A couple of Christmas Ideas

I'm back home, after a pleasant trip were I somehow managed to score upgrades to business class for each and every leg!  I did lose all my sim cards somewhere in my travels; my Canadian, Italian, Tanzanian, Moroccan, Kenyan and Romanian sim cards were all in a small pouch I somehow misplaced.  C'est la vie.  Since I won't be involved in helicopter related activities while home for the holidays, I thought I'd post some Christmas ideas for guys, in case you ladies were wondering....

Fine single malt Scotch!  There's quite a selection out there, from the strong smoky and peaty Ardbeg, the rich and lustrous Lagavulin, or the pleasant, smooth and spicey Glenmorangie Nector D'Or.  If I could have only one Scotch, it would be the Lagavulin, but they all have something to offer.  They'd probably go well with a cigar but I made myself sick while sitting in a garden in Cuba, reading Hemingway, sipping Cuba Libres, and doing my best to enjoy a Cohiba.   I was green less than half way through and couldn't shake it for the rest of the day.  My first and last cigar.  So....Scotch yes, cigar optional.

Another great gift idea is old time shaving supplies, readily available online.  I've been shaving with electric for decades but recently made a swap back to blades.  I found out that two, three and four blades have nothing on the old double bladed safety razor my Dad used, other than heavy marketing spousing their neccesity, and I found these heavy quality Ikon razors a pleasure to shave with.  I picked up a shorter one for travel, as well as a home and travel version of badger hair shaving brushes and real soaps.  Pretty cool.  If you've really got some cash to burn, I've got a Norco Sight Carbon on order as well....

I can't imagine anyone not wanting one of these beasts under their tree come Christmas morning....

Dunottar Castle

Dunottar Castle, in Stonehaven, Scotland.  Outfitted in Patagonia Gore-tex as opposed to a wool kilt, but if I had one I may just be tempted to wear it......

Super Puma systems and limitations, night clubbing, single malt scotch distilleries, and ancient castles....we have been enjoying ourselves, even if the days are long.  It seems that every restaurant in Aberdeen has the same menu; a few burgers, fish and chips, pork bellys, steak and eggs, mac and cheese, gammon...but we've found a few Thai and Italian spots for some variety, and the beer is cold most everywhere.   My body is craving some green so perhaps a salad tonight.  Our hotel is attached to the biggest mall in Aberdeen, and being a week to Christmas, it's packed from opening to closing with shoppers.  I generally avoid malls like the plague for all of December but I don't have much choice.

We are almost finished the ground school portion of our AS332L2 course, and to be honest, there are very few differences when compared to the AS332L/L1 variants that I am decidedly well versed in, so I am kind of bored, but heck, I'm getting paid and visiting castles.  Got a shot of my next steed from an engineer buddy....big iron.....woo hoo!  Base Manager headaches like reading through contracts, preparing operations documents and work VISAs and a myriad of other distractions has already begun.  Home on the weekend for the holidays!  Looking forward to it.

Bump Caps

Here we are looking rather silly in our "bump caps" at the Aberdeen, Scotland hangar, day one of our AS332L2 course.  I'm sure the safety dudes would have a conniption fit if they knew one guy took his "bump cap" off then promptly smacked his head.  No blood, no paperwork...

We've settled into grey and gloomy Aberdeen, rainy, windy and cold but equally alive and bustling with Christmas shoppers and festive lights, and everyone on course agrees, these are some of the friendliest people we've ever met.  We had no idea Scots were such an amicable lot, but the smiling and pleasant locals more than make up for the dreary weather.  Maybe that's why everyone is so cool?

My days are spent pouring over systems and limitations, and reconnecting cerebral links to Super Puma systems knowledge tucked away into remote recesses of my brain, ostensibly to make room in my addled head for the AW139, but being back on Pumas has my brain firing off synapsis at an alarming rate and it's coming back, slowly but surely.  Everything is so well thought out in the AW139, designed from the ground up with integration and modern simplicity in mind, and it works, but almost too well.  The AW139 is not a challenging bird to fly, as it is one very smart aircraft.  Enter the AS332L2.  This is a pilot's helicopter...big and complicated and cumbersome and requiring some pretty serious headspace for full understanding.  Even as I sat in the old girl for the first time, very similar to the Super Pumas I've flown for better than two thousand hours, but with first generation glass flight displays, and many modern enhancements, I felt like a pilot.  I was looking forward to the challenge, to take these girls out to some deep water rigs far far offshore.  Super Pumas are just seriously cool aircraft.....

Then....Friday night in Aberdeen, what kind of trouble can one find?  Overflow from company Christmas parties serving free alcohol spilled into the damp streets, drunk and over dressed Scots filled every bar, pub and night club, stumbling down the streets, happy, laughing, and old ancient stone churches turned into Gothic night clubs with spider webs and skulls on the walls.  I am really starting to like Aberdeen......

Travel Woes

Sometimes...well, actually most of the time, the getting to and from a place can be far and away the most unpleasant part of any trip.  Sure, enjoy the voyage and don't stress about the destination, but they're talking about life, not actually travelling.  I do enough of both to be quite sure.  First and foremost North West Africa was getting some of the worst weather they had ever seen the morning of my departure.  While driving winds and low visibility are fairly common on Canada's East Coast, Morocco's drainage is just not set up to cope.  Schools were closed, and some earlier flights were cancelled, but I headed to the airport anyway, well before first light.  The terminal was shaking and the power was out, but they started boarding only forty minutes late, and we were soon off to Casablanca, bouncing and rattling but I'm certainly no stranger to turbulence.   Then Casablanca....

No, that's not Casablanca in the photo, that's Heathrow's fancy new digs.  Very impressive, very organized, very efficient, and very far removed from Casablanca's debacle. I have to say, that was thee worst security check I have ever done.  There were four long lines for four open security checkpoints, and I was at the very back, but then there was this big rush and the line thickened at the front to ten abreast per line, then again the line thickened at the front to twenty abreast, then forty, and soon there was a disorganized mass of culture and language barriers pushing and shoving and elbowing forever forward towards a chance to get through one of the four gates.  It took me over an hour.  It was not pleasant.  I'll apologize in advance if I offend anyone but the flight was filled to overflowing with pasty white overweight Brits happy to be headed home, and there was someone nearby with a stench of BO so overpowering I was nauseous. I did sit with an interesting English historian with a penchant for early British influence in East Africa, so with the vent directed towards my nose, the conversation was enlightening, and the flight was not a complete nightmare.

With the travel I do, averaging over 85,000 miles a year, I'm a pretty efficient traveller, but sometimes I break my own rules.  Fifteen years ago on a tour in Baku, Azerbaijan, I desperately wanted to purchase one of the famous carpets they are world renowned for, but carrying two mortgages and dancing with bankruptcy, I couldn't justify the cost.  But now in Morocco, significantly more flush, I put some effort into finding a Berber rug and found some very nice ones, so I purchased some cheap luggage at the market to get them home, but now I've got one extra bag to lug around.  I didn't think it would be a problem, but with an overnight on the way home through London, all the cabs refused a local fare paying with plastic, and with very little local currency in hand, I decided to lug all my bags to the Central Bus Station, and stumble my way onto a city bus, who dropped me off with two city blocks of cobblestones to wrestle and trip and fight my unweidly bags to the airport hotel my company had booked.  Did I mention it was raining?  It didn't matter much as my bags spent enough time sitting out on the ramp in the driving rain in Agadir, Morocco to soak most everything inside of them.  That first beer in the hotel bar went down very , very well.

Next morning I head down for the standard complimentary breakfast buffet, only to find out afterwards it was not included, something I had NEVER heard of, so twenty British pounds poorer, I start making my way back to the airport, the devil's luggage in tow.  The efficiency of Heathrow's completely redesigned terminal was appreciated, even though I was a tad lost.  I had been through here a dozen times a year over the past decade but it's been completely revamped, and I must admit for the better.  There was quite a commotion at Air Canada's check in desk but I sauntered up to my privileged Priority check in and flashed my 75K card, only to discover St.John's airport is closed due to an ice storm and my flight has been cancelled.  75K (for having flown over 75,000 miles with Star Alliance the year prior) has it's privileges, and although I lost my business class upgrades, they did manage to get me another flight through Montreal, and still home today (hopefully- this adventure is still unravelling), only I'll now miss supper.  I'm still in the Heathrow lounge now, killing a few extra hours, and my travel home is far from over.  I still have to collect all those bags in Montreal and clear customs, recheck them in for the final leg to Halifax, and I know I turn around again in less than a week and head to Aberdeen....the price to pay having the best job in the world....

Goodbye Morocco

My time in North West Africa is quickly coming to an end, with an overnight in London, then back to my woodsy home in Nova Scotia, for at least a week.  I'll get a few days of hunting out of our whitetail deer season before I'm off again.

Morocco has been a blast.  I've made some new friends, dined on some amazing cuisine, tasted some old world culture and took some sun.  What more could one ask for?  I might just have thee best job in the world.  I may be saying goodbye to the Italian AW139 for awhile, an aircraft I really enjoy flying, but I can't say I was disappointed to hear I was headed back onto Super Pumas.  I've had the big old workhorses out in some of the worst conditions I could have imagined and they always got me home safely, and being an instructor, giving countless ground schools on it's various systems and running quite a few pilots through initial and recurrent type training on the Norwegian simulator, it will be like going back home.  After a few days of relaxing and tromping through the dense woods of Nova Scotia with my .308, I'm off to Scotland for some training myself with some old friends I haven't seen in ages. There's a very interesting ferry flight in the cards in the new year, and at the end of it, another SAR contract in a tropical climate where I'll be the instructor once again.  Things just keep playing out.....

Holding it together...

It's been raining for a few days now, strong winds rustling through the palms, the Atlantic surf pounding and booming, hail rattling off the metal on my deck's railing.   As I sit in an English pub, one that doesn't serve dark beer unfortunately,  the strong smell of leather creates a nostalgic sense of having been here before, but it is only my vintage "satchel".  The soft old thing's scent leaves little doubt it came from an animal, permeating every space it occupies.  Ex-pats watch whatever sporting event is playing out on large screen on every wall, but I've got my nose buried into Charles Bukowski's Factotum, sipping Kronenbourg, damp, smelling of leather.  I could be in a bar in Stavanger, Aberdeen, or even Halifax, but I'm still in Southern Morocco.  It's funny how weather creates so much ambience.

I flew some six hours the other day, with some good solid fog and IFR approaches to offshore rigs that I sorely miss from my years of flying off Canada's East Coast.  But now there's only a myriad of logistical headaches preparing for a base mobilization out of Morocco, destination still uncertain.

While tackling managing this base mobilization was something I've undertaken to keep me from getting overly bored pining away at home while my next assignment gets sorted, it does seem like my next posting is finally firming up. It's someplace I've never been before, so I'm looking forward to some new adventures!  I'll say it's a new continent for me, but I don't want to let the cat our of the bag in fear of jinxing it!

In the meantime, the flying is all but finished, as the logistics of moving aircraft, equipment and crews across International borders looms heavily.  My days are spent trying to understand tax implications of importing and exporting, consumables or temporary, VAT exemptions, etc., something I've been exposed to managing base moves from Turkey to Romania, Romania to Scotland, Tanzania to Kenya, and back again, and after this month, Morocco to........but it's certainly not my forte.  I think I'm better off getting airborne and dealing with the joys of aviating.  Enjoying the challenge nevertheless.....

I'm in Morocco!

The flight was quite a pleasant one; upgraded to business class Halifax to Toronto, exit row seat on a Dreamliner with six feet of leg room for the trip across the big pond, a full day kicking around London (took a city bus with all my luggage, that was a treat!), then seriously over tired, scored a very nice seat on Royal Air Maroc to Casablanca where I nodded off for a few hours, then hanging out in Casablanca's very boring domestic departure gate, wondering if I missed my last flight as lights started going out with airport staff obviously heading off home, lunch pails in hand, but eventually, an hour after the time given on my boarding pass, only three of us boarded a very empty Boeing 737-700 for the last leg to Agadir.  We requested to sit up in business but the stewards wouldn't have it.  Passport control, immigration, customs, drive to the hotel, check in, crashed....and woke up, stumbled out onto my deck to this view!

It's good to be back, in far, far nicer digs than last time, this place is serious five star!  The crews have been together for a good spell and everything just gels, so I've been getting on with the admin end of running one of these operations.  I spent the morning with airport security, the afternoon in a bank dealing with things I really don't have a clue about (photo below), but it's all part and parcel dealing with international exploration contracts.  Picked up a nasty head cold, but it was in a pool in Morocco!  How cool is that?

I really don't know how long I'll be here, and the management gig has the phone ringing and emails binging constantly, but I've been here many, many times before.  You just do what you can and be proactive and things seem to work out.  Meetings with the customer most of tomorrow.  As I'm doing up the schedule I've got myself flying Friday, and it will be a treat to pull pitch and blast off into the Moroccan skies once again, but I seriously doubt I'll be able to sneak away for any camel riding in the desert......but maybe.......

Off to Morocco!

No, it's not easy to look cool riding a burro, but perhaps I can pull it off with some more practice.  I got the call last night, with just over six weeks home and no idea of what the future held, to pack my bags and hop on a plane back to Morocco, to manage the base for the month.  I'll be covering flying duties as a Captain as well, and may be faced with some training duties depending on present staffing, but I know from experience. having managed exploration support helicopter bases in Turkey, Romania, Tanzania and Kenya, that I'll be very busy with a cel phone permanently attached to my head sorting out an endless variety of frustrating and inane issues.  Being the boss sucks.  At first I found the challenges rewarding, especially when faced with mobilizing and setting up bases across International borders, dealing with all sorts of logistical nightmares and dizzying bureaucracy, but then there's all the tedious and time consuming administrative tasks that fall on you as these sorts of things typically operate very bare bones.  There is just so much to do that is very far removed from joys of aviation, and it takes so much time away from the reason we sought pilot licences in the first place;  basically to fly and then sit by the pool.  It is not an enviable job, but they needed me, and I know I can muddle through. Besides, it's only for the month, and it's Morocco!  After I've tackled this job, it's looking like I'll be saying goodbye to the Italian steed I've been using to blast around the skies of Africa and saying hello again to the heavy iron.  I must admit, I have missed flying the heavies and I'll be happy to be pulling pitch in an old friend once again, but then things could always change.  In the meantime...off to the airport for another adventure!

Hoisting

Well, I actually have a pretty good idea of where I'm headed next, but nothing is written in stone.  There's now three spots on completely different corners of the globe where I've submitted paperwork on the company's behalf as they sort out where I'm most needed, all interesting and some better than others, but I best hold my tongue until the dust settles.  In the meantime, I've been mountain biking, lunches with Bob, and hunting white tails with my Bear bow, and quite honestly, having a blast with all the time off.  I thought I'd post a little GoPro footage of some Search and Rescue training in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya last year.  I've had the footage for awhile but my new MacBook can actually handle processing the video....

Basically as a SAR pilot, you need to maintain currency, as well as the rear crew and first officers, so we do these little training sorties with some regularity.  This was a very, very calm day but higher sea states actually make it far more interesting.  Throw in some squalls and it gets quite entertaining.  Unfortunately the AW139s we had in Kenya were not fitted with the optional SAR kit, so we have no autopilot hover modes, restricting us to day time hoisting where we can actually see for hover reference, but hand flying these sorties is no big deal, it's just takes a little practice.  Generally once we've done our recee, we move to a stand off position with the nose of the helo into the wind, in this case, a standard deck just off the port stern.  We complete some checks then lower the SAR Tech to a safe height, then quickly move him over the deck, avoiding the anti-pirate razor wire all around the vessel, drop him off, then move back to the stand off position.  We'd then move back in to lower a highline, to facilitate quickly lowering and recovering gear, and then lower a medical bag and perhaps a stretcher, then eventually, recover the works.  Throughout we practice various emergencies, as this is a training sortie, so we'd have comm failures and equipment failures and simulated engine fires and whatever else I could think of as an instructor.  Then we'd request the boat to change heading and do it all over again.  I'm actually concentrating pretty damn hard as I have a good friend on the line below me, but the conditions on this day were pretty benign.  I'd like to get myself on a serious round the clock/all-weather dedicated SAR post but I'll take pretty much anything that keeps me airborne....

Spider Lake

Well, almost six weeks off and still no idea where to next.  Not overly stressed....just jamming on my Les Paul and hitting the trails with my Norco.  Playing with my GoPro and my new MacBook, I found the bar mounted video I shot of mountain biking in Tanzania to be very choppy, so here's a test run with a chest mount, camera upside down and video flipped.  It rained last night and didn't break ten degrees celsius, but I had fun.  I always do.  Tunes are my own!

My favourite bit of single track in Nova Scotia, and only a twenty minute ride from my house!

Banff

Damn, this is some beautiful country!  I'm out hiking around Banff, Alberta, my Sony NEX-7 around my neck, thoroughly enjoying the thin high altitude air I'm sucking into my lungs at an alarming rate.  My daughter, anxious to get out and match her wits against the world, flew the coop while I was away in East Africa.  After a few days reconnecting with home in Nova Scotia, I was westward bound for a visit, a resupply and to deliver her snowboard.  Supporting local micro-breweries in the evenings, and scoping out spectacular vistas during the day, I'm doing a fine job of keeping my mind off of the ever changing uncertainty over future postings. 

While sipping a cappuccino in Zurich awaiting my next leg home to Canada, I received the first email that I was headed to a dream posting in the Far East which featured a much desired new endorsement, but it meant turning around twenty-four hours after setting my foot in my own door for the first time in over two months.  My indecision was for naught as the offer was rescinded by the time I actually did get home, as it seems Tanzania wasn't quite finished with me yet.

Then of course that changed, and soon came the thank you emails for a job well done with base closure photos, with all the good bye emails that go with it, and my future was once again in the air.  With my hours, time with the company, plethora of endorsements, TRE and SAR Captain/Instructor/Examiner status, I'm not worried about having a job, but I have far less say over the "where".  One side of me wants to just roll with it, to go where I'm sent and to make the most of it, to be the provebial leaf floating on the stream, my sense of adventure and the potential possibilities ever at the forefront, while the other side of me wishes I had some control, wondering why someone else is getting this or that choice posting and you're thinking about sending me where???

As always, the only certain thing is uncertainty, the only constant is change.  In the two weeks I've been home contracts have been won and lost, contracts extended and contracts cut short, people have moved from A to B to C and back to B and I've been convinced that I'm probably headed to four different locales with varying degrees of uncertainty.  I know full well that until I've got my ticket in hand and am boarding the plane, and sometimes even then, you just don't know.  My choice?  Well there are some very attractive bids out there, and plenty of existing work as well requiring my skill set, but my fingers are crossed for a return to someplace in East Africa.  That place has seriously gotten under my skin.

And then, there is also the option of giving up this touring life.  There are plenty of attractive options right here at home. Trade adventure for stability?  Tough call and one I'm struggling with.  We'll see where they send me next, as that will certainly help me decide.  In the meantime, I'll chill and enjoy the mountains of Banff.

Chillin' with Bob

Home sweet home!  The Nova Scotia weather has been absolutely stellar, with only one major storm to speak of in the last week, so I joined my best friend Bob, a very experienced "been there-done that-many, many times over" helicopter pilot, living just around the corner from my place, for brews on his deck.  I'm laughing as he tells me he was actually out flying in the storm that took out most of the power in the province earlier this week.  Stories of days of yore and lamenting dealing with persnickety, fastidious, impractical, pedantic pilots of today is always good fodder for conversation over locally brewed hops.  I've had more adventures with Bob in venerable old S61s two hundred miles out into the North Atlantic in brutal winter mahem than I'd care to remember, and they just could not kill the two of us when we flew together in the Norway simulator.  I truly miss sharing a cockpit with my ole buddy.  An ex-bush pilot as well, he started touring Internationally long before I took the plunge so we have quite a bit of common ground.  I often join Bob on errand runs around town, a remnant of an earlier friendship when we were both starting our offshore careers on Canada's East Coast, and somehow I tend to spend an inordinate amount of money whenever I'm out with Bob.  Today I ended up coming home with a fairly high end blender that I just used to crush some ice for some daiquiri recipe I found of Ernest Hemingway.  Chillin' with Bob.  Life is good.

He's got it figured out.....

One more weekend.....

Do I look like I'm enjoying myself?  We're prepping for yet another SAR Training sortie in East Africa, and loving every second of it.  I just can't get enough of actually flying a helicopter once again.  SAR flying involves plenty of low level shenanigans with steep turns and flares and precision hovering, hoisting folk off heaving decks or cliffs and rock outcrops, and requires experience and dynamic decision making skills, and it all adds up to some seriously good fun.  SAR flying is very far removed from the numbingly sterile offshore support flying role, which to be honest, is getting more and more sterile as North Sea "experts" bring about even more restrictions and inflexible procedures.  If I could shenaggle a full time SAR posting......

I've been getting in plenty of flying this tour, with over six hours airborne yesterday with a surprise trip to Dar es Salaam, so I'm as happy as a rooster in a hen house.  I've got one more Mtwara weekend ahead of me, then I'm homeward bound yet once again.  Many contractual rumours have everyone wondering just where they are off to next, myself included.  While the best course of action is to just go with the flow, as in most everything life throws at you, it is frustrating not having more control.  I love flying the AW139, but it wouldn't break my heart to find myself back on Super Pumas, or perhaps even a new endorsement?  I really don't have a clue what the future holds, which isn't really a bad thing.  Considering the possibilities provides one's imagination with plenty to keep it occupied, plus providing plenty of fodder for conversations over sundowners at the Msemo.   I've made a good life here in East Africa, with the snorkelling and mountain biking and good local friends, and if I'm not back,  I will seriously miss it.  But ever upwards and onwards!

Two Weeks

Two weeks left, and counting.  The forever blue skies have given way to foreboding clouds building on the horizon, the jungle darkening beneath as their tops climb for the heavens.  We skim over the turquoise seas now morphing to sad grey in our Italian steeds as unimpressed humpback whales frolic and splash.  The winds howl unabated raising dust devils and causing my cheap single pane and ill fitting hotel windows to rattle and trumpet like an odd musical instrument while I attempt to sleep.  One can feel the change of season as the prevailing winds shift from South to North.  Seasons do change here as they do in Canada, but the temperatures never call for nary a sweater, swinging slowly from pleasant and dry to hot and muggy, and stormy.   
    

This tour has been long, and I find eight weeks away to be a bit much, even though it's been broken up by stints in Italy, Morocco and Tanzania, with stop overs in Zurich and Johannesburg.  It was hectic and fun, but back in Mtwara time is just creeping along, mostly due to changes brought about by people I'd really rather not work with ever again.  I'm smiling as we are flying a fair amount but the constant bombardment of noise, either incomprehensible Islamic sermons blasting over loudhailers at all hours, brimming with self righteous and pious tone,  to Tanzanian rap far exceeding speaker capacity everywhere one goes, and the unabashed staring that seriously wears on one's nerves.  It feels like it's time to move on.  Rather than complain too much, I thought I'd share some images of this past tour.  At the top is my vintage leather briefcase/flying bag (Buffalo Jackson) on the seat of our SAR AW139 prior to a training sortie.  Perhaps not the most practical but I quite like it. 

This cool view is from the waiting area at the Tanzanian Civil Aviation Authority's "Aviation House" in Dar es Salaam.  One just has to lean back and look up while waiting to write their bizarre licensing exam from the fifties.

I had to share some interesting East African construction techniques.  This is in Mtwara but I've seen the same on high rises in Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.  Where else will you see electric conduit for water lines, and wonder why they leak in the walls?

And despite warnings about how dangerous Africa is, from the afore mentioned folk making all the unwarranted and unwanted changes, I still head out and have fun.  After almost three years I think I've pretty much sussed out the risk involved.  Below is a short clip of FM Academia, a band from the Congo, playing at the Makondi Beach Club.  I was thee only mzungu in attendance, and I had a blast!

Published

 

 

   

 

I just received notice that an article I submitted to African Hunting Gazette will be published in the upcoming September issue!  It's a story of my week long kudu hunt high in the Waterberg mountains of the Limpopo, South Africa, near the Botswana border, where my guide and I hiked some thirty kilometres a day chasing the elusive grey ghost.  The end result is a Rowland Ward Record Book kudu rack on my wall, and memories of long stalks through gorgeous countryside, wading through herds of impala, zebra, wildebeest, waterbuck, blesbuck, and red hartebeest, as klipspringer flushed from the foliage, my tracks mingling with those of leopard, and evenings were spent dining on fresh game roasted over hot coals.  I'd love to go hunting in Africa again, but my disposable income is presently tied up with more pressing matters.....


To add to the excitement, my kid has flown the coop!  She's picked up her stakes and headed West for work as I did when I was but a year younger.  I was anxious to get out and find my own place in the world, and I wasn't surprised she followed suit, but I am sad I was overseas when she left.  I'm sure a visit out West is in the cards next time I get back to Canada.

But I'm still here in Tanzania, well into an eight week tour.  I've signed off one new commander and there's two more in the works, plus with some OPCs, SAR Training and line checks, I've been getting airborne quite regularly.  Line flying has increased as well, and it all amounts to doing more of what I love.  All the recent fears over security seems unjustified, as I go about my business as I have here since the beginning.  The National airline departing Mtwara yesterday returned in short order with one engine obviously given up the ghost, so there is excitement, but to be honest, as my concentration is interrupted yet again by the intermittent yet incessant "Allahu Akbar" call from the loudhailer adjacent to my window, I'm ready to head home and just chill for awhile.

Eat Sleep Fly

Some iPhone footage of some night rig training.  Don't fret, I'm not flying, I'm recording from the jump seat behind the crew stations, checking out a new instructor.

I'm still plugging away here in East Africa, and having fun to boot!  The weather has been relatively cool, making the mountain biking pleasant, and I've managed to avoid the machete welding thugs that mugged the last guy to ride my bike.....so far anyways.  Life is good.  We've been warned that the local environment has changed due to a stupid bar brawl some of our compadres stumbled into, but I refuse to change my modus operandi.  I still wonder about the brazen stares from the majority of locals, as if I had two heads, but my local friends laugh and tell me it's because mzungus generally don't walk around so freely, nor in the areas I tend to frequent, generally preferring to sit in the air conditioned comfort of the omni-present white Land Rovers that crawl the landscape like locusts.  I'm on foot in a quest for fresh mint to share the "Moroccan Whiskey", or sweetened mint tea, that I fell in love with in Morocco, with my friends here.  I finally discover an East Indian shop owner whose neighbor has some growing in her garden, and he closes his shop and we head off to pick some!  Hand shakes and smiles and I'm off again, when I hear a scream and turn to see aformer base security guard running towards me,  then giving me a big hug, proudly sporting the "CANADA" t-shirt I handed out to all our staff for Christmas one year.  I give her some fresh mint.  As opposed to being a Moroccan social lubricant, I discover that in East Africa mint is used as medicine for a bad stomach or dental problems. Ah, life in Mtwara, taking it day by day to the sounds of cows mooing, roosters crowing, goats baying, calls to prayer and school bells, hawkers yelling indecipherable gibberish selling their wares, in cheap plastic bins balanced precariously on their heads, and music everywhere, always far louder than the speakers can handle.  Mtwara really hasn't changed.  Fuel is still being stolen at the airport, and I think it always will be.

The threat of ebola hasn't reached this side of Africa, and it's a BIG continent, but still our corporate headquarters expect us to be prepared, and we couldn't resist trying out our ebola suits!  Stylin!