Playing catch up

I just posted the posts I had started writing about BC, they are all out of order because they were saved as drafts and then I put the one about Liam up, so keep going past some you've already seen. Will tell about all other trips as soon as housework is all done!

A road trip

Wednesday was a bit of a bonus day, I didn't have anything planned as I was supposed to be flying today too. Instead we took our time getting going and took a little drive up the island to Coombs. I don't really think there's much there except this touristy trap place that we wanted to see. It was mostly stores with all kinds of tourist type stuff, like the requisite candy store. But it also had a market that's famous for it's goats on the roof. They had interesting groceries from all over the world, some really cool toys and home decoration things, every flavour of ice cream known to man, as well as an endless bakery with all kinds of delicious things. Can you say brain overload? We spent the afternoon there and then made our back to Nanaimo. We passed this place with all these old London buses lined up. I learned how to drive(sail?) the dinghy too.

More flying

This day was dedicated to more flying, I had the next day booked too, but decided to try and get it done today and finished with. Getting up early this morning wasn't that great, and crossing the harbour in the dingy in the rain was something I wasn't so keen to try again. So ended up flying for 5 hours with a lunch break in the middle. We did landings on a smaller lake, where we had to land and taxi back, and also on a bigger one and in a harbour where we could land and take off without taxiing back each time. Besides learning about physically flying and landing on floats, it was also a bit different to wheels in some other respects. Generally when you land on a runway, someone tells you which way to land, or you are pretty much limited to two choices, also your environment is quite protected (now I suddenly remember a news article about a King Air having to take evasive action to avoid a cyclist at Hay River!) With float flying you get to pick whichever direction and where ever you want to set her down, taking into account that you have to share with all the boaters with water skiers in tow. I wish that I could go and do some flying now just for fun, but I guess I'll have to wait until I get to fly the Twin Otter, ho hum! From now on if anyone asks my advice about getting started I will tell them to include their float rating as part of their commercial training and build up time.

On the way home we bought a new wheelbarrow for Sandy, it fit in the dinghy quite nicely.

Welcome

Liam Joseph Miller
6 lbs, 15oz, born at the Stanton Territorial Hospital at 6:05am.
Congratulations Kim and Jack!!