Bug shield, Canadian Shield

Today made for a bit of a long day. Good, but long. My duty day started at 0930, and my first flight was off the ground at Ten AM. As for flight time it wasn't a super long day, I only did 5 trips, which is one less then a usual chock full day, but they seemed to be spread out a bit more. I did a few morning flights, and then we had to wait for the train to get it, because I had some passengers to take north once they got off the train. The train is supposed to be here at 2 in the afternoon, but didn't actually show up until closer to 5:30. So I got a break from flying for a bit, but I had to cut the grass in front of the house I'm staying in, which is I guess technically part of my duties. My duties in my job description when I accepted the job includes general duties as well as flying, but I've gotten off pretty easy with the general duties thing. Other then taking the fuel truck down to the depot to get it filled up every now and then, cutting the grass has been the only thing other then flying that they've asked me to do so far, and this has been the first time. So I can't really complain.


It suddenly turned hot up here in the past week, its be near 30 degrees C almost every day, and today was no exception at around 25. So by the time I was finished the mowing I was covered in grass, hot and sweaty. It felt good, but the shower I took afterwards felt even better.

So by 5:30 I was back flying, with three more trips to do, although I wasn't aware of each succeeding trip until I returned from the previous one. Finally by 10:47 PM I was on the ground, and a half hour later back at home. Almost 14 hours from start to finish. Wow. The final flights I was not in my top form. It was a good thing its not busy that time of day, because I was exhausted and my brain wasn't functioning at peak efficiency either. Instead of the crisp, succinct nature of my usual radio calls they sounded more like, "Traffic advisory for the **** area, uhh.... Cherokee.... Golf Yankee Bravo Tango... uhh... 15 to south level two point five...". Its pretty bad when you have stop and think for a second what your registration is, lol.


Unloading the airplane and the first bit of the return leg for my last flight wasn't very much fun either for a different reason. The mosquitoes where I landed were at near-plague level. It was terrible. Even the locals helping me unload were shocked at how bad they were. I unloaded the airplane as fast as humanly possible while trying to swat away the 5 or so biting my arm all at once. By the time we had finished unloading and I had the doors to the airplane closed, they were swarming inside the airplane as well. As fast as I could I dug out my mosquito jacket from my flight bag and pulled it on to cover my arms and face, but I found out I couldn't fly with the hood covering my face because I couldn't read the instruments well enough through the mesh.


I spent some time before starting up slapping at mosquitoes to try to make a little more bearable to fly. By counting the dead bugs splattering the inside of my windshield, and the ones smeared over my pants and arms, I figured there must have been an excess of 70 mosquitoes INSIDE the airplane with me! Frig, talk about next worst thing to hell. Tomorrow I'm going to have to go clean up the mess of dead bugs on the airplane windows, for now I'm just glad to be safely in my house and away from them. Hopefully this is an event out of the ordinary that will not be a regular occurrence.


On a more enjoyable note, on Friday I made a flight a couple hundred miles into Quebec to a small town tucked into some breathtaking scenery. Unlike where I am where the landscape is completely flat and very muddy and swampy, here it was beautiful Canadian Shield rocky hills, and dozens of little lakes tucked in amongst them with clear blue water. I spent most of the flight on the way back after I dropped off my pax below 500 agl to just enjoy the landscape. It was a wonderful change from flat. I took some pictures as well, see below:

If I wasn't in someone else's airplane, burning someone else's gas I could have spent hours bombing around through those hills just for the sheer joy of it.