From the Logbook...the Office View

It's no secret that I LOVE to fly.  I am beyond blessed to have an occupation to enjoy most every day.  Recently, due to the heavy rains of rainy season the numerous waterfalls we fly near have been awesome to watch.  In the picture above you can see a waterfall off in the distance.

That same waterfall zoomed in is pouring down pretty good.  I'm not sure, but I'd say it's a 100ft. high waterfall.  AWESOME!

About 10 more minutes into the same flight I came across another waterfall.  This one wasn't as high and unfortunately, it wasn't gushing as strong as it was just two days before.  But, it was still worth getting a close up picture and enjoying God's beauty in the middle of nowhere.  So beautiful!

From the Logbook...Teamwork!

Isaac was able to capture our team in action last week when I returned with a woman that was three months pregnant and already having complications.

It's always great to arrive with a patient to our home base and watch our team just kick into action without so much as a word...we just know what needs to be done and it happens.  We all love what we do and helping sick people in all of their varying degrees of seriousness is one of the easiest ways to attach meaning and value to our "job."  Thanks to all of you that pray and support us to be able to impact the people of Central Borneo in Jesus' name.

From the Logbook...Kids Will Be Kids

It's always fun to see what the crazy kids are up to when I'm at the dock of an interior village.  I was able to take the picture above from the opposite side of my float plane and shot the picture from under the aircraft through all of the flying wires, cables and struts.  Otherwise they would have turned shy and hid from me.

The other two pictures are self explanatory.  Most kids love a tree to climb on/in and these kids were having a blast climbing all over these small trees on the river bank.  There's nothing like letting your kids enjoy the great outdoors and making all sorts of adventures and fun for themselves.

From the Logbook...From the Rooftop

While on the hangar roof last week taking pictures of the high water conditions, MCD was getting ready to go on a quick post-maintenance flight.  I captured these pictures while I was up there.

Just upstream from our hangar is a small lumber mill.  It's easy to get used to the rhythm of things at our hangar/office/dock and then look 100 yards upstream and realize there is a TOTALLY different type of business and lifestyle happening there.

As MCD took off, he flew right by the hangar roof as I snapped a few pictures.  I love flying float planes...

High Water (Pt. 2 of 2)

Some workplaces have aquariums and other "natural" additions to their office spaces to promote a sense of Feng Shui.  We don't have to go to any effort to have any of that at our office/dock/hangar.  Mother Nature has brought it right to our front door...

We've really been enjoying having a troop of macaque monkeys around the office lately.  Most of the trees around our office currently have some type of fruit currently and the monkeys are finding plenty to eat.

The ground at the base of these trees is currently under about 2-3 feet of water.  But this doesn't slow the monkeys down much.  They can live their whole life in the trees without ever touching terra firma.  It's amazing to watch them jump from tree to tree with effortless grace.

Usually we have the monkeys hanging out near our offices when the water is high because our office location is one of the last remaining areas that actually has trees.  The properties on all sides of us have been clear cut to prepare for other buildings.  As the area around our dock continues to be developed, I wonder if the monkeys will be spending more time in the trees near our office.

High Water (Pt. 1 of 2)

The river is flooding at our home base location right now.  This happens every year and it's wonderful.  Water means life and the abundance of all of this water means we get to see a lot of neat animals and other oddities.  The picture below is actually a few pictures stitched together taken from the roof of our hangar showing our office and the other float plane dock.  The water is about 8 inches low from coming into the office.

Toads aren't that unusual to what we normally see, but even they are looking for a dry place to hang out right now.  You have to be careful where you step right now.  There are small critters everywhere as they are driven out by the high water.  It's near impossible to keeps the ants at bay as they seek higher ground.

Our Indonesian employees are naturally adept at catching fish.  It's not unusual for them to string up a net as they leave work only to check it the following morning when they get back to work and see what they've caught.  From time to time they bring up some unusual animals!

I've always liked lizards.  This was the first time that I've seen this species around our offices, although I'm sure they have been there all along.  But this one, like everyone else, is just trying to find dry ground, of which there isn't much of right now.

Check back in a few days and I'll show you what else has been hanging out around our office.

From the Logbook...Dock Life

As I fly to various villages throughout the course of a week...sometimes it just hits me how unique the environment around me is.  I often wonder what it would be like to fly float planes in Washington state or Alaska.  There is no doubt that those float plane environments are extremely different from what I see on an almost daily basis.

At most of the interior villages we serve with the float plane, almost all aspects of life occur over the water.  Trading, buying, selling, raising animals, butchering animals, bathing; you name it...it occurs over water.  Such a different world, it's such a privilege to serve these people with my passions and gifts.

From the Logbook...Boat Traffic

In our float plane operations, we share our "runway" with all type of different water going vessels.  It sure keeps things interesting.  On some of the larger rivers we operate out of, during high water season, it's common to see these tug boats pulling a barge full of hundreds of logs heading for a furniture store near you.  I can't say whether or not this lumber of from the legal or illegal lumber trade, but I can say that the amount of lumber being floated down the river is unbelievable.  The picture above was taken in a misty type of rain, leaving the river almost perfectly flat and the sky grey.

Regardless of the size of the river, there are always the little "klotoks" seen above.  Most of them have customized paint jobs and are operated by a lawnmower type engine.  It's not common to see them all lined up like they are in the photo above because usually the river current  has them lined up end to end...not side to side.  Life is sure colorful in Indonesia, on many levels.

From the Logbook...Tumbang Olong

One of my roles at our MAF location is that of Instructor Pilot.  This makes me responsible for initial checkout for new pilots as well as performing their recurring 6 month checks.  It's always fun to go to all of the places I normally do while performing one of these checks, but with a different perspective...that of Evaluator.  On days like that, I'm able to wonder around a little bit more and watch from the "outside looking in."

For those of you who have ever flown with or met Isaac, the picture above describes him well.  Always ready to laugh and brighten the mood in any room.  He is a testimony to what the life changing power of Jesus can do in us and he readily demonstrates that to those around him.  We always have a lot of laughs in the cockpit flying together.  It probably makes the passengers wonder what the crazy "bules"  (Westerners) are talking about.

Most of the time, the village kids enjoy having their picture taken, especially when you show it to them afterward.  It's a childhood RADICALLY different than mine was.  I like how this little guy has his gun with him.  There is something in the DNA of boys all around the globe that has them liking similar things; guns, trucks, airplanes, motor noises, etc.  It's so fun to watch and interact with them.

From the Logbook...Night Landing

Back in December while I was still waiting for my work permit our other pilot was busy keeping the flight schedule going.  One of his flights had him landing just after sunset due a wide variety of factors.  This is unusual to MAF because,  1.) per our own internal rules, we don't fly at night, and 2.) operating a float plane at night can be especially dangerous.  Thankfully, it was still just a few minutes after official sunset leaving a little bit of dusk light and Isaac made a wonderful and uneventful landing.  

I took a few pictures of the landing.  The pictures are very grainy due to the settings I had to use on my camera for the low light, but I thought they still turned out cool enough with all of the airplane lights reflecting off of the water.

After pulling into the slip, the airplane was hoisted onto the hangar floor and we all went home for the night, albeit a little later than normal.

From the Logbook...Kalaweit Foundation

Just days after receiving my work permit last week...a fun flight opportunity came together to document what a good organization is doing about an hours flight north of where we live.  For a few months I have been working on a flight request to enable a French filming crew to come and make a documentary about a man named Chanee and his organization called Kalaweit.  You can read about Kalaweit by clicking here.

One of the requests that the filming crew had was to film one of our airplanes while airborne.  We were only able to comply with this request literally days before the flight was to occur due to my work permit status.  Thankfully for everyone involved, my permit came through just in time for them. In order to get better shots of the airplane while airborne, the right-side door was removed on the other airplane allowing the cameramen to get good shots of me flying above the jungle near Kalaweit's home.

A storm had just passed through the area before we left leaving numerous "anak awan" or cloud-children in it's wake.  I always love seeing the wispy little clouds left behind after a storm passes.

Inside my airplane were Chanee, seen in the green jacket, his son, a camera man, and Véronique Jannot, and French actress and singer.  Apparently this documentary is big enough that they brought in some French Star power.  She was a delightfully nice woman.  The whole flight was a lot of fun as it's not everyday that we do something as unique as this.  It always amazes me the wide variety of people my "job" enables me to rub shoulders with.

From the Logbook...It's Time to Celebrate

I'm BACK!!!  I've had a long hiatus from my blog...and for good reason.  Since arriving in Indonesia in late September 2014...I have not had a work permit that legally permitted me to fly.  I can thankfully report that this past Monday the 2nd of February, that finally changed and I was granted a work permit.  The details as to why I didn't have a work permit and why it took so long to acquire it are too long and complex to post here on the blog.  Myself and several other MAF pilots around Indonesia were affected by this.  Since I could not legally fly for the last 4.5 months, I didn't; which is why the blog and my digital life-print have been so sparse.  Now that I can legally man the cockpit again, things should return to "normal" on the blog again.  Thank you to those of you that follow a little bit here and most importantly pray for me and my family as we live and serve in Indonesia.

What a good way to celebrate being back than by writing a post about jumping off of the wing into the river.  There is actually a funny story that lead up to this...

While I was working with our airstrip agent at a village called Tumbang Naan, he handed me my flight manifest (passenger names, weights, tickets, money, etc.).  As I opened the manifest up, 10 - 100,000 Rupiah bills fell into the water.  This is roughly the equivalent to $100US.

As I watched the money land on the river and begin floating downstream, there was only one way to retrieve it from the fast river current...jump in after it of course.  Thankfully, I was able to recover 9 of the 10 money bills.  It makes for a funny story, and since I was already wet, I decided to jump off of the wing a few times and enjoy myself.

I handed my camera to a passenger to take a few pictures of my escapades as a float plane pilot.  Despite being soaked from head to toe...the refreshing that comes from jumping in the river after sweating through a long day flying is quite rewarding.  And, I must say...flying floatplanes is one of the most unique types of work I've ever done, so it is fun to enjoy those peculiarities to their fullest!!!  Flying floatplanes is FUN!!!  It is great to be back in the air again!

From the Logbook...No Flying Yet

If you've read my precious post, you know that this year we have had a particularly long and gross smoke season.  My family and I have been back in Indonesia for almost 2 months and I still haven't flown yet due to the smoke.  Things look like they are changing...hopefully this coming week things will be clear enough for us to begin normal flight operations.

Due to the fact we haven't been able to fly due to the thick smoke, we still try to run the engines on our airplanes once a week to keep everything lubed and working well.  A few weeks ago we took the airplanes about a mile upstream from our hangar along with the speed boat in order to have our weekly prayer and worship meeting.  These are the ways we try to make lemonade from lemons and it's always fun to do different things as a team.

Of course, what is a fun team gathering without a funny team picture as well.  Thankfully, we work with a great team full of godly and humorous men.  It's a pleasure to work with these men and their families and we couldn't and wouldn't do it without them.

We also took the opportunity to give our speedboat a little washing.  After sitting in the gross, low water conditions of the river, the hull was in need of a scrubbing.

It didn't take long for the seriousness of work to be overcome with play.  Soon after starting, buckets of water were flying everywhere and our guys were having a great time "washing the boat."

Finally, we gathered on the beach for a time of prayer and worship.  It's always a great time during our week to take an hour out of our day and spend it with worship and prayer together.  You know what they say, "a family that prays and plays together...stays together."  This holds true at our workplace as well.  We have a wonderful team of dedicated, Jesus loving men, and it's a privilege to serve with them in Central Borneo.

We're back in Indonesia!

We arrived back to our home in PalangkaRaya, Indonesia at  the end of September.  Unfortunately we arrived during smoke season.  We know that every year usually during September and October we are going to have to deal with smoke.  The majority of the smoke is from the forest being cleared and burned to make way for palm oil plantations.

With the smoke this bad day in and day out, we have not been able to fly.  I'm really excited to get back to flying, but on a positive note, it has eased my transition back into the managers seat while I get caught up on all of the happenings that have occurred over the last 8+ months.  To make things easier, we have canceled all flights through the end of October.  Hopefully, prayerfully, rainy season is just around the corner and things will get back to normal next month.  Thanks for your prayers for us and those we live and serve with.  This is always a tough time of year for the people where we live.

Grandma Jean

Thankfully, just a few weeks before we returned to Indonesia at the end of September, we were able to make one more trip to see Grandma Jean.  It was a fun time to be able to "have her to ourselves" as well as enjoy other members of Becca's family while in Kansas.  We always enjoy our time with that sweet woman and now that I'm typing this now from Indonesia, she can't even hit me when I say "we love and miss you Alberta!"

After all of the traveling that we made virtually from every corner of Colorado over the course of 8 months, we finally pulled off the side of the road and took a picture of us coming back to our home state.  Ironically, there are other border crossings that are much more "Coloradoesque" with mountains and hills, but the high plains have their own beauty also.

Taos Pueblo, New Mexico

 In early September, we finally made a trip to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico; something we had been talking about since arriving Stateside in February.  It is one of the oldest inhabited places in the USA with history dating back more than 1000 years.  It was really neat.

 This structure has been continually inhabited in one form or another for over 1000 years.  As we learned about the building techniques and social practices, it made us all ponder all of the history that has occurred at the Taos Pueblo.

 What's more iconic than blue sky and adobe for the American Southwest?  We love traveling in the Southwest and we feel grateful to have grown up there with those BIG BLUE skies.

 Some of the locals were selling little wares and food stuffs.  Our girls all made it home with a few necklaces and bracelets all made from dyed corn.  They were pretty excited.

The impetus for our trip was Grandmas birthday.  She wanted to take us to the pueblo for her birthday.  Cool!  We had a great time together and really enjoyed learning the history of a culture that is far older than mine and just a little ways down the road.