The Journey

June 22, 2011

As a promise to Mark, I am going to document my first rotation in Juba, Sudan.

I left Sarnia Airport excited and I must admit a wee bit nervous.  It finally hit me that I wasn’t leaving my wife and daughter for a week or two like my previous jobs, but eight weeks to the other side of the world!  While I don’t tend to be emotional, I concentrated on not breaking down when I saw my wife’s eyes tear up at the airport when she was saying good bye.

As I sat and waited for the Beech 1900 to fire up I could not help but feel this was going to be a life changing experience.  The excitement built and I said goodbye to my familiar surroundings of Sarnia Airport for a couple months.  

I’m sitting at the KLM gate waiting for the flight to board, the agent calls my name and request I come to the desk.  She needs to know my VISA status in to Uganda as she sees there is no record of one.  I stay cool, and say I will get a VISA on entry, not knowing if that was even possible.  As I boarded a KLM A330 to Amsterdam, the butterflies started to migrate in my stomach.  I’m way out of my element with this international travel stuff!  My whole career I have felt I was out of my element when I started a job and I always fumbled my way through and came out on top.

As I watch the sun set at FL390 over the last tip of Labrador (the last piece of Canadian soil I’ll see for two months) I in my heart say good bye to my home land, customs, and familiarity.  It’s the start of something new!

The night was a extremely short one.  The date is June 21, 2011 the longest day of the year.  Over the North Atlantic on the NAT tracks at FL390 the sky never got dark, it maintained a twilight until two and a half hours later we race the sun around to the other side of the world to see a brilliant sunrise over Dublin, Ireland.  This is the first time I have ever seen Europe!  The lights are still blazing on the ground in Dublin, but the sun is brightly hitting the plane.  We cross England and I now can see detail on the land through the broken layer of cloud.  Crossing the English channel, I can see the freighters anchored off shore of Holland, along with oil rigs and plantations of hundreds of wind turbines in the channel.  We are on final, I can see the dykes and canals surrounding Amsterdam.

Chirp, chirp.  Our A330 touches Holland soil.  I can’t get over how pretty the airport is.  Lines are painted fresh, signs are clear, progressive taxi light system guides us to gate E9.  I deplane into the massive AMS Schiphol airport.  What a huge place!!!  My feet are finally off North American soil!!

Sitting in the terminal waiting my body is screwing with me.  The time on my watch says 1:30am but is light out and time for breakfast.  Stupid cadian cycle can’t understand what we just did!