back to Africa.  For various reasons, I want to get back. I should want to be home, but I get bored, and I truly miss the flying. And I'm finding more and more, I love Africa.

 

Montreal hasn't been all bars and a good book, I was able to meet a good old friend, a helicopter engineer I worked with over twenty five years ago, who has been kicking around deepest darkest Africa for better than two decades, most recently Uganda.  It was good to catch up and compare notes.  We have more in common than I thought.

One week to go and I'm headed back over, with my new safari vest.....

 

Travelling again....for fun!

Changes, changes, changes....had it in my head that I was only home for two weeks, but yet more changes were made to my schedule and I'm now told I can stay home for a month.  And I lose the overtime.  Shit.  But the weather has been incredible and I can spend much more time with my daughter, although she's now got herself a job and days at the beach with her are sadly behind us.  We did get a fair bit of mountain biking in though.  I had some saved up airline points so we are off to Montreal this morning, my old thrashing grounds, for a back to school shopping trip, and one of my good friends, a helicopter engineer residing in Montreal who has been working in deepest darkest, will be home from Uganda so we'll get together for a brew and catch up....been over twenty years! 

Shopping trip in lieu of working over time....you can't take it with you.

I stink.

What was I thinking, travelling without spare deodorant?  Sitting in the lounge at Zurich, not really feeling like digging through my bag for euros to buy some, smelling right foul.  I'll have to strip down in the public washroom, wash best I can with hand soap and paper towels, fresh shirt.  Damn Zurich lounge; no food short of peanuts, apples and bananas, no showers, and only one hour of Internet allowed per six hours.  I'm here for four.  And it's warm, I'm sweating more in this lounge than in East Africa!  Being the height of the East African safari season and kids off school, the vast majority of travellers are families.  The security lines take about four times longer than the rest of the year, where I'm typically brushing shoulders with seasoned world weary business travellers.  We avoid getting in lines behind families like the plague, but there's little option for that now.  I've only an hour connectIon in Toronto, and have to clear passport control and customs, and I've got carvings to declare.  It'll be tight.   Maybe if I skip the wash up, customs will wrinkle their noses and whisk me through quickly.  But I know I wouldn't want to be sitting beside me for ten hours in economy.

The quick trip home, totalling four full days of travelling for two weeks in Nova Scotia, has been eventful.  I show up at Mtwara airport and am told there's a delay for mechanical reasons, but I later find out from my back to back inbound from Dar es Salaam that not one of the carrier's planes has departed all morning.  A few phone calls and I'm able to sneak onto the oil company's charter plane for the hour hop to Dar.  There's the extremely frustrating two hours of traffic in Dar to get to the Sea Cliff, but it's worth it, to sit pool side with a fresh breeze off the Indian Ocean and sipping cappuccinos.  Next there's word of a huge fire at Nairobi airport shutting it down completely for the day, and my flight, scheduled to stop in Nairobi, is cancelled.  Just before supper I find out the flight is back on, direct to Zurich, so I dive back into the Dar traffic for two hours, for a drive that should take twenty minutes.  Ali, our dedicated driver, does an amazing job of cutting people off and driving on the sidewalk and cutting through slums and alleys and creating a slight aura of adventure, and I tip him handsomely. 

I have to do this all again in two weeks.  I'll bring deodorant.

Update:  bought deodorant, did the strip, paper towel and hand soap wash up and shirt change in the public washroom, then was very pleasantly surprised with a complimentary upgrade to business class for the ten hour haul to Toronto.  I drank too much, free Gran Marnier and fine French wine, then slept through all the meals.  Missed my connection in Toronto, but I'll make a late supper at home tonight.  Tired or hungover or perhaps both.

SAR Captain

I've made SAR Captain!  And not only a SAR Captain, but due to my instructing background and TRE status, and because the SAR Captaincy training went so well, the company asked me to take on a SAR Training Captain role as well.  I was slightly shocked at the request, and knew it would ruffle some feathers, but there was a requirement and no one else to fill the role, so I accepted.  I'll actually be training other pilots to fly SAR, having just qualified for a Captain's post myself, much to the chagrin of some rather experienced SAR Captains, but I'll be sure to defer to the experience on hand.  As in everything I undertake, I accepted the role and I'll take it seriously, and I'll put a ton of effort into studying and learning from those more experienced, to make up for my obvious lack.  Stoked tonight.  Hoisting guys to and from heaving decks surrounded with razor wire with an aircraft unequipped with any auto-hover modes is the most fun I've had in a helicopter in years, even better than shutting down engines as students rotate just to see how they handle it (although I enjoy that as well).

To the satisfy the glut of SAR qualified Captains on my opposite rotation, and to replace a TRE who has moved into a full time sim slot, the company is sending me home tomorrow, after less than a month in country, for far too short a time home, then having me back in Mtwara and on the line on the original date I was supposed to head out for my six weeks off!  It didn't sound too bad at first glance, but considering the two full days of travel to get from home to Africa, and again in reverse, I'm getting the raw end of the deal.  Nevertheless, the overtime will be welcome.

Tomorrow the Sea Cliff in Dar.....fine cappuccinos poolside!

A guy walks into a bar with a chicken.....

A guy walks into a bar with a chicken.....

Really.  No kidding.  The bouncer stopped the tipsy fellow, and the story we eventually got was the guy wanted to go out for a beer, but didn't have time to cook himself supper.  So he grabs a chicken and heads out the door, hoping the bar can cook it up for him.  The bouncer took the chicken and threw buddy out.  Understandably, our protagonist wasn't very happy.  The chicken was still running about the typical African open air/thatch hut bar when we pulled pitch in the wee hours, no doubt euphoric to live and die another day.

The SAR flying has been going very, very well, even earning a ".....far above standard" comment on the training forms from one of thee most demanding Check Pilots in the company.  I knew everything went well but the comment put a smile on face.  Like my ego needed any encouragement.  Hopefully we finish ticking the final boxes early this week, then I'm off to Canada three weeks early.....only to head right back, effectively shifting my rotation to better suit base requirements.  At least it will put me home for my daughter's birthday, and incur some much needed overtime.

Rapids

Have you ever considered that you really don't want to know everything about someone, regardless of how close you are or how well you know them, as if some mystery and unknowns are required?  Perhaps it's the element of discovery that we don't wish to lose, the lure of the unknown, anticipating the next surprise.  I wonder if that applies to one's self?  Sometimes feeling so grounded, so sure, and other times, not so much, things on the edge of unravelling, disjointed, everything up in the air and you don't have a clue where they'll fall, if at all.  I'm finding, more and more, I enjoy things along this periphery.  Certainty has no element of adventure, no joi de vie.  Be the leaf floating on the stream, and hope for some rapids.  Take up touring International in third world countries. I can almost guarantee rapids.

The flying has been steady.  Contract renewals and rumours of a return to Mombasa, perhaps a change of hotel, and new people coming on board and old friends moving on, it's as always, in a steady state of flux.  Just enjoy the here and now and embrace the change.  I'm flying and working and having way too much fun, so you won't hear me complaining very much.

To add to this disjointed and bizarre post, yet once again I'll claim to have found thee perfect survival knife!  The SOG Seal Pup Elite.  Good steel that will hold an edge and won't rust, small and light enough to keep with you, and tough enough to take whatever you might throw at it, simple and functional and it looks cool
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