one last bit of leftovers...at midnite.

boom! killshot!

you wascawwy wabbit!

charliebrown made brownies like little mushrooms

brownies are done, waiting for cookies

both kids got nintendo DSxi's for xmas

i tried to rotate the pics but stoopid cumpooter won't do it make hulk annngggryy!! any hoo couple of pics i was gonna do the whole big dealio but i think i'll just wait til the missus sorts out the pics.

my friend Matt Bromley died in the crash the other day. Matt's day actually started in my office that day(he flew the sched flight in to simpson the night before), and we were talking about all the accidents that have happened lately, the weather, the usual stuff. he was a good kid.

Air tindi lost a plane today outside of Lutsle Ke. thats on great slave lake east of yellowknife. as you may recall it's one of the places I travel to for work. Two people died in the crash today. I don't know if one of them is the pilot or not yet. But I'm sure I knew someone on board.

A couple of bad days for northern aviation. Yesterday an Arctic Sunwest charters twin otter crashed in yellowknife, killing both pilots aboard. I knew the gal flying right seat. this morning at about 9:00 local a cessna 206 departed fort simpson headed to a remote hunting camp up the root river(they land on a gravel bar in the river) about an hour later the Joint Rescue Co-ordinating Center in trenton phoned me looking for info on a possible downed aircraft in the mountains west of simpson and south of Wrigley. even though this crash was waaay off in the boonies, it might as well have been right at my airport. Wrigley airport was closed, so I was busy all day dealing with it and in this case there was good news as the pilot was rescued and only suffered minor injuries. frickin' stressful though. when I took my training they told me in school that you go a whole career and never have to deal with a crash-kinda like a cop who goes a whole career and never draws his gun. today was my sixth crash. I'm exhausted.

it's a bird! it's a plane! it's not superman that's a local fella with his death machine. I don't think that's the name they market them under, but just the same...it's a snowmobile motor hooked to a propellor that you wear on your back hmmm

went fishing with the family the other day-charlie brown got her first catch of the year. coleman did too but his was on a hookless lure, so eventually the fish got away. miranda caught a nice pickeral but it was post-spawn mangy so she released it. one more time the empire strikes back! frickin' jackfish lunged at me and got my arm. it's actually a picture of a poster, not an actual flightdeck, and the poster is a print of a painting, but it still made a nice shot.

coleman just couldn't stay awake another second! too funny.

yeah cathy, I see the ice pilots on a fairly regular basis, the cameras weren't there in fort good hope. (we can tell when the plane is on final approach if the camera crews are aboard-with binocs you can see the little camera mounted high on the tail) I should say that those guys are pretty much the same on camera and off and pretty decent folks to boot.

always a frickin' bear...every airport has a bear...how cliche'. that's in YVQ, it's a small griz.

what else we got- view from the tower in YVQ this is a kick ass all digital touch screen futuristic bunch of coolness, way different than my museum of aviation. buffalo airways on the ramp in YGH- doing the run-up the big DC4 was generating some nice little dust devils.

I have to say when I'm flying over the mountains in a Twin Otter on my way to a remote little place, and i'm looking out at the mountains going by, river in the distance it's like wow man and I'm getting paid for this shit! if life is a game-no more calls-we have a winner!

well on my way again tomorrow- i'm off to CYGH for a week. never been there before(those of you who watch ice pilots will remember them from the show where the only store and post office burned down at christmas) but i digress. mike, i can't say anything about that bcuz i'm not sure about the statute of limitations on that. but lets just say that everytime i tell that story people laugh their ass off. I still got some pics from our trip(it was actually four days and just over 500km byGPS) i'll put them up when i get back. when we left the big river boat launch in fort prov it was like seven friday night. miranda asked me when i would be back and i told her monday about 4 o clock. we didn't have a watch and no real plan other than roughly where we were gonna camp each night. even so, i hit the boat launch at 4:06 monday afternoon. the boys were amazed at my accurate estimated time of arrival.
frank you are correct sir that is indeed the domulus chromulus if my latin is correct.

a little over one pound of hamburger in this bad boy!

after a couple days camping, a bath was needed-brrrr!

the boat all un-loaded at second camp

serial killer carl with his largest victim(the fish was released)

second camp

that's a 28 inch cooler, so not too bad

mesieus Lee and Enfield made a damn fine .303

first night camp

well, I'm back from my annual trip. It was awesome! it ranked right up there with one of my trips with steven. Derek and serial killer Carl from work came with me. We had miranda drive us over to fort Providence

and drop us off and came back to simpson in my boat. about 300km by boat in four days. we fished every river and creek between here and fort prov. we caught lots of fish got hammered and had a great time. maybe i can right off the cost on my taxes, call it professional developement and team building!

I'm batching it for a week because miranda is off to the east coast for a early chilhood educators conference. the ice pilots were in last week and i think i'm going to be on again next season(might be a speaking role this time) I had a chance to get to know devon brooks a little bit this time they were in, he's a nice guy but i get the impression he'd rather not be on tv. the pics are pretty much what ya see...

the pics are pretty much what ya see is what ya get. busy time at work, the ice should be breaking anytime now. once again it's heli-milk for a month. happy birthday to sis, hope you have a great day. I'm starting to get my summer brain in gear and think about some trips.

anyhoo that's all for now charles wants some pizza