Taken from my bedroom a few days ago. I live by a pier and it caught on fire. Gonna be smouldering for weeks... with the toxic smoke from that and the wildfires down south, my family has been stuck inside. Luckily we got our first pin and have been plenty entertained.

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My last photo was a fire on one side of the building. Here’s my next few photos. A fire on the other side…

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This is (with liberties taken) what I see out my bedroom window. Still a work in progress.

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I needed a new couch in the living room, and it snowballed from there. Ended up pretty much redoing the entire room. This is one of my favourite parts: a couple paintings (prints) of my city by Max Jacquiard.

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It was busy on the dock today. Both our dock and the next door neighbour’s. Those Beech-18s take up a lot of space. Never seen four at once before.

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I fly the Beaver. Same era, same engine: but only one, not two.

There were a few operators today. The planes are typically used for bringing tourists and their cargo to fishing camps. I do the same, with trips to native reserves sprinkled in too.

The planes pictured were bringing investors and big-wigs to a gold mine in northern Ontario.

Haven’t been to Dayton, but I’ve seen my share of aviation museums. The Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario is great because they’ll take you for rides. I went up in a Tiger Moth while my aunt went in a Harvard (same plane as a Texan).

I don’t know about the Beech, but the Beaver was made just after WW2. That being said, the engine, a Pratt & Whitney R-985 is WW2 tech. 9 cylinders, 450hp. Nothing crazy, but it gets the job done. I always wear earplugs underneath noise cancelling headphones to give an idea how loud it is.

Haven’t flown anything with a turbine yet. Hoping to fly a Turbo Otter next season on the west coast. Frankly, anything on floats near Vancouver is good enough for me. I’d rather be with the family than here flying in Ontario, but I gotta build up time. Covid threw a wrench in things and it’s my first time flying in years.

Worst of all, though, no pinball machines here. I saw one guy in town is a Pinsider, but I don’t want to be the kid on the block that only asks you to hang out for your toys.

What training are you doing?

These photos are from just north of Sioux Lookout in NW Ontario. I’ll head back to New West when the water freezes. As much as I’d love to experience a real Canadian winter, I’d rather deal with the rain.

We’ve had high water, and as it drops rocks appear. I did a rock check in the air, but you can’t see everything. Unfortunately I scraped one pretty good as I was leaving the shoreline, so maintenance has to fix my mistake. Lots of our docks were wrecked by ice in the winter, so we had to beach a lot, which was a ticking time bomb.

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I’ve been playing a lot of piano lately. I was gonna buy a used Yamaha, but after trying a Baldwin at a store I quickly decided that was the way to go. I didn’t have $4000, so I found a good looking one on FB Marketplace for $625, and talked them down to $500. With the move, a tuning, some repair work, and then a second tuning because, “It’s never been serviced,” according to my tuner, I paid $1350. Plays and sounds great!

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Point Atkinson from 300’.

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