Another tour under my belt

I'm nearing the end of yet another tour, in yet another corner of the globe, and it's been a rather quick one.  Forty-two days is never absolute, as time compresses and stretches depending on so many variables.  I had never been to Gabon before, it was the first time I've met about half the guys on this job, I had never flew an L2 before, despite my simulator time and L/L1 experience, and we had a new base of operations to set up.  There were excitements and challenges and adventure to be had, and it was all new.  It was one of the quickest forty-two days in recent memory.

I've only a couple of days left, all my homeward flights and hotels are sorted, and packing won't take me but a few minutes.   I'll still be busy.  I'm still covering the line and flying, and I have an Approved Check Pilot refresher course in Vancouver the Monday after I return home, and I just received a rather brutal exam that I have to have finished beforehand. I have over three long days of travel ahead of me; a charter flight to the capital and an overnight, a five hour flight to Ethiopia, arriving in the middle of the night, then an eight hour haul to London in the wee hours of the morning, five hours killing time in the Star Alliance Gold Lounge at Heathrow, then another seven hour flight to Halifax, my own bed for one night then I'm flying across Canada for another ten hours of travel.

But, that's the job.  The pay is decent, and the experiences are like nothing you could ever attain as a tourist visiting these places.  First you get to places that few tourists ever see, you are living and working amongst locals for weeks at a time, you make friends and connections and see how lives are lived so very far removed from one's own, it can't help but change you.  I love Gabon.  It is still Africa but it is more familiar than East Africa, less immediate, more relaxed.  I wish I could afford to stay on for a few more weeks and takes treks and boats deep into the interior and see all the country has to offer, but I have commitments and people waiting for me back home.

And I'll be back in October......