Back to the cloud mines

Uh oh! Did I really have a three week vacation? Or was it all a dream? I am back in the flight deck enroute to San Francisco, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City. Guess who is the flying pilot? That's right, me. I was going to push it off on the co-pilot but I found out that he also just returned from vacation. Well, we are going to be extra careful today! Thank goodness the weather is cooperating today.

Update: Everything went well today. We flew three legs without any major malfunctions in procedures or airmanship. It is truly amazing how far from the performance pinnacle one slides during vacation.

The CAT's contrail

The CAT

Today we rode the CAT from Nova Scotia to Maine. The CAT is a wonderful high speed catamaran-type ship that can carry 900 passengers and 250 vehicles; trucks and cars. She is constructed of aluminum, steel, and composites. Power comes from four 9500 shaft horsepower marine diesel engines. She looks like a starship on the water. The passengers are treated with hot food, cold drinks, movies and television, a casino, and a really cool outside observation deck on the rear of the ship. When the Captain ordered the engines to be started I knew I was going to enjoy the ride. You can feel the power of the engines thrumming under your feet. We slowly moved away from the dock with side thrusters stirring up a lot of silt in the shallows; then after a few hundred meters down the departure corridor the crew slowly increased power until we were skimming the top of the waves at forty knots. Major cool!

Three hours later...Maine.

Swiss Air 111 monument; accident site is on the horizon to the immediate right of right stone edifice.

Nova Scotia

The weather in Nova Scotia has not been cooperating! We brought all of our photography equipment and have used it little because of weather. Low IFR conditions and rain most days. Well, it is September in the Atlantic Provinces. I am gaining weight, too. The food here is pretty darn good!

Today we drove to the Swiss Air 111 memorial on Nova Scotia's south coast. Very powerful and emotional site. Six years after the accident people are still leaving personal stuff at the base of the memorial. It was worth the trip to see this alone.

Site of highest tide in world

High Tides

Wow! I am in Nova Scotia with my lovely wife after a ferry ride from Prince Edward Island. Today we drove to the site of the world's highest tidal event, as measured in the 19th century. It was an incredible 54 feet difference between high and low tide! We stayed to watch the tide come in and I was duly impressed. Literally billions of tons of water rolls into the basin in a short period of time. Very cool!

The weather has been beautiful. Warm days and cool nights have been the norm for our trip. The seafood has been excellent, especially the lobster. More to come...

Prince Edward Island

This is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Literally, I can point my camera lens in any direction and push the shutter button for a lovely photo. The rolling countryside looks like photos from the magazine Country Living. The island is sparsely populated; I would venture a guess that the winters are brutal up here.

We are planning to take the ferry to Nova Scotia Tuesday; then on to Newfoundland and Labrador. Things are good on this end.

Vacation!!

Oh man, I am on vacation with the wife of my youth!! We hitched a ride to Boston on one of our airliners; then rented a brand new car from Avis and headed north to the Atlantic Provinces. The first night was spent in Portsmouth, ME. Tonight we are in Frederickton, New Brunswick. We just returned from The Lobster Hut where we had an excellent meal. Tomorrow we are planning to drive on to Prince Edward Island for the overnight. It is beautiful here in the provinces. More later...

Keep the pointy end forward and the greasy side down...

Smooth Sailing

This morning's departure from Boston was on time for Las Vegas. The first 200 miles were a little turbulent, but things finally smoothed out. The rest of the flight was glassy smooth, deep blue skies, unlimited visibility and light headwinds. As we became lighter from burning off fuel we climbed to the maximum ceiling of the aircraft. The view was incredible. Over Iowa the farm fields stretched to the horizon in all directions. The Rocky Mountains were in view hundreds of miles east of Denver. Our flight over the Rockies was breathtaking; early snow and a few patches of Aspens starting to turn orange. We penetrated Utah airspace and saw beautiful canyons, vast expanses of desert, Bryce Canyon and Zion. Then, after five hours of high altitude gawking, we started our descent into Las Vegas with 109 excited passengers. We winged over Lake Meade and saw hundreds of folks playing in the water with their boats and jet skis. We marveled at the new construction project to span the canyon south of Hoover Dam. The co-pilot made a beautiful approach into Las Vegas' airport and touched the main gear on runway 25 Left ten minutes early.

We are preparing our new mount for the flight to Phoenix. The day has been perfect to this point.

Fingers crossed...

Eastbound

We left San Francisco four minutes early this morning bound for Boston. The ride across the country was rough today at all altitudes. We arrived five minutes behind schedule because of enroute vectoring, speed changes, and heavy arrival volume at Logan International. The weather is gorgeous in Boston; thin and high cirrus clouds with light winds. Temperature is a cool 63 F. In the morning we leave for Las Vegas and Phoenix. Then it's vacation time for me. Yeah!

The Bay

I just entered my hotel room in San Francisco after a six hour transcon flight from New York City. We have a short overnight here, then on to Boston in the morning. Last night in Manhattan was great. The weather was mild and the city was rockin'. Still a lot of energy from the Republican National Convention.

Of course, I had to eat one slice of real New York City pizza...

P.T.

P.T. is an airline acronym for proficiency training. This is part of the simulator training regime I must complete every six months. I have a P.C. (proficiency check) and then six months later a P.T. (proficiency training.) In other words, every year I must complete twelve (12) hours of simulator training. I successfully completed my P.T. training today and have the nod to fly another six months. Once a year I must complete a line check with a check airman sitting in the cockpit observing my performance. To say that training is nerve racking is putting it mildly. The simulator allows realistic training for all the bad stuff that can happen to an airline crew, such as catastrophic engine failures, explosions, fire, structural failures, etc. All the emergencies that would be too dangerous to simulate in a real aircraft. For my P.T. I flew the airline's newest and most expensive simulator. It costs as much as a real airplane; $40,000,000 bucks. Yep, that's right... The realism is scary; pretty much the same as flying a real aircraft. When I was a young pilot the simulators were very crude. Basically, boxes on pedestals with a cheap sound system and no visuals. The pilot had to use a lot of imagination...We did basic and advanced instrument training in the early simulators, then we flew real airplanes late at night to polish our emergency tactics. Today, in the year 2004, a new pilot never touches the controls of a real airplane until he reports to the line for his first flight. The visuals and motion of the latest generation of simulators are incredible. For instance, snow falling at the airport and when the tug pushes you back from the gate you can see the tracks left in the snow. Also, simulated humans on the ramp as you taxi into the gate. Really cool!

Years ago, when I was being checked out in my first transport category jet as a brand new co-pilot, we (a bunch of new co-pilots and one grizzly old I.P.-instructor pilot) signed out a Boeing 737-200 with turbo-jet engines and blasted off for a small town with a long runway the military had abandoned years before. I remember we left at midnight and did not return until dawn's early light. The early turbo-jet engines the airlines used were loud, very loud. Think of crackling thunder, the kind you can feel in your chest, and you get some idea of the sound. The airline would send us down to this little community in the middle of the night and we would do touch and goes and single engine work all night right above the sleeping citizens. I guess they weren't sleeping much after we arrived. I found out later that the airline paid the little town for the noisy nights and use of their airport.

How many miles I have flown since those days of youth...