Just noticed that I hadn’t posted anything here since the 1st of June.  Time is certainly flying by.  After Wings & Wheels I had such trouble with my feet that I’m finally able to say that I’m walking without pain for most of the day.

We have another wet weekend in Toronto (I’m sensing a trend) so there’s not much to do except housework and watch the Worldcup and G20  rioting. 

(above taken at Waterloo Air Show – Viper North MIG 15 and Vintage Wings of Canada F86 Sabre in high-speed pass)

About 5am in Memphis and it’s snowing.  What the hell?  I leave Toronto where it’s cold but snowless, travel South and end up with this crap.  Forecast says up to 5 inches today with more coming throughout the week.

This sucks!

NASA scientists have serious doubts that Spirit will survive even though they’re positioning the rover so that its solar panels can capture as much sunlight as possible.

Been busy at work, some things never change.  Business still sucks but there’s a few bright lights on the horizon and I have a big project that’s taking all my time.  Looks like I’ve got a couple of trips down to Southaven Mississippi next month.  Southaven is just outside Memphis TN for those who are wondering.  Looking at flight schedules and they all suck – why can’t the US see that the hub and spoke method of air travel just makes for terrible connection times.  I can go through Detroit, Atlanta, Newark and those are the good ones.  I was looking at one Continental schedule that included 3 stops!!  I could probably drive there quicker.

The second trip looks to be interesting.  I’ll be going down to the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station on the 19th to attend the Northeast Council of Air Shows meetings to try and drum up some interest in Wings and Wheels.  On the Sunday afternoon I’ll fly out of Buffalo to Memphis.

Speaking of Wings & Wheels, next week we start contract negotiations with Downsview Park to see how much they’ll charge for rental of the big hanger and tarmac.  Hopefully it’s less than last year.  The Festival itself is coming along very well.  Hope to start selling advance tickets over at the website real soon (hint, hint).  Private pilots are already starting to sign up to attend and quite a few people have requested volunteer information. 

The other thing that has kept me busy is my New Year’s resolution – my body.  Over the holidays I tipped the scales at 231 pounds which, unfortunately, was an all time high.  Something had to be done.  What’s a nerd to do?  Technology to the rescue!

First thing to do was to start tracking what I was eating and how much exercise I was getting.  The exercise part was easy – nothing!  I set up an account at a website called Daily Burn.  Great site that allows you to track everything and provides motivation and tips.  You set your goals – weight, nutrition and workouts – and update them religiously.  Next, picked up a digital scale because the old one was inaccurate and I had trouble reading it first thing in the morning.

The weather is still sucky so it was off to Best Buy to pick up a Nintendo Wii and the Wii Fit balance board.  I’m not into video games but as an exercise aid this thing is fantastic!  Who thought running in place could be so much fun!  Running for cardio and yoga for flexibility and strength.  It also does a good job of measuring weight and BMI and I’m happy to say that, so far, I’ve been able to bring the BMI down from obese to *merely* overweight.

Of course exercise without changes to diet is useless.  I’m rediscovering how good food can taste when you think about what you’re cooking and eating.  Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and smaller meat portions.  Breakfast and lunch everyday.  No fast food.  I feel great!

The last piece of ammunition in my new arsenal is an Apple iPhone.  Why you ask?  The company cracked down on what we could access with our BlackBerries so I needed something to act as a personal communication and data device.  Of  course, the big thing with the iPhone is the number of apps that are available.  I’ve found apps that link to Daily Burn so I can track my nutrition and workouts even when I’m away from the computer.  Also a very accurate pedometer plus some fun stuff and a lot of travel apps.  Right now I’m listening to live air traffic control from Pearson Airport.  You got to love the WiFi feature that allows me to link to the home wireless network and avoid those terrible Rogers data charges.

Now the answer to the burning question, “Have you lost any weight?  Yes, as of this morning I’m down 8.6 pounds for the month.  The goal is to lose 10 pounds per month.  I’ve set a personal goal of 180 but I’ll probably level off before then.  Then the task of maintenance begins.

A hard childhood coupled with some incredible strokes of luck led Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr to storm the world of music and popular culture.  Through it all, Lennon remained remarkably aloof from everything that was going on around him.  He treated a lot of devoted people around him like crap but they still stuck with him.

Norman spends a lot of time dissecting the songs giving them a dark meaning.  For instance, “Help” really is a call for help.

I’m not sure that he doesn’t read too much into some songs that were just pure pop. 

The one revelation in the book is Yoko Ono.  She comes across as a smart but strange woman who had no part in the Beatles breakup. 

January started off with a wish for peace.  I won’t make a judgement call on how that went.

My flight lessons came to abrupt halt on January 11 when I blinked.  Couldn’t handle stall training.  I still haven’t flown again since that day and I’m not really sure whether I will again.

Sticking with aviation, January 15th saw the remarkable landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in New York.  Captain Chesley Sullenberger and his crew reminded us all that professional aviators are remarkable people.  Lots of people had fun with what could have been a horrible tragedy.

As far as I know, US Airways never went forward with this suggested modification.

I spent a lot of time at the Canadian Air & Space Museum this year.  Main task was to help put on the 4th annual Wings & Wheels Festival.  My first post on the subject came on January 18.  More on that later.

January 20th saw the swearing in of Barak Obama as 44th President of the United States.

The world was electrified and hope was unlimited.  How’ he done so far?  Meh.

On Valentine’s day, instead of having a romantic dinner with Jan, I boarded an Air Canada flight to Zurich.  Another week of meetings.  When I got back, the museum had changed its name from Toronto Aerospace Museum to the Canadian Air & Space Museum.  To announce this, I took part in the opening of the Toronto Stock Exchange on February 23rd.

Quite a rush!

March was pretty slow.  Busy at work and at the museum.  Weather turned nice in the middle of the month and I got some planespotting and posted a bunch of pictures.

April was filled with preparations for Wings & Wheels. I posted a bunch of photos of the aircraft that were scheduled to appear and attended lots of meetings.

Then came May.  On the 2nd, I got word that my mother Maxine had been taken to hospital in Midland.  She’d been in pain for a while, something she attributed to an injury while exercising, but things got really bad.  They let her out 2 weeks later (on her 80th birthday). I wrote about my first love the day after.

Wings & Wheels went off without a hitch.  A very busy week but lots of fun.  It helped take my mind off Maxine’s condition.

June saw Maxine in hospital again.  Lots of tests and conjecture but more questions than answers.  Lots of trips back and forth to Midland while trying to keep the wheels on the track at work.  The month started off on a good note, I caught a lucky shot of the very first Airbus A380 approach to Pearson Airport.

Then it all started going horribly wrong.  My trips became more frequent.  Maxine was slipping and there didn’t seem to be anything that could be done except manage the unbelievable pain she was suffering.  She no longer knew who I was.  She was moved to a palliative care unit in Penetang and we prepared for the inevitable.    At 1:13 pm on Monday June 29th 2009, Mary Maxine Mist passed away.

Goodbye Mother.

July was a whirlwind.  Arrangements were made.  Friends and family were contacted, memories shared, tears shed.  Some may question my judgement but I had to get away for a while.  I had to get my head straight.  I spent the first weekend of July at Trenton Air Base and attended the general meeting of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society.  The camera became my close friend.  Looking through the viewfinder helped me forget about things for a while.

Everyone gathered up in Elmvale to celebrate Maxine’s life.  We had some laughs and shed more tears.  I put together a slide show of all the pictures we had and everyone enjoyed it.   Then it was off to the house where Maxine’s ashes joined those of my sister Susan and my father Ted in the garden in the back.

No need to bore anyone with all the legal and financial matters that came after (and still continue) so let’s move on.

I started writing a series of posts – “Today in aviation history” and kept it up for a couple of months but it just became too much work to find something interesting everyday.  Kept busy at work but found some time to attend an airshow in Waterloo and took part in the 60th anniversary of the Avro Jetliner celebration at the museum where I had a chance to meet the head designer of both the Jetliner and the Arrow, Dr. James Floyd.  Even got my picture taken with this remarkable man.

Speaking of the Waterloo airshow, I worked the museum’s booth and had a chance to meet one of Canada’s astronauts, Bjarni Tryggvason, who also piloted the 100th anniversary replica of the Silver Dart.

September was without personal drama.  The museum, on the other hand, went through a lot of turmoil as “new” members of the board who had tried to take us down an unrealistic path resigned and left us in a bit of a lurch.  I wrote about it.  On a high note, I flew up to Ottawa and helped as a volunteer at the Vintage Wings of Canada open house.  A fun weekend with lots of beautiful airplanes.

On the 16th, Kanye West continued his intrusions and hijacked the website.

Spent a great day up at the Brampton Flying Club’s Open House where I got pressed into duty as “official” photographer.

Glad to help out Julie!

October held another trip to Switzerland.  Another week of meetings.

In November I grew a moustache in support of the Movember campaign to support prostate cancer screening.  Raised a little money for a very worthwhile cause.  Got sick (not H1N1) and spent most of the month feeling crappy.  Even though I thought I was through with business travel for the year, I ended up doing a quick trip to Connecticut for meetings.  First flight in a little Beechcraft 1900D was a highlight of the trip.

Also got a chance to visit the New England Air Museum outside of Hartford, something I’ve been meaning to do for years.

Wings & Wheels preparations for the 2010 show started in earnest and I put on my web designer hat (it’s a very small hat) and spent a lot of time on the new website.

In December I got older (58) but not a whole lot wiser.   Along with millions of others I watched the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  Beautiful!  All the joy and promise that event brought got sucked out late in the month by the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by the “underwear bomber” which brought a new round of security theatre as the US went into lockdown mode and screwed up air travel for millions.  Coming on Christmas Day, the event brought a little excitement into what was, otherwise, just a quiet day at home with Jan and the cats.  It felt very strange not to be phoning Wasaga Beach to wish Maxine a Merry Christmas.

Went to see Avatar on the 27th and wrote a mini review.

The year ended with a visit to the dentist and a quiet dinner at home with the woman I love and two fat and happy cats. C’mon 2010.  Try to be better, please?

High on US politics but still fun.

20 years ago, dozens of sea lions started showing up at Pier 39 in San Francisco harbour.  Now, for some reason, they’ve all left.

I ran into this lazy bunch back in 2005.

Reports say they left during the last week of November.

There’s two distinct aspects to this movie and I’ll tackle them separately.

The Story

Definitely the weaker of the two.  If Cameron spent 15 years planning and making this movie, I’d bet he spent only a short period of that time on the plot.  Whether it’s a thinly veiled rebuke of US foreign policy or just lazy writing, the theme of Avatar has been done before and done better.  Poor oppressed naive people (country) brutalized by big, greedy corporation (bigger country) but learn to fight back thanks to a member of the latter who falls in love with a girl from the former and switches sides.  Ho hum.  Didn’t see that coming.  Little guy defeats big guy and everyone walks off into the sunset where everything will be unicorns and rainbows forever. Gag me with a spoon.

The Visuals

Oh my God!  This movie will define the exact moment when movie making changed forever.  A cinematic masterpiece that has to be seen in 3D.  There’s a metric crapload of CGI on display here but it doesn’t take long before you can no longer tell where it stops and “reality” begins. I won’t be spoiling anything to say that the story revolves around a race known as the Na’vi who inhabit the planet Pandora.  They’re 10 feet tall and blue.  Yep, gotta be CGI and they are.  But they look so dam real that you start looking at them as real.  The integration of motion capture to get the actors’ facial features and mannerisms is so seamless that I couldn’t pick out anything that looked in the least bit fake or out of sync.

The landscape is both beautiful and terrifying.  Some of the scariest movie critters ever imagined are on display here and they will scare little kids (and some big ones as well).  More impressive are the smallest of creatures, gossamer in construction and flawless in movement.  Floating mountains, flying creatures and fearsome war machines are all rendered with complete believability.

3D has finally achieved all the promise that started with those cheesy cardboard glasses with the red and green cellophane that let you see spears coming at you.  Today’s version comes with cool Blues Brothers inspired black frames with gray lenses.  The “let’s scare you with something coming directly at you” tricks are still there but they’re completely separate from what makes this new technology so powerful.  Things appear at the corner of your vision and drift into frame – in front or behind the action.  In your face but not in-your-face if you get what I mean.  A scene where the forest is burning and embers float by blew me away.  You feel like you’re actually there and the embers are falling on YOU.  It’s done so well that it’s really impossible to describe.  You have to see it.

The Verdict

Story aside, this is a great piece of art.  Cameron and crew have made a movie that will be talked about for years.  It will recoup all the money that it cost and then some.  It will clean up on the technical awards at the Oscars.  It will make you glad that you saw it – just make sure you see it in 3D.

Story: 4 out of 10

Visuals: 11 out of 10