Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: AMA 3, reminding myself

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

AMA 3, reminding myself

A self generated question asked many times in recent years. "Tell me again why you live where the air sometimes hurts your face?"

One of the things that retired people sometimes do is travel. We've done some, both within and outside Canada. I was always amused by the RV units with the continental outline on them, filled in by stickers to show which states and provinces they'd been to. Pretty sure that if my mom and her husband had done such a thing, they would have filled them all in.

I'm still missing Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick (I don't think a night train journey through it counts), Prince Edward Island, Northwest Territories, and Nunavat. It's shorter to say which states I've been to. Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Utah, Kansas, Florida, Massachusetts, (Delaware and New York as a child) and Washington DC. Outside of North America I've been to UK (just within London), France (within Paris and train tracks to Italy), Italy, Germany, Bermuda, and New Zealand.

There's a story I liked to tell while I worked at Amoco and BP. Where did the other members of my team go? Places like Dallas, Houston, Montreal, Chicago. Where did I go? Fox Creek.

Not a big list, really, for someone my age with a pilot for a father and brother. Some of my earliest memories are of being at what was then called Malton International Airport, now Toronto Pearson International Airport, and inside the now demolished Terminal One. And as I digress into a bit of research, I see they've also demolished what I knew as Terminal 2, a butt ugly linear abomination surrounded by traffic jams.

I can remember some of my first trip into Toronto as a small child. Pretty sure it was in a DC-8, and it was a really rough ride. I started grade 1 soon after, so this would be 1964 or so, when the terminal was new. We had to deplane out on the ramp, they provided umbrellas because it was raining. Lots of times dad took us to the airport when he had stuff to do and I'm pretty sure we got taken into areas the public wasn't allowed. The road into the terminal swooped under the runway, then into a maze of ramps, drop off and pick up zone, and the parking structure. Dad knew it like the back of his hand and often swore at the tourists in the way.

I'm just now looking at a Google Maps image of the airport thinking about how much it's changed. At one time in the late 70's, I had all the runway and taxiway designations memorized, knew how to get into and out of it, and into the parking lot near the start of 23R to watch the planes taking off. You can still see a dark spot on the pavement where the old terminal used to be.

Flying then was a fun thing. I loved everything about it, watching the planes come and go, the flight itself, all the activity in and around the terminal. During air traffic control training I got into more areas not open to the public, including the control tower. Sure glad I didn't go into that career. Now, not so much. In fact, with all the security theatre bullshit, it's an ordeal, with the exception of Air New Zealand business class. That was nice. And Air North is pretty good too. West Jet used to be, back in the days when there were terrible dad jokes at the end of the flight.

I moved here in 1980 because a buddy told me it was easy to get good paying work here. And so it was. Nice housing was a bigger problems. At some point along the way Calgary became home. Once I started in oil and gas, it became where my professional expertise was based, and where essentially all my contacts were. I got some work because people knew me and called before going to a recruiter. Going elsewhere would have meant starting over, and I wasn't into that at all.

Plus, living in a paid for house has serious lifetime advantages. I've talked about how money insulates you from the problems of the world. Not totally, of course, but it's the best tool available. Owning your own house is a huge part of that security and insulation. I mentioned earlier that it was easy to find good paying work. That became less true over time, and there was one year I didn't work, and was beginning to wonder if I ever would again. Having our own house and relatively modest lifestyle meant that nothing changed while I was off.

Now I don't need to look for work. Some photography work finds me, but I don't go looking for it. So the question comes up, why live in Calgary? Why indeed?

This is where many of our friends live. I have a cousin recently moved to Airdrie to escape the dreary BC weather, and another in Camrose. Linda has a cousin here. Linda has put her heart and soul into the garden here, and would miss it, even moving to a place where the gardening was much greener.

Much of the time Calgary has a great climate. 333 sunny days a year, and almost 2400 hours of sunshine a year make it the sunniest big city, and one of the sunniest places overall in Canada, and I do like a sunny day. Even when it's cold out, mostly. Moving to Medicine hat, as a slightly sunnier and somewhat smaller place doesn't really get us all that much. Plus it's full of old folks, looking for warmth on the cheap. Which might describe me in the coming years.

But it's when it's cold out that's beginning to bite me. There aren't many places in Canada to go to escape winter. There's been periodic discussion of Turks and Caicos becoming part of Canada, which would be nice, but it doesn't seem to be a priority for them. Maybe we should vacation there to try it out next time it gets cold here. Which, as another digression, is right now. -17 right now and getting cloudy and starting to snow again. This after nearly a foot of snow over the last couple days.

New Zealand would be nice, outside the recent cyclone and flood zones. Hmmm. Let's go down the unblogged New Zealand memory lane from a few years ago.

Linda in Dunedin, near our condo. As I recall, we were on the search for a chocolate emporium.