Epic Fail

Okay, after having slacked off for the better part of a year, its time to make the final entry into the unfinished blog. The thing is, when I left this off I had just gotten in to Alexandria, MN. Word around the campfire was that there may be a cleanup project or two after we finished and then we'd be done. You better believe that we absolutely busted our asses to finish the project and get home. We spent a couple weeks in Alexandria and (to spoil the end of the story) we had NO OTHER PROJECTS!

Couple Minnesoooota highlights to share (apologies for aweful paragraphing):

Neighbor states- Alexandria is on the westernmost part of Minnesota. While out working the project, I managed to leave asome rubber and money from the company credit card in North Dakota and South Dakota. Kinda cool.

The creepy motel- So Bugsy had explained where the motel was (I know, I was WTF about a motel too) and when I came up to it, I thought the guy had lost his mind. Every creepy movie motel you've ever seen was what this one looked like. I'm thinking 'Oh well, small town, small selection of accomadations, deal with it.' Then I stepped into the room. Holy shit. It was NICE! Hard wood floors, a real bed (like $1200 pillow top Sealy). I literally felt like I was in a bedroom. It was fantastic and probably the best place the whole trip. Not a bad way to end the thing.

MSP- So we procured a car for free, and may have neglected to mention we were going to drive 2-3hours to Minneapolis/St. Paul for Twins game. Ben and I had joked about it, and along came a weather day so we jumped on it. We had a blasty at the game and met up with one of Ben's friends who lived in St. Paul. We consumed and played shuffleboard and consumed until they told us to go home. I woke up foggy in a strangers hideaway bed to "Zach we gotta get the fuck outta here. Its good weather, We gotta fly today." The 3rd guy with us had split the bridge of his nose open in a drunken midnight run to the john... still don't understand how he did it. Yada yada yada, we made it back to Alexandria and the weather was not as good as we thought, so we chilled. We may have gotten a parking ticket in St. Paul and it may have disappeared accidentally on the interstate. All in all it was a good time and I got to experience the Metrodome and dome dogs in the Twins last season there.

Project finish- We cranked out some absolutely, unbearably long 12+hr flying days and got word that once done we were to report back to Batavia where it all started. We finished in about an hours flight in the morning. We ran back to the hotel, grabbed out crap and called the boss to peace out to Chicago on our way back.

Last legs- We stayed a night in West Chicago at DuPage Airport. It was pretty nice and its always fun to dink around in really busy airspace like Chacago. We contemplated going downtown but decided we'd rather get back ASAP. We made our plane ticket purchases before leaving chicago too. Due to the way our per diem would be paid out we planned to stop just short of Batavia, spend the night and do a quick hop the next morning. We decided on Dunkirk, NY which would leave a 30-45min flight to close out the season. Aside from Cleveland trying to fly me over the middle of lake Erie (which I refused), the flight to Dunkirk was uneventful. There was some worry about the weather early in the morning getting in to Batavia but it ended up being unnecessary worry. I'll never forget taking off from Dunkirk, firing up my iPod, hopping on air-to-air, and holding the push-to-talk... "Its a beautiful morning.... ahhhh, I think I'll go outside a while, an' just smiiiiile." We landed in Batavia a short time later. It was very weird coming back to the place this whole adventure started. So glad to go home though.

I wish I could give a real insight into what this whole thing was to all of us. Fun, exciting, new, dreadful, torturous, tiring, enlightening. I've never felt a love-hate like I did withaerial survey. Obviously I chose not to go back, but I think if I continue to struggle to find employment flying I will consider it next season.

I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I was indifferent to writing it... thats a lie, I liked writing it.