Wednesday, May 30, 2007

One year later

Well it has been a year since my first blog post and the reason I had started this blog was to share experiences and photo's with my family/friends and as time went on I was fortunate enough to meet many others who would stop in to see what I have been up to. In the beginning I had realized I would not be always afforded such amazing opportunities to see so much of North America and had the ability thanks to Blogger to share it with everyone who might never be able to travel as I do.

With that in mind like all good things (blowing my own horn about the blog :) they must come to an end at some point (even The Simpsons :). Yesterday was my last day at work with the company that has allowed me to see so much and created an appetite to see so much more. I will still be blogging in the future but it will not be able to take pictures at work, nor discuss where and what I will be doing. I will resume my picture taking in 25 years after I retire and start fresh on another aviation adventure but until then I will have to mainly talk about the industry, and turn this blog into a more of an information/safety blog.

I would like to thank many of you for stopping in and hope that if you are a fence sitter thinking of flying for a living or getting your private license to allow you to take to the skies, I urge you to GO FOR IT. If it is really what you want to do then make it happen, don't let your circumstances dictate your reality. Attitude determines your altitude :) (aviation on the brain all the time I know:). Thank you again and please do check back from time to time as I will be still keeping the blog going, just with not as many pictures. The following are pictures from my last day at work going from Quebec City to Ottawa. Enjoy, and fly safe.

Here we go one last time...just departed off runway 06 in Quebec City and over flying the downtown core. I was fortunate to spend the last 5 days here and finally got around to seeing the sights. This area has some of the earliest history in Canada and they have done a great job at preserving it to it's original form. I will be posting pictures from around the City shortly but I have still to organize the 500 + pictures I took and select the best ones to demonstrate the beauty and culture of this area. The river you see here is the St. Lawrence River, the island off to the east is Orleans Island. The City of Quebec lies right under the frame of this picture and the town of Levis Quebec is shown in the bottom right hand corner which is across the River from Quebec City.


Here we are at 28,000 feet en-route from DICEN intersection to EBNYR. The co-pilot had never gone above 25,000 feet before and for me I will not be going about 10,000 at my new job so we decided to go up nice and high for both our sakes :) Again the PC12 is truly an amazing airplane with awesome capabilities. For the first time ever we actually got speed restricted in the climb. We took off right after a King Air 200 (a twin engine turbine aircraft) and because we were on the same route of flight and out climbing and grounding faster we had to slow down to keep the en trail spacing. They were headed to Toronto so they must have a had a full load of people and gas...but so did we :) That goes to show you just how amazing and cost effective this airplane is, burning about 40 percent less gas, carrying the same people at the same speed.

The view of the Quebec countryside from 28,000 feet as we head west bound towards Ottawa. The St. Lawrence river is just to the top of this frame and you can see the transition from farm land to woodlands as you get farther from the River.

The Ottawa River winding it's way east towards Montreal and then connecting to the St. Lawrence. The first explorers to Canada (amongst the Natives as well) used this river to navigate in to the heart of Canada after arriving in Montreal in their sailing ships. They used birch bark canoes and paddled and portaged their way in to some pretty rugged territory. Their main reason was greed to sell furs and make lots of money but I guess things would be quite different if they hadn't. This honestly is the best job in the world (besides the view from space) and I have had a blast sharing all my photo's with you. Whatever your dreams may be, please go after them, we only have one chance to do so :)

Thank You-The Flyindutchman

"It was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of men-where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same time."
-Charles Lindbergh

6 comments:

Quodlibet said...

A big congrats on the new job and I'm sure it will be very interesting as well. I've enjoyed reading your blog very much; you take wonderful pictures and tell a great story to go along with them. I'll look forward to the new direction your blog will take. Fly safe.

Flyin Dutchman said...

Hey there,

Thank you for the great comments although I really wish I had a digital SLR for the past year to up the detail of the pictures :)

Now I am expecting you to start carrying more work photo's now that I can't :)

Take care,

FD

Anonymous said...

I will miss the pictures of the PC-12 you post. It is one of my favorite airplanes and I was fortunate to have found your blog which had pics of the real thing!

Good luck with the new job!

Norman

Flyin Dutchman said...

Thank you Norman ! Glad you enjoyed them.

Thanks again

Quodlibet said...

Well, as a matter of fact, I just bought another camera today (now I have 3.... so silly) but anyway I wanted a smaller, pocket sized camera because I found that so often I wouldn't take my camera to work because it took up too much space. Now that I have this little tiny one I can have it with me every day! So, I will try to post some more pictures, however keep your expectations low as I do not have your eye, nor your great words to go with them!!

Flyin Dutchman said...

LOL,

See I used to have the same issue as I own the Canon S3IS so it takes up a good chunk of space.

Thankfully I flew a PC12 with ample side room so I just rested it on my maps and it was always ready for a shot.

As for my pics and writing...I received a 51 percent in grade 10 English so basically I just type slow and write as I speak LOL!

Can't wait to see more pics, don't make excuses for not taking the pictures try making excuses for why not ! :)

Fly safe