Catching Up

   Ok, I’m going to make a go at keeping this updated, I’ve managed to post a few times this month and it feels good to be writing again.

 I had a few different motivations for starting this blog over the years and they’ve morphed over time. Initially, I liked the idea of reading others stories who had gone before me, especially during those first few difficult years in anyone’s commercial aviation career. Over time it became less shameless networking and became more of just having a place to record some stories that I enjoyed as they happened, and enjoyed looking back on through the lense of time. Now, it’s a little of all of those things but it scratches an itch to keep writing as well. 

  I know when I first started flying, I devoured blogs of pilots who had gone before me, to read how they got past the first dark years of having no experience and looking to get a break somewhere. I feel relatively comfortable in my career position now, in so far that if there is a hiccup in the best laid plans, my experience level allows me to still fall back on a career I’d be happy doing, instead of immediate and severe financial catastrophe, haha.

  Anyhow, the point of this post is to kind of summarize the blank spots in the timeline if you’ve had any inclination to follow along or read through back issues. Kind of let you know in broad strokes what I’m doing now and what happened during all the blank years in my post history.

  I’ve posted off and on over the years, mostly vague allusions to continuing to post but not really giving much clue to where I was or am in my career. Mostly due to privacy issues with current, at the time of that writing, employers. I’m a little more inclined now to not really care so much. It’s a small industry, anyone who has met me and had to endure long nights over the worlds oceans listening to me rehash favorite stories, will immediately pick up on some of them, having been repeated on the blog. Again, don’t really care anymore about being “ outed “.

  Here’s the cliff notes, I moved up North in Canada, worked for almost four years for a small charter outfit. My first real break in commercial aviation. Lots of wildlife survey flying, charter flying and smoke patrol, in a decent variety of aircraft.

  That got me to 1000 hours, where I made the move to go south with my young family and got on with a Medevac outfit in Northern Alberta, flying King Airs. Stayed there for about little over 3 years, made captain and a ton of good friends.

  Things got iffy financially for the company I was working for, so back north I went for a year, this time flying as a Medevac Captain out of Yellowknife. I had only previously done seasonal summer-flying in the NWT, so I was glad to get to experience the winter part of Northern Flying. I mean really, how can you say you “ flew up north “ if you only flew on nice summer days??

  Eventually the toll of rotational work took its toll on the expanding young family, with the addition of another Short Person into the mix so I moved the family down south, to Vancouver Island and took a job with a Charter outfit, flying King Airs and 1900s. Eventually helped out running the small base and kind of burned myself out trying to please everyone. 

  Made a change of tack and set sail for a three year stint in Aerial Firefighting, mostly in Alberta. One year on the tanker as a greenhorn and two seasons as a bird dog. It was a challenge as I wasn’t naturally good at it, but I do take some pride in my persistence and not giving up till I was reasonably competent. 

Then I gave up, haha. 

  Covid limiting my job options at the time may have had a small role in my decision to stick with a job that I had a fairly good sense wasn’t going to be a long term solution for me.

  Took those sails down, again, and put up a new set. This time I decided I could no longer ignore the raging inferno of pilot hiring at the airlines, particularly in the US. Having 2 passports and access to the lucrative employment market in the US, I applied, was offered, and accepted, a job flying wide body airliners around the world.

  That’s where I’m at today, and my current employer is off limits as far as revealing or documenting much about that job. My layovers and travel experiences are my own though, so I’m happy to share those as I feel very lucky to have the opportunity for them and would be thrilled to share.

  I suppose it’s worth mentioning that I also got divorced after the move south. Amicably enough and my ex wife and I still share co parenting duties with my two children. My current job has me on the road 14-17 days a month, so my time at home is mostly spent trying to spend as much time as possible with the kids. Truth is, they’ve lived most of their lives with me being away, so it’s not entirely new to them, but as you can imagine, it’s still a challenge every day to make it work.

  Oh, also, I live in a Bus. I’ll get to that.

  So there you go, you’re all caught up. Obviously, I have a metric crap load of pictures and stories from those experiences and I’m slowly going through them with the intent of sharing them on here. 

  I think to the time when I was just getting started, and any one of those jobs at some point in my life seemed like it would be the final destination, the ultimate goal. I’m happy to share my experiences that I had doing those things, really in the hopes of reaching someone who is just getting going and looking to those jobs as possibly where they want to get themselves to. You don’t know what you don’t know, and sometimes the only way to find out is to ignore everyone and just do it anyways. Well, if you’re stubborn and slightly stupid like me anyways. 

  I’m working on posting past experiences in rough chronological order and interspersing some current layover/travel experiences in between. I have a lot of sitting-around time these days in between assignments and being carted around the world on commercial deadheads, so hopefully I get the chance to put my thoughts and experiences down to share with anyone interested. 

  So, there you go, you’re all caught up.