Chillin'

Chillin' at the homestead in rural Nova Scotia, torn between trying to unwind after a hectic sixty days of shutting down operations in Gabon and then flying our two Super Puma L2's through twenty-three countries in twenty-five days, and impending unemployment.  I am doing my best to relax and unwind, all the while scouring the market trying to find opportunities that will keep me airborne.  I find it hard to believe that I'm going to be laid off from a company that I gave some seventeen years to, but the market is pretty much flat, and they can't seem to find work for me.  The entire offshore oil market has taken some hard hits.  I have not been too aggressive as of yet, and my resume is pretty darn thick, so I'm not overly concerned....yet.  I need some downtime too, but knowing the time at home could be long, I have to get my name out there .  Momentum is a powerful force, and I want to keep busy.

Photography is a passion, and I was researching cameras pretty much the entire tour.  I wasn't home for twenty-four hours before I treated myself to a new full-frame kick-ass unit that has set the industry aflame.  I was seriously looking at a Nikon D750 but the size and weight had me back to Sony, with their impressive new A7ii, with some new Zeiss glass.  I just need another adventure to fully test the diminutive yet impressive technical marvel.  The full size sensor is the real draw, but there's a host of impressive features making me wish I had splurged for this beast prior to my last tour.  Ah well.  There'll be more fun to be had.  I hope.

I've got so many leads on so many interesting jobs, yet none are solid enough to give me a ton of confidence that I'll be flying again anytime soon.  I could find myself home mountain biking, fishing and jamming on my guitar for months on end, or, I could find myself right back where I belong, flying in some third world locale.  It gets addictive.

  

Anyone in need of a pilot with experience setting up and managing bases just about anywhere in the third world?  Longline, SAR instructor and check pilot, sim instructor and TRE on the 139 and 332.....here's an excerpt from my cv if anyone is looking....

Times:             BH47/R44/HU30             350 hours

                        Bell 206B/L/L1/L4        2860 hours

                        Bell 222                         1540 hours

                        Sikorsky S76                   600 hours

                        Sikorsky S61                 2830 hours

                        AS332L/L2                   2500 hours

                        AW139                           600 hours

                        plus some time on the Bell 205 and Hughes 500

                       Pilot in Command         9000 hours   

                       IFR                                1960 hours

                       Offshore Oil                  5980 hours

                       TRE/IOS                         620 hours

Total Time Flying Helicopters : 11400 hours, and I really want some more......

Arrived in Poland....

While the weather out of Prague was clearing, and finally Rzeszow, Poland (pronounced "Z'ai-shoff" ....I think) was forecast to improve, we still had some pretty big mountains to get over, and of course those big rocks were still in the soup and well below freezing.  It was hard to sit still as the sun burnt through the ground fog in Prague, and the engineers were getting ansty, having pressing maintenance issues that were quickly running out of time.  But we had had enough as well, and soon we had the ole girls turning and burning and lifting into the blue for the better than three hundred mile hop to our maintenance facility in Poland.

Slightly over seven thousand miles of flying, some twenty-five days enroute, having flown through Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Senegal, The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Germany, The Czech Republic, and finally Poland, some twenty-three countries in twenty-five days, having stopped in eighteen of those for fuel, overnighting in thirteen different countries, sleeping in seventeen different hotels, we dealt with taxi drivers and hotel staff and refuelers and airport officials and customs agents and police, paying exorbitant handling and landing fees, we were swindled in Nigeria, robbed at gunpoint by police in Benin, ate dust in the Sahara, mobbed by shopkeepers in Dakar, filled out reams of landing cards and beaten over the head with bureaucracy in Morocco, annoyed by the French, frustrated in Luxembourg, fell in love with Prague, and throughout it all, became good friends.  It was a bitter-sweet adventure, with all the mayhem and bullshit intertwined with awe, everyone of us pushing forward to get the job done, but facing unemployment on arrival from a company that many of us had served for nearly two decades.  Ever professionals, we did what we do best, right to the end.

Prague, Czech Republic

As weather at our destination in Poland was still showing three hundred foot ceilings and low visibilities in freezing temperatures, and forecast to remain the same throughout the day, we elected to push on to Prague, getting us ever closer to our final destination, and ultimately, all our layoffs.  Although the weather reported at both departure and destination were fine, we ran into more crap enroute that had us diverting this way and that, climbing and descending, looking for lower ground and breaks in the cloud, but eventually we settled into the very friendly Czech Republic to sunny skies.

Everyone loved Prague!  The hotel was like nothing any of us had ever seen, in rooms with two floors and a luxurious bath overlooking the foyer, it was opulence for a fraction of the cost of what we were paying in Luxembourg.  Actually it was the least expensive hotel we had stayed in for the entire trip, and far and away the most beautiful.  The Grand Mark Prague and the city of Prague are now at the very top of my list of European vacation spots, and I hope to visit here again and spend some real time.  Unfortunately it was just for the night but we did our best to see as much of the city as possible.  Everyone on the crew absolutely adored Prague.

We headed up to Prague Castle in the waning light, enjoyed a hot wine at the base, then ventured into the old city and the Jewish Quarter, overwhelmed with the beauty of Prague.

This morning we're back at the airport with the friendly Menzies Handling team, waiting for ground fog to lift.  The forecast is looking good.  We should be finished today.

Diverted to Nuremberg, Germany

With poor weather in Luxembourg, and the next destination IMC in freezing temperatures, we elected to hold on and kick around Luxembourg for the day.  A historic city, originally a castle purchased in 963 AD, with the town developing around the fortress walls, it has the highest GDP (PPP) in the world.  For us that meant expensive, and everything in town was priced a tad high for our taste, let alone mixing with the well heeled crowds drawn to all the Gucci and Panerai shops, so we were thrilled to get away the following day.

The forecasts looked promising, but once we got into the high country crossing into the Czech Republic, we found ourselves scud running yet again, with power lines and wind turbines leaping out of the soup at us, and soon enough the clouds were right into the trees, so we worked our way back into the nearest valley and crawled to Nuremberg with our tails between our legs.  I'm sure our Skytrack route looked like some kid's scribbling.

The weather in the high country between us and Prague didn't look much better the next day, with forecasts of three hundred feet ceilings and a kilometre visibility in parts, so we went on walkabout in Nuremberg. 

Beer halls, pretzels, bratwurst and sauerkraut, we ate well on the hardy Bavarian cuisine, and met tons of Americans in town for a large Sportsman Show.  I sat with a table full of Leupold Scope reps discussing my collection of their VX-3s, and comparing kudu hunting stories and photos from South Africa.  Next meal we sat with two older German couples in their late seventies, telling stories of their Bavarian countryside.  We did the math and wondered what they had seen in their youth.  Everyone enjoyed Nuremberg.

Often referred to as the "Unofficial Capital" of the Holy Roman Empire (The First Reich), as the Imperial Diet and courts met at Nuremberg Castle, it became one of two great trade centres from Italy to Northern Europe.  Because of the town's significance as a centre for the First Reich, Adolf Hitler chose the city for the huge Nazi rallies of the 1930s.  It was also here that Hermann Goring and fellow Nazi high command were tried for crimes against humanity at the infamous Nuremberg Trials.  We visited the Palace of Justice where the trials took place and a number of the convicted were hung.  We later headed out to the Documentation Centre Nazi Party Grounds where the massive rallies took place in the thirties for a little history lesson.

This morning the weather looks promising.  We will hopefully push on into Prague and then our final destination in Poland.  If all goes well, I could be back home in Canada for the weekend.