The joke's on me

Guidebooks of things to see and do in Morocco have taken up residence in the centre of the dinning room table, pages dog eared and folded corners.  It was a done deal.  I was off to Morocco for my next tour!  Two days before I'm headed to the airport for the first leg of my trip, everything has changed.  It seems my particular skill set, namely the Search and Rescue instructor role, is still required in Tanzania, as well as my Check Pilot status, so I'm headed back to Mtwara.  I am still headed for Northern Italy in a few hours for a weekend of fun in the simulator, then I am actually headed to Morocco to give some check rides at the base, so I will get to see the place for a few days, then I'm dragging my gear to Dar es Salaam and eventually Mtwara for yet another six week tour.  There are some good friends I'll be happy to see, my possessed mountain bike is still there waiting for....hmmmm....maybe THAT has something to do with the change in posting.....

Waiting, waiting....

In limbo, but I doubt I'll be back in Tanzania next tour.  Word is Morocco but I'm waiting for confirmation.....although that would be very, very cool!  William Boroughs and Jack Kerouc, watch out.  As the wheels appear to be coming off in Kenya, with yet another couple of deaths in Mombasa today, and damn, I do love Mombasa, and machete wielding thugs mugging mzungus in Mtwara, perhaps the North West quadrant of Africa will be a nice change....there will be no SAR component and I'll sorely miss hoisting guys off decks, but it's Morocco!!!

Sitting at home waiting, I've been giving my Les Paul some love and came up with a few new ditties to put lyrics to eventually.....

Still, no rest for the wicked, I'm Northern Italy bound Friday for a simulator check ride....

The Good Ole Days....

Ah, the days of bush camps in the high North, sipping cheap beer sitting on fuel drums, smelling of sweat and freshly applied DEET.  After a day of twisting a cork wood throttle in an old bird from the 50's, moving crews between confined areas, rock pinnacles and shorelines, there was a sense of purpose, of getting work done.....evenings spent cleaning all the bugs off the bubble screen with water hauled up from the stream, the ritual of squirting grease into all the many, many bearings, inspecting cables and every moving part as one goes, and then hand pumping avgas for the next day, the pumps always needing fresh filters, bolt heads stripped and worn, while someone fries up fresh caught trout over an open fire.  Not too many guys have worked wood bladed 47s in the bush, living out of tent camps for months on your own, no engineer, no phones, no contact with anyone outside one's existence in the bush, and I was as happy as I can ever remember being.  I was still young and fresh but finally off the farm, where I was pulling in a paltry $25 a day, though they were splendid hard days, days spent throwing hay bails, fresh cut into heavy squares bound with tine, up onto old dilapidated trailers towed behind even older tractors, walking alongside under mid-Canadian skies, skies so blue, with hands raw and chaffed and as fit as one can be, or perhaps up in a dark dusty mow, breathing that sweet scent of cut hay, the dust dancing in the slivers of sunlight cutting through the loose barn boards....but now, now I was living my dream, I was flying.  Moose surveys, mapping projects and exploring for silica sand, modern day prospectors in search of clues to diamonds or gold in Canada's rough North.  Then after getting a few seasons, and a few hundred hours under my belt as an honest to goodness aviator, I made the natural progression onto larger turbine powered birds, still old by the day's standard, for all you had was a compass and engine gauges, and a second hand map stuffed under the seat.  But still, I was moving up in the world.....

 

 

Now I was moving drilling equipment, slinging fuel drums, building microwave towers and stations on mountain tops, and probably the most fun you can have in any helicopter; fighting forest fires.  There's always a hectic sense of purpose when natural resources are going up in flames, with the busy radio traffic of multiple helicopters and bird dogs and water bombers, one feels part and parcel with the adventure unfolding around you.  You are moving crews and slinging gear, drip torching, and bucketing for hours on end, scooping loads of water from streams and ponds nestled deep into the trees, to drop on hot spots or quickly advancing fire lines, or to give a ground crew an escape route, the smells now of ash and heat and jet fuel.  Conditions continue to improve, as canvas tent camps moved into my memory as I now slept in Arco trailers, at times with a room to myself, and there was always the rare treat of living in a cheap motel, with one's helo parked out back.  I was even happier if I scored a long line job, with underslung loads far below the helicopter, generally so your spinning blades could remain above the trees, placed with precision while you hung half out of the helo to watch the load swing into place with whatever momentum you've induced with imperceptible pressures applied instinctively to your controls.

Even as now, one was always dealing with ever demanding customers, getting the job done despite the weather and any number of hindrances, but there's less of pushing back on loads "the other guy took".  The good ole days.  Looking back I'm sure there were stresses, but I only remember being content.

 

 

I'm home now.  I still like getting out in the woods whenever I can, but I'm missing the flying when I'm off for too long.  How many jobs are there where you can make good money doing what you love?  And see the world while doing it?  I miss the bush flying, and I feel bad for guys who have only known offshore, as their limited view of the industry often leads to an attitude of "this is how it's done".  For all of offshore flying's faults and airline like attitudes and procedures, the birds are the best you can get your hands on, the salaries are very good, and conditions, depending on where you are posted, tend to be better than Arco trailers parked in black fly infested tundra.  Air Ambulance was a nice mix of bush flying skills and twin engine two crew IFR ops, which I did and loved for a decade, and SAR flying is way up there on my "Dream Jobs to Retirement" list, but for now, I'll just flog my way back and forth to oil rigs and enjoy the variants of living with different cultures in exotic locales.  It's all good.

 



Where to next?

The farewells were short.  Not much adieu is made of the coming and goings of touring folk, as either you'll be back in six weeks, or you won't, but friends made will always have a means of getting in touch.  Technology has made the world a very small place.  I've been touring in East Africa for better than two and a half years, back and forth roughly every six weeks, but this departure had a slightly different flavour.  I look at everything more closely, savouring more, slightly melanchonic and retrospectic, trying to capture what I can, not of the images before me as much as the general aura of the place, as I'm not sure I'll be back.  I've made the place a second home, but it's time for a change.  East Africa will always hold a special place in my heart, for so many reasons.  There have been many memories, and lessons learned, about myself as well as others, that I'll be processing well into my elder years.  But I'm off to Canada and anxiously awaiting word of my next posting, good or bad.  I know what I've requested but unfortunately it doesn't work that way, you go where you are needed.  In transit I hear more of my possessed bike, the one who messed up both my shoulders in two separate crashes, as the beast is still up to it's evil ways.  The co-worker who borrowed it was mugged on it his third day out, surrounded by a large gang of machete wielding thugs, patting him down for cash and his phone.  That ride is bad luck.

But back in Canada, back on my trusty Norco pounding out miles in the wilds of Nova Scotia, prepping for hurricane Arthur bearing down on us this coming weekend, I'm excited about the possibilities.  Where to next?