New Sheriff

Guess who's boss again?  It's a long story but the acting manager had to fly home for an indeterminate duration and as the previous manager here for over a year, as well as managing offshore exploration support bases in Kenya, Romania and various bases in Northern Turkey, plus numerous base moves across International borders, I guess I was the easiest fix to fill the vacant post.  It is not a fun job.  It took me quite a few tours to get out from under the title "Base Manager".  I enjoyed the challenges but as an instructor and examiner, there was no way I could handle the workload of both posts and I had to choose, so I stepped down after quite a few years of constant headaches and concentrated on the training department, and now back at the helm, I'm quite sure I chose correctly.  It probably won't be for very long, but.....all that belly aching I've been doing in the past few posts....lets just say I'm smiling again.

And don't forget what it's all about......flying helicopters baby!

Finding Shagri La

Yup, he's got it figured out.  Lounging poolside at the Old Boma in Mikindani, while we humans fret over choices.  Choices are not always welcome.  Sometimes it's better to just make due with the hand you're dealt.  I've gone from thinking I've found the secret to happiness, that I've figured out an ideal life of perfection that escapes the masses, playing in the sun in an exotic locale, living a life of adventure and fun, to really wishing I was just at home, with its grey skies and drizzle and cold and wind, but home.  Choices put me here.  Choices could get me out of here.  I'm torn.

One gets tired of dealing with stupidity, or people in power imposing their morals, their idea of how things should be, making rules and restrictions for what end I'm not sure.  Live and let live.  Silly concerns of security while other lapses abound, when just beyond our gates people are living their lives unencumbered with corporate responsibility or appearance.  It's silliness and I shake my head.  Much harder to swallow when I had run the show myself for so long.  But what are my choices?  Put up or move on?  The world is changing and Africa provided a breath of fresh air, but now even that's being taken away.  I'd like to stay.  I like the mountain biking and snorkelling and monkeys and friendly people and Search and Rescue hoisting and the freedom, but I'd shoot myself in the foot to spite someone.  Trying to be smart.  Weighing options.  Battle not lost quite yet.  I know I'd miss Africa sorely.

 

Yet another spill on a mountain bike, adding to a pattern work of scars from years of pushing too hard.  Blasting down a steep rough and rutted mud trail far too fast, taking a blind loose corner slightly out of control and not overly surprised when the front wheel washes out, with so many crashes under my belt, I've been here many times before and it all unravels in slow-mo, wondering as I'm still earth-bound how badly this will hurt, but after the prerequisite post-crash lay-quietly-and take-stock-to-see-if-anything-is-broken, I'm happy to find I've only reopened up the leg wound from last week, perhaps adding a few more scrapes, but I have quite seriously messed up my shoulder.  A very unpleasant ride back to the hotel after repairing various items knocked askew on my steed.  Lots of Advil and four days later it still wakes me up when I roll onto it at night, my sleeping self not as careful as I would like.  I do like the 27.5" wheels though.  While your center of gravity feels much higher, the frame has me sitting far more upright and it's easier on my lower back, and it's a solid bike to blitz over the hard packed mud trails and roads of Mtwara.  I've been out every day, even with the painful shoulder.....

My few days in Dar es Salaam were a pleasure, and I now understand why traffic is so horrendous during the rains. In rain the police aren't out, so there are no fines for breaking rules, no enforced guidance, and the roads become a free for all and are soon in deadlock...we sat at one point for over forty-five minutes without moving.  I've been around and I've never seen traffic like Dar, where a drive from the airport to the coast can vary from twenty minutes to over three hours.  Mtwara's mud roads are far preferred!

We were back to the Old Boma on Sunday, reopened after months of renovations.  Blue monkeys high in the trees pee in our general direction, thankfully short of their mark, and I wonder if they are just answering the call or is there malicious intent?  We laugh regardless.   I do like Africa.  What to do?  What to do?

 

I'm going fast Mom!

No, not really.  Just out ripping around the Nova Scotia bush one last time, as I'm off to Tanzania tomorrow for another six week stint.  I get to spend two nights and a day in Dar es Salaam to sort some licencing stuff, and thankfully I'm staying at the gorgeous Sea Cliff hotel.  Nice way to start a tour!  All packed and sorted and as ready as I could possibly be.  It's a pain hauling a bike over in addition to everything else, but I think it will be worth it.  Mountain biking is just too much fun and we have a serious amount of time to kill.....

Took one spill today.  Still feeling like a big kid.  I think that's a good thing.

Bucket List

Someone recently asked me while discussing the recent Everest news if seeing Tibet was on my bucket list.  It's definitively something I want to do but I think I've passed over the bucket list concept a few times over.  I've read more than enough mountaineering books and treks through the Himalayas to provide plenty of food for my very over active imagination.  Reinhold Messner's solo ascents of all the big fourteen had me yearning for a little challenge of my own, and I took up rock and ice climbing quite seriously, with a grade five first ascent to my name in the Thunder Bay area; Red Rock Revival.  You can look it up.  But to be quite frank, I've checked pretty much everything on whatever bucket list I may have had, some items many times over.  I still haven't driven a Porsche 911, but pretty much everything else has been checked and then some.  I've done plenty more than even my imagination had yearned for, just going with the flow and no doubt being a little lucky.  I never really actively pursued a list, but if something presented itself, I always went for it.  Often to my detriment but I don't regret a second.  Always go for it.  Grow a pair, take a risk. 

I don't think I'm overly reckless.  My job certainly doesn't allow for reckless behaviour, and I certainly wouldn't have made it as far as I have if I were.  I am prepared.  I know the rules and I follow them.  I know the aircraft.  I know the procedures.  I study.  I review.  I prepare. I self examine and reassess.  I don't see any reckless behaviour at all but more than a few people comment that I'm pretty far out there when they hear that I'm flying a search and rescue helicopter and living in East Africa.  It's knowing what you can handle and that only comes from pushing oneself, getting out of one's comfort zone.  I didn't make the cover of the Globe & Mail (Canada's National Newspaper) for surfing in a hurricane due to reckless behaviour.  I started out in three foot slop, surfed hard and heavy and worked my way up to being comfortable slinging my short board on eight and nine foot days, and I surfed and surfed and eventually got to the point were I was extremely comfortable paddling out into eighteen foot plus swells, the really heavy days on Canada's East Coast, knowing when I could handle the strong currents and more importantly, knowing when to bail.

 

Hoping not to come across sounding too preachy, but life is meant to be lived.  Bucket list.  I just want to be sitting in my rocking chair in my eighties thinking back, with a big smile on my face. 

 

Back to Tanzania in a week.......

 

http://www.mountainproject.com/v/red-rock-revival/106221558  (FA = First Ascent)