Jul 24, 2016
…and then he was gone
…pretty much within 40 minutes of waking up this morning Colin was in his car and driving to Vancouver. Every year he has a full days worth of aerial photography to do in Vancouver. Usually it happens the end of June or early July. Last year because of the smoke from forest fires he did not get job completed until October 6th. Of course the photography is totally weather dependent as in he needs perfect blue sky, no clouds and no haze. For years now the first thing I do in the morning is check the weather, our business depends on it not only for the aerials but for most of our jobs. Yikes, a big change. Today, Sunday the weather is perfect with clouds coming in Monday, certainly different from the forecast we saw at bedtime yesterday. Colin had planned to leave at 5AM Monday and do the aerials. He had a helicopter booked for the low elevations photos and a plane ( much much cheaper ) booked for the higher elevation shots.
He called the helicopter pilot at 7:45AM this morning and yes he would come in on his day off. Thank goodness as it is almost impossible to get a helicopter at a reasonable cost. Enroute he called me who called the plane pilot who said he could not do it until Monday morning as it was his day off. So I made arrangements for Colin to overnight in Vancouver. He was up in the air at noon exactly. The pilot told him he could only fly till 4PM. He flew a bit longer and by 4:45PM Colin called to say that he had done all the aerials., low and high elevations. That is beyond amazing. The photography is for 8 different clients. I guess the helicopter pilot did not have to wait too long for the Vancouver airport tower to proceed nor from the downtown harbor tower.
Of course that means that it did cost us more to fly all of the aerials by helicopter. But by the time you work out the time for him to drive from the Abbotsford Airport to Boundary Bay Airport where the plane is and the overnight expenses it all sort of sorts itself out. We may have been down $200.00 or up $200.00 more or less. No idea at this moment.
At 4:50PM Colin called to ask me how to get to Ladner ASAP from Abbotsford, he was in bumper to bumper traffic on HWY 1. We used to live in Ladner and got all of our fresh fish and tuna pies from Superior Fish. I had pre ordered 46 tuna pies ( frozen and vacuum packed )for Colin to pick up Monday end of day, enough for us to have once each week till we leave for Mexico and then every 2 weeks while on the Isla. They closed at 5:30PM today. It was touch and go. Colin had started off on the wrong ( in my opinion ) road and then called me. I felt like I was on the Amazing Race. Thanks to Google Maps I did get him on what I thought was the best route. I guess he should have taken the Lexus this morning……I have navigation 😀
Meanwhile I am calling the fish store, giving them my credit card and Colin’s ETA. He arrived only 5 minutes after closing. Whew 😯 Colin loves that I am his CPS ( Contessa PS ), he always has said that he does not need a GPS. So he is now on the road at 5:50PM and should be home by 11PM give or take 15 or so minutes.
This is not what I would call a free and fun day off for me. I was on call the entire drive into Vancouver lining up the pilots, etc and of course at the end of the flight. As I have said before, our life is full of drama, it seems that we thrive on it.
So here we at 6:20PM and Colin is heading home, happy to be back with us tonight and in his own bed. I have cracked open a bottle of the good stuff. I feel like I deserve it. The girls are insisting on their 6PM dinner time so off I must go. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Meanwhile I am so looking forward to seeing Colin later this evening. Life is good.
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That was a hectic, day, those tuna pies sound yummy.
What a day and good to have a cooperative pilot. I love tuna pies but have always made our own with my mother’s recipe. I don’t think I have ever seen a commercially made one.
Such is the life of the self employed – glad he was able to get the shots this year though. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money and that sounds like what he was doing. We take our breaks throughout the year, you guys have a marathon run then winter months off. It all evens out in the end. And yes, your wine was well deserved! I often say to hubby that there is no way he could hire an employee to do all that I do, sounds like your job is much the same Miss CPS. I have done the same when GPS led hubby astray near the Horseshoe Bay Ferry terminal when he was coming home from a business trip and about to miss his reserved ferry.