Friday, July 19, 2013

Day 4 - Weathered Out!

We got up nice and early this morning, got packed up, had breakfast and made sure we were ready to get on the one and only bus available back to the airport.  We all piled in, headed to the airport and then waited.  The weather was not nice, but there was a slight chance that it might improve in a few hours.
In the mean time, this was the scene... everyone sitting around the airport waiting to see what the weather would do.  
It was entertaining to watch everyone with all their iPads and iPhones trying to flight plan possible routes.  
The rain came down really hard off and on.  
Here's Lon after getting caught out in the rain... yup... he's wringing out his jacket!
Finally, after a number of weather briefings, it was decided that the weather was just getting worse and it would be smart to just wait it out here in Elliot Lake.  Then came the task of finding hotel rooms for everyone!  We were supposed to be in Gatineau tonight, so everyone had hotel rooms booked there.  The Century Flight staff worked hard and finally found enough rooms for everyone here and move our hotel rooms in Gatineau to tomorrow night.  Thankfully we were able to get a room back at the same hotel we were in last night.

We took a group photo while we were waiting at the airport. There are about 35 planes here. I've heard there are about 15 planes already in Gatineau and others joining in in PEI. 
We were very glad when they put on a complimentary bbq for lunch. 
Lennard wasn't very happy that I took his picture, but I had to find something to do with all the hours we sat around today!
Finally at about 1:40 the buses came to take us to our various hotels.  We all got loaded up and we were looking forward to relaxing for a bit.

Unfortunately, the hotel's check-in time was 3:00 and they would NOT budge.  Even when the rooms were ready... they wouldn't let us in until 3:00.  Everyone found a chair and hung out for another hour!  Little frustrating!  
At least we had a beautiful view to look at while we were waiting!
Once we got in to our room, we had a bit of a nap and got all our electronics charging.  We then met up with about 20 others for dinner.  It was a lot of fun sitting and visiting with everyone.  We were at the restaurant for two hours and laughed a lot.  You can definitely get some interesting stories going when there are a bunch of pilots together!

The plan for tomorrow... hopefully get as far as Gatineau, Quebec... and then see what happens!  It looks like the weather won't let us get too much farther, but we'll just have to play it by ear.  Hope we can get out of here tomorrow morning!

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