Famous on the Internet

I've been to Yellowknife before, but always in the winter or spring. It's odd integrating what I see today with what I remember from previous trips. Everything looks different without show on. It's odd to see the water open everywhere. There are lakes everywhere not just Great Slave and Frame Lake. The whole landscape is a carpet of lakes.

I go down Franklin to a Chinese place that serves breakfast. I've walked through the snow to get here before and I have to quite forcibly assimilate my past memories of being here with the current place. The food is good and the service is friendly.

Returning from breakfast, I see a couple of people in Air Canada uniforms outside the hotel. I was under the impression that Yellowknife was a quick turn for them, not an overnight. Many a quick turn becomes an overnight when the airplane doesn't pass muster, so I wonder if there's a story there. I always forget that while it's obvious to me that uniformed pilots are pilots, that they can't tell that I am one. I'm incognito! So I walk up and chat. It turns out that that I'm dead wrong about the Air Canada Jazz schedule. They have enough flights in and out that there are two crews here every night, one from the last arrival at around eleven p.m. and one for the first departure at six a.m. I guess they have their own ramp to overnight the aircraft and don't get grilled by ATC on where they are going to park. It's a fourteen hour overnight for my new acquaintance, so they do have time to go out and enjoy the city if they want to.

He compares it to a Fort MacMurray turn, where they get in around midnight and report again for duty at five. I must have looked aghast for a moment, "That's not even a ... oh it's a split duty day." Yeah, they just count it as one long duty day where you happen to get a nap in the middle. Just as well. Yellowknife is a more interesting place to spend fourteen hours than Fort Mac.

He asked how I came up to Yellowknife, and I told him, chatted a bit about my job and so on. Suddenly he asked, "Do you know Aviatrix?"

What is there to say? Big grin and finger tap to chest. He's a reader of this blog. That's the first time I remember someone doing that, right out of the blue. A few others have figured it out, but they knew me better, or had more to go on. Guess I'm not so incognito after all. That was fun. I think I was a little stunned, though. I almost forgot to tell him my real name before he got on the airport shuttle.

Also, this is a great way to publicize a vintage airplane and car event. They are re-enacting Canada's first aerial police chase.