Information Echo

Although only a few people actually noticed, my domain was expired (and on a 30 day hold) for the last several weeks. I had seriously considered letting it lapse since I was no longer sure that my blog held a lot of personal or public value, and perhaps it was time to move on.

I have considered for the last six or eight months that my blog had went out of focus and was becoming disinteresting, but since my blog was at one point primarily oriented towards my flying activities (something I’ve drifted away from) I never really thought of much else as being in-focus. Basically, I didn’t want it to become a place where I posted mindless banter about things that I was personally assured 99.9% of the public wasn’t interested in reading.

However, I went back and read a number of my old flying related posts and reviewed the page hits I still receive for man of them, presumably from other student pilots or dreamers, and decided otherwise - even though my current banter is probably of little interest, apparently my old banter still is.

And if my current banter seems uninteresting, well, I sat back and realized that many of the other personal blogs I follow are strikingly similar, and I quite enjoy reading almost all of them. So perhaps my personal viewpoints were wrong. And of course, I’m not forcing anyone to read what I write.

All that said, short of my old aviation related posts that people still routinely find courtesy of Google, I think I’m writing to an audience of about 10.

So, for at least another year, oshawapilot.ca lives on.

Looking back on the last few years worth of blog posts it seems I never made a resolutions post since 2007. That’s probably a good thing considering my results from the last time I did.

A quick roundup of my 2009.

- My job was unstable and in the spring a sense of doom and gloom hung over not only me, but many of my fellow employees. Many of us (including myself) have returned to stable employment once again, but many others are still unemployed, or only working occasionally.

- Total hours flown, zero. I haven’t flown PIC since May 7′th, 2007. Looking back on that and realizing that it’s now approaching 3 years since I unofficially stopped flying it a bit surprising. Do I miss the stress of trying to stay current all the time given the renters policy at my airport? No. Do I miss the cost? No. Do I miss stressing about the weather, hoping it will play nice for when I scheduled a flight? No.

Do I miss flying at all? Yes.

I guess the last answer speaks volumes, but I don’t anticipate the situation changing in 2010 - costs have only gone up, my free time has officially gone down dramatically with changes to my job, and the spare time that we will have this year will be consumed with the horses and RV’ing. My medical is still technically valid from a year standpoint, but probably temporarily invalidated by some medications I’m currently taking, so in the end it’s all rather moot anyways.

- Speaking or horses, we got back into them in a big way in 2009 and both me and my daughter (if not other family members) have enjoyed it immensely. It’s amusing to listen to many people exclaim how expensive horses must be only to compare it to flying in my mind and have a little chuckle about the comparison. Horses are expensive, yes. Flying is vastly more expensive.

- RV’ing will continue to be a primary focus for the summer of 2010, I’m sure. We’ve officially travelled coast to coast now (Vancouver BC in 2008 and Prince Edward Island in 2009) and are now looking for alternative destinations. There’s more coasts, but I don’t have any interest in driving to the Arctic Ocean, so that probably means our next big trip will be south, possibly either early this year, or late fall - nobody wants to drive into the hot weather when it’s just as hot here. Both my wife and I are lucky to have quite a lot of vacation time, so this leaves some flexibility to break it up into one short trip in the summer, and perhaps the longer one in the fall. Time will tell.

So, looking back on things in general, the beginning of 2009 was rotten for reasons I have (and haven’t) mentioned here, but ended on a much more positive note. Lets see how 2010 goes.

Haven’t been posting much recently, so for anyone interested, my summer (so far) in a nutshell.

- I’ve been working more then I anticipated despite things looking grim in the spring. Prospects for getting back full time are looking up. Eventually.

- We took our RV vacation to the east coast of Canada, a few weeks later then planned, but we made it none the less. We spent considerable time in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Overall it was an extremely enjoyable trip with a much more relaxed pace versus last years trip to Vancouver.

- Still no flying although the bug has been biting hard recently. Must win lottery.

- We’re replacing our minivan with something new. Not sure what yet, I’m opting for a Corvette or something fun, but my wife is leaning towards something slightly more practical for a family of four. One must dream.

I’ve not had a great deal worthy of blogging about recently which is why it seems I haven’t made a post in over two months.

I read through a bit of my blog history back in March and came to the conclusion that it had gone from what was intended to be a typical personal blog (providing an insight on my life for those interested) to a bit of a soapbox for me to stand on and whine from.

I didn’t really like where it was headed so I took a hiatus. My domain actually expired at one point and seemingly nobody even noticed for the 10 or 12 days it was gone. I renewed it within the grace period so as not to loose it, but at one point I pondered if I’d even bother blogging anymore and considered just letting the domain expire for good.

…

The 2009 camping season kicked off last weekend with disappointing weather. We traveled to Presqu’ile Provincial Park to meet friends and open the season. Unfortunately the weather on both Friday evening and Saturday ranged from relatively nice, to windy, rainy, and at one point we were hailed upon.

In typical Murphy’s Law fashion as we were departing the campground Sunday afternoon the skies opened up to beautiful blue sky and pleasant conditions.

Our summer vacation plans remain unconfirmed based on my employment situation.

And yeah, that’s about it.

Despite the fact that I’m (at least temporarily, based on the latest outlook) out of work we have decided to push on with our summer vacation plans.

Unlike last summer where we logged over 10,000 Kilometers on a trip to Vancouver BC and back this summers trip still involves our RV, but for a much shorter trip to Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada, and then down the eastern seaboard of the US to the Boston area, and then westward towards home.

This trip will take us through several notable Canadian cities, many of which I have been to many times before, but not in a tourism aspect, Quebec City being one of the big ones. Our terminus of Charlottetown PEI is a location that I have not visited before, and beyond that the many small towns along the eastern seaboard through Maine and New Hampshire will surely offer up many surprises, excellent scenery, and friendly people, if not big attractions.

Instead of taking 4 weeks for this trip as we did last year this years trip will be 2 weeks. That will give us several additional weeks of vacation time later in the summer or fall to keep our options open to take another short trip or to just sit back and unwind near home, and given the much shorter distance involved with the planned route of this years trip (less then half of last year) we simply don’t need as much time to begin with.

So, the planning begins.