I started in Ft. Simpson for 9 days, then took a long ranger up to Norman Wells for 3 days. I’m up in Inuvik now, which, I’m sure you’ll appreciate knowing, is at N 68° 18′ by W 133° 29′ (well, the airport is anyway).

Let me tell ya…. it is damned expensive up here. Because the ice roads are no longer in, everything comes in right now by air… everything. A 2 litre of milk, for example, is roughly $9.00. That is, of course, if there is even milk there. I got the second last available 2 litre of lactose free milk. There was no other milk except chocolate milk and 18% cream. Mmmmmmm, cream on cereal.

Oh, and I’ve learned that you REALLY have to look at expiry dates up here. Most of the meat yesterday had a best before date of May 22. Uh, that’s tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just skip buying chicken today.

But what are you going to do… not buy food? You just buy it and get on with your day.

So far this tour I’ve flown 11 hours revenue and over 5 hours non-revenue (that means no flight pay). Not exactly a stellar tour, to say the least. Two weeks to go here and it doesn’t look like a whole lot of flying to be done over the next few days anyway. >sigh<

Yesterday afternoon I tagged along with a 212 pilot out to one of the NWS sites. The NWS is the North Warning System (also known as the DEW line); a series of radar sites along the northern coastline set up decades ago by the US to alert them the Russians were coming.

Canadian has the contract to transport personnel to and from the stations up here.

I’m pretty certain I’m going to be pursuing my IFR training soon. I gotta say, it was pretty nice getting 1.6 hours of sticktime on the 212.