First, a little background...

I am a first officer at Horizon Air, a regional airline based in Portland that serves the western US and Canada. I fly the Q400, a 70-seat twin-engine turboprop. I've only been working here since April 2004, but have been flying since 1994, when I was 13. I originally started flying lessons simply because I thought it'd be fun, but as I got older I decided that it was something I wanted to do for a living.

After high school, I attended the University of North Dakota, where I majored in Air Transport. To build hours, I flight instructed both at UND and a flight school in southern California called Air Desert Pacific. Those In the Know in SoCal crack that ADP stands for Another Dead Pilot or Another Downed Piper. After building enough hours, I flew Part 135 cargo for a now-defunct company called AEX, and then for Ameriflight.

I've been married to Dawn since July 2003. She's from Minnesota, as am I, and moved to California with me after we graduated college. She teaches high school math in a small town just north of Vancouver.

At my airline, I fly over some gorgeous country to some pretty cool places, so a lot of this blog will probably be photos and descriptions of places I'm at. Other times, I'll be writing what life is like for a junior first officer at a regional airline. Other times, I'll just simply vent when crew scheduling extends me into my day off again. I'll occasionally post stuff that has nothing to do with flying, because let's face it: the public finds aviation a lot less glamorous than we pilots would like to think.

Right now I'm in Calgary. It's about 20 degrees and sunny outside, quite pleasant really. I just walked 6 or 7 miles from the crew hotel to downtown and back. It's a pretty nice city. I was here a few weeks ago with Dawn and her parents. We rented a car and drove to Banff; but that's a story and a rant for another time.



Dawn and I taking a glider flight over the north shore of Oahu on our honeymoon, July 2003.