From the Logbook...Another Ride Along

 After a long trip last week from Eastern Borneo to Central Borneo, I am gearing up to fly the floatplane again.  Before I just jump in the airplane after having not flown for about 3 months I rode along yesterday as a passenger.  The girls above kept jumping into the water as I tried to take their picture.  It was pretty funny.

 This is one of my favorite places, Naan.  Quite, clean, and still full of virgin rain forest   

Another shot of Naan.  After a little practice, I should be on my own again this week serving the people with a floatplane.  Should be fun!

MAF Tarakan pt.2

A few more pics from my ride along a few days ago...

While getting "the tour" of MAF ops in Eastern Kalimantan we visited a number of airstrips that the MAF team serves.  The airstrip pictured above is a "sporty" one with a maximum of 23% slope.  It made for a thrilling takeoff!

One of the fun things about flying around in a wheel airplane again was seeing all the people.  I still interact with plenty of people while flying float planes, but being able to walk around on the airstrip instead of being restricted to a river dock enabled me to see how some of the people in Eastern Kalimantan live a little better.

This weekend we will travel back to PalangkaRaya, Central Kalimantan.  I look forward to getting back in the floatplane and serving the people of Central Kalimantan...plus all this language school stuff has made me groundsick...I NEED to go flying.

MAF Tarakan pt.1

Last week we finished language school on the Indonesian island of Java and 2 days later we left for the island of Borneo, where we will be living.  But, instead of flying directly to our home base in the city of PalangkaRaya we flew instead to another MAF base in the city of Tarakan, Eastern Borneo.  We are here for a week to meet the rest of our MAF Kalimantan (Borneo) team and get familiar with how things are done here.  

One of my days here I got to ride along with a long time MAF friend who is based in Tarakan.  We spent the majority of the day flying all over Eastern Kalimantan in the hot rod Quest Kodiak pictured above.  It is an impressive aircraft!

As with most anywhere MAF flies, children soon arrive at the airstrip shortly after we do.  They are always a pleasure to joke around with and are almost always full of laughs and smiles.