Home Again

After a very busy time in Spokane, followed by a whirlwind trip through Pennsylvania, I finally made it back home to Tarakan, nearly a month after leaving.  Obviously it's great to be back with my family again!!!

Despite very tight connections on two of my international flights, including the one through Tokyo, Japan, the entire trip went off without a hitch.  In fact, I enjoyed flights that were half empty, (normally these flights are totally full), no doubt due to many canceling or changing flights due to concerns related to the situation in Japan.

After three days of traveling, I arrived back in Tarakan on Wednesday evening, spent most of the day Thursday unpacking, catching up on desk work and MAF-related stuff, and then had to report to the hangar first thing Friday morning--albeit still tired and a bit "out of it" from the exhausting past month and long trip home .  I spent the day riding along with my buddy Paul, observing Kodiak operations from the right seat (co-pilot's side).

On Monday the Kodiak will come in for a routine inspection, so I'll be helping with that this week.  At the end of this week, our entire team flies down to Balikpapan (the closest big city to ours, through which every large commercial flight that leaves Tarakan usually transits) for our annual staff conference.  Joy is one of the conference planners this year, so she has been very, very busy with the many details related to that.  She will be leaving two days earlier to go down to the hotel and make sure everything comes together as planned.  The kids and I, along with the rest of the team, will then come down on Saturday for a week of spiritual, physical and emotional re-charge.

Finally, after we return from conference, I will begin my program Kodiak checkout.  In the meantime, I'm sure I'll keep you updated with a few pics and bits of news from Tarakan and/or our conference in Balikpapan, but right now I'm still trying to catch up on stuff from being gone for a month--so strangely, for me, no pictures this time.

Again, thanks for keeping my family and me in your prayers during the time that I was at training in America.  We really appreciate you!