And Then There Were None

Last night marked hopefully the end of one of the worst parts of this job and something that I don’t recall being in the job description. We dragged the last of the floaters from the Mackenzie River capsizing out of a machine last night. This particular fellow had been missing for a month and needless to say was a little on the ripe side. He brought the total number of bodies flown to the hangar in that month to a staggering total of nine. We dealt with the posttraumatic stress counseling the best way we knew how last night: A good old fashion barbeque and piss-up!

Hopefully that was the last of the tragedies that we will have to deal with this season.

It has been a rough 10 days for the folks over at North Wright. Not only did they have the crash this week but also the week before the son of the owners was run over by a grizzly bear. The unfortunate fellow works as a guide for one of the outfitters here and while set up at there camp later in the evening they spooked the bear who in turn spooked them. The bear’s only route out of said situation was right over top of the poor fellow. Fortunately for him he only suffered a broken leg.

Thus began the first phone call I received from someone from North Wright, this one at the crew house near midnight and a beer or two in to me, one very distraught mother working with the only information that she had: Son, broken leg, Grizzly bear. Fortunately that issue turned out well

What an eventful month it has been around here, death not withstanding. Last night also brought fond memories of our favorite clients of the season, the drunk guys. They have been gone for a week and a half and as difficult as it was to co-ordinate around their schedule and the endless pizza and beer deliveries they were a lot of fun and a truly professional bunch. Well as professional as you could be when rarely sober. Turns out that they will be coming back… Just needed a couple of weeks to dry out though I think that is wishful thinking. Looking forward to the return of that train wreck, maybe I will get to go on another delivery run

Speaking of drunks, I am not so sure I mentioned the baseball superstar that came through town. Word is that he likes to tip a beer every now and then. We got a call from one of the outfitting camps that if a helicopter was in their area that the gentleman in question would pay any price for a beer and he was known to fancy more than one. Of course the cheap bastard balks at cost of all of his flights in the hills and moments after autographing his visa bill asks if we have any beer.

Never a dull moment with the hunters out here. I have yet to figure out what the lifestyle is all about, these guys come out here for their adventures in the weeds 10-14 day hunts, they shoot whatever it is they are looking in the first 2-3 days and want out as fast as they can. So far my favorite guy was this little fellow who bitched about the mountains; he had a little tumble, wrenched his back and wanted to get out. I asked where he was from and he replied Breckenridge. I was dumbfounded; the Breckenridge I know is nestled in the mountains at near ten thousand feet. He was a little pudgy and I was a half step from calling him a pussy when he mentioned that it was actually the other Breckenridge: The one in Texas.

He’s still a pussy though. 3 days and he wants to go home.

Still tough getting used to seeing these guys come into the hangar with there shit eating grins and a rifle over there shoulder and then returning a little bedraggled, the a real big shit eating grin, still strapped with the smoke pole then bitching about the cost of the helicopter on one hand then mentioning how much money they make on the other. So far the only guy that didn’t bitch was the one that needed to get back to his sick kids in Boston. Would pay cash to get out. The bill was 5 grand and he had it in a big wad of greenbacks, but was going to put it on his card. We don’t take Amex and then he had to tell me how much he had to spend to get that fancy black card.

- One million, he says.
- Excellent, I reply… Got a Visa?

He was good about it and if you happen to be in Boston, check out his buddy’s restaurant. Just mention Norman Wells and helicopters and he will treat you right.

So near the beginning of the month I had a little bit of a practical exam courtesy of the good folks at Imperial Oil. They have quite the safety program for both their employees and their contractors and I have the dubious little title as the Sahtu HOC

-Helicopter Operations Co-ordinator.

Corporate speak for receptionist. Part of the job is flight following which essentially means document last known position of the aircraft, souls on board and intended destinations/plans. The pilot is to call in at every landing and give me all of the relevant info. Imperial had sent up its head of aviation to run a mock overdue aircraft exercise and was coordinating with local flight services and the other aircraft companies. He also had a minder from our company with him. The whole outfit is in a bit of a panic about the whole procedure and really none to happy with the whole process and right about the time I am about to be given the drill, one of our finest redneck pilots- example: when working out of a camp last year he repeatedly mocked the only Arab out there about the menu, “Guess what’s for supper fucker!? Pork!” and “Look lasagna, too bad for you, that’s not ground beef it’s stuffed with, guess its corn flakes for dinner again”- expresses the difficulty he has doing his job using all the vocabulary he learned in the trailer park about how messed up the Imperial guidelines are, our minder gets into a bit of a tizzy about how this pilot could mess up the whole contract. Then…

I get a phone call. “Flight Services here, you have an aircraft that is 30 minutes overdue on its flight plan.” So I start to go through the process of finding this overdue aircraft as well as trying to find out if the drill has begun. Nope, it’s the real thing. Well everything turned out all right all of the appropriate procedures were followed but there was a little issue with minder. He had a little bit of a panic attack while trying defuse the pilot and deal with the emergency all under the watchful eye of the perhaps the one guy who could make or break the contract. Meanwhile the Redneck and the Imperial guy were comparing their hometowns.

At times I have had to follow the whereabouts of up to five aircraft involved with the pipeline as well as any other company aircraft operating off of this base. The other day we had 11 machines either operating off of here or flying through here and at times I keep thinking that maybe I should have taken up the maintenance side of aviation first as there has been absolutely no shortage of work for them. With so many machines the make up of the hangar floor was constantly changing. The drawback to so many machines of course for them are the long days, I may complain quietly about the 14-16 hour days I put in on a regular basis, but the engineers have been on a steady diet of 4 hours a night for the last 3 weeks. This week a couple of tech reps from Turbomeca are coming up to help tear apart the business end of an Arriel 1d1. The first year engineer is probably pulling in more in flight pay this month than I make in salary and if the long working days aren’t enough for them the local teens are more than happy to get all big city on their asses. A few of the locals have taken to swarming wayward boozy travelers and actually took a swipe at the apprentice knocking him out cold and still swinging wildly at the two other 200+ pound engineers tending to him. I guess that they figured that nobody would find out, especially in a town as big as Norman Wells, population 600. One has since been shipped away to a home for wayward boys by his parents.

With all of these people moving in and out of this place housing can sometimes be a bit of an issue and I think that the next addition on the resume will be something about extensive experience in the hospitality industry. Out of all the operational mayhem and tragedy’s that have occurred in the last few weeks there was at least one positive development that happened yesterday. I had my first brief chat with the Chief Pilot in a long time. He mentioned that if I was interested continuing with the company there was going to be another training session in October… Not even the smell of the floater could wipe the smile from my face though the morning headache has taken a bit of a shine off of it.

All the news that's fit to print.

Holy Smoke!!

Word travels fast!!

Before things spiral out of control, lets get one thing straight:

The moustachioed one had nothing to do with the plane crash. More information regarding the plane crash can be found here and here. The town is awash in all forms of investigative and federal authoritative types; RCMP, Transport Canada and the NTSB and we are even getting the Canadian Rangers in from Inuvik.

Mr. Boggs though did pay a visit to the area and got out of here two days ago. One can say that he has a fondness for alcohol, rifles and sheep. Though not necessarily in that order.

Stay tuned…

The eye of the shiticane

Yes it has been forever since the last update.

Plenty of information stored somewhere in the brain to relay to the masses. Lots of good stuff:

Alcoholism, firearms, celebrity, intrigue, mayhem and what appears to be the rapid approach of fall.

I just have to dig real deep to retrieve it and escape the phones long enough to type it up.

But here is a little teaser, how many of the previously mentioned categories do you think this guy is involved in?