Sesto Calende

Sesto Calende, Italy.  My yearly Transport Canada check ride is coming due yet once again.  Thirty plus years as a pilot, I've done my fair share of them. The Pilot Proficiency Check is a yearly requirement enabling one to fly commercial aircraft and carry passengers, and as the Agusta Westland factory is just up the road, it makes good sense to have their training centre here.  We politely asked if we could get on a factory tour, to see where our aircraft are made, but we're told a trip to the moon would be easier.  I imagine a trip to the moon would be very difficult so we took that for a "no".  It's been raining steadily but we had one sunny day, which we made the most of, spending the morning walking around Arona just up the road, drinking cappuccinos and eating gelato.  This is not the Italy that the tourist's brochures advertise, this is Northern Italy, about an hour out of Milan, and it's more industrial, more like home, but there are quaint little scenic haunts here and there if one doesn't mind seeking them out.  The food is amazing, the wine....well, it is Italy!  Last year we drove around Lac Maggiore, up into Switzerland, grabbing lunch in Muralto, before coming around the lake and back to Sesto in time for supper, but free time and weather didn't cooperate this time around. The training with the factory instructors has been top notch, as usual, and the simulator flying, fraught with very bad weather and emergency after emergency, was challenging and fun.  We still have the actual check rides late this evening, then a very early flight back to Eastern Canada, catch my breath, then back across the pond.  I'm looking at a 13 hour direct leg from Toronto to Addis Ababa, smack dab in the middle of Ethiopia, then a short hop down to Mombasa, Kenya, where riots are in full swing.  After several Al Shabab - Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in Kenya, in retaliation for Kenyan military forces wrestling Somalia out of the hands of extreme right fundamentalists, the Kenyan authorities have stepped into a Mombasa mosque well known as an Al Shabab recruitment centre.  Shots were fired, people were killed, and the rioting has hence been steady and creating mayhem for operations.  Apparently a few people were stabbed today and numerous commercial vehicles set ablaze.  The worst of it is on the only route from our hotel to the airport.  I had to deal with similar riots when we were based in Mombasa over a year ago, so it's nothing new.  Got to love Africa!