Making Money

I sleep through to 9:30. It's hard to sleep much longer because I'm used to getting up early, and the room is hot. I checked already and the thermostat is turned right down. The curtains are fairly dark, but not blackout curtains and the sun has been shining in since an hour or two after I went to sleep. I call Greyhound to see if they have my suitcase yet and discover that they were open from six a.m. to nine a.m. and are now closed. They only open with the bus schedule, and this being the middle of nowhere the bus comes at inconvenient times. They will next be open from one to five p.m.

In the meantime I catch up on e-mail, read about AF447's last messages, and do a workout, yes the aforementioned Buns of Steel, but it's more like Buns of Aluminum because there's something wrong with the DVD. It skipped most of the warm up, freezes for a while mid lunge, skips a few chunks of the cardio and almost all of the abdominal exercises. I decide it counts anyway. The phone rings just as I'm finishing and it's the customer. He wants me to be ready to fly for 2:30 p.m. No problem. He also agrees to drive me down to Greyhound to get my suitcase.

I go into the station and ask eagerly if they have a suitcase with a broken handle sent over from WestJet. As I ask I think I can see my suitcase behind her, and she says 'yes' before I'm quite finished the question. It's mine. It's back. Oh happy reunion with my stuff! As I lift the case into the bed of the truck it's clear that if anyone stole anything out of it, they replaced what they took with rocks, because it's as heavy as ever. And when I get it back to the hotel room I see that everything is where I left it. My hat! My flashlight! My clipboard! My clean underwear that hasn't been washed in a hotel sink! I now have an hour to get ready for the flight, eat a meal (I've really given up on naming the meals I eat), and meet downstairs. The food I have time for is a Tim Horton's "Chili Deal", and I substitute a bagel for the included doughnut. A bagel is a good inflight snack. As I move furniture around in the room to find a good place to set my suitcase I notice that the pilot light is on in the fireplace. (Yes, the hotel room has a fireplace. Swanky, eh?) But just that pilot light is putting out a lot of heat. I an feel it against the glass. I figure out how to turn it off and then go flying.

The plane is already on the ground and fuelled when we arrive. We have a quick meeting. The plan is to go to Grande Prairie first thing tomorrow morning. We'll meet at 6 a.m. That will not give me enough sleep to reset my duty day, but I will be a passenger on the flight and can get eight consecutive hours of rest after we arrive in Grande Prairie.

I go fly. It's a hot day and there is are a lot of convective currents. No thunderstorms, just a lot of bumpiness. A few whacks of moderate turbulence that throw things from the copilot seat onto the floor, but mostly just the discomfort of being whacked around. I reduce power so I don't go over the mission speed parameters while holding altitude in the updrafts. There are more small aircraft flying around below, calling 126.7 to advise of flights between small destinations in northern Alberta and northeastern BC. I ask one of the pilots if they are doing charter, but he says it's just for fun. He sounds envious when he realizes, "you're making money!" Heh, yeah, I guess I am. Cool.

I touch down about 9:30 and taxi in. A C172 is parked on the apron I was using. It's the same one I heard yesterday, CXD. The apron is separated from the taxiway by a strip of dirt, with a bit of a dip. There is one level gap where the pavement is good, and one can taxi through, but the Cessna is blocking that gap. I size up the dirt strip. You have to be careful when taxiing through any kind of trench, because the propellers can strike the ground. I choose a place where the dip is not as great and I am confident it won't be low enough to hit the props. I swing around, secure the airplane for the night and head back. There's a note under my door starting off with, "More Sleep!" The meet is amended to 7:30 tomorrow morning, because we can't get into the hangar until 8:30 anyway.

There's a twenty-four hour grocery store next to the hotel. I don't really feel like food though. I guess the snacks I ate during the flight are to be my final meal for the night.