Up and away on a flight simulator

A relatively busy day, although (as is often the case) little gets accomplished on the weekend. Started with an U14 match at Ottawa University, where OSU Blue-2 were dispatched relatively easily in a placement match. The final score was 4-2, and the imbalance of the side is still apparent. Strong players playing alongside weak players – sometimes this makes a team stronger, at other times it brings the levels down. This has been the case towards the end of the season.
 
Found out that the Louis Riel Dome collapse was indeed serious. Apparently, the massive snow storm we had managed to rip a hole in the dome casing, which brought the whole dome down. Thank God it happened in the middle of the night, otherwise it might well have been a major – and I mean major – catastrophe. The casings weigh tons. I wonder how much the facility owners – Louis Riel is a school – knew: they were cancelling all events during big snowstorms, citing troubles clearing snow from the facilty parking areas as the issue. Now, I begin to wonder.
 
Anyway, post-game, the three of us drove back home for breakfast. Then I drove Ottawacker Jr. to the Brookstreet Hotel, which is where the AviaSim facility is housed. He had been gifted a two-hour session on the flight simulator as part of his Christmas present by Iwon and Gene, so was keen to take it up. This has actually been the first chance we have had. We arrived a trifle early, and after the obligatory snowball flurries in the car park, went in. The area where we had to go was closed off – turned out the Montreal Canadiens were using the hotel and that floor’s meeting rooms in preparation for their evening game against the Ottawa Senators.
 
The Canadiens are probably more popular in Ottawa than the Senators – they are one of the original hockey clubs, whereas the Sens only arrived in 1993 – so there was a bit of security to navigate. It was pretty relaxed though – and I am delighted to say that Ottawacker Jr. was distinctly uninterested in the players walking by in shorts and tracksuits. He was more interested in West Ham beating Arsenal 1-0 at the Emirates… proud father moment.
 
The simulator was different to last time: then, the instructor had sat in the cockpit alongside Ottawacker Jr. and had helped him considerably. This time, I got dragged in there and we were told what to do. My role consisted of putting the wheels down and the flaps up. Everything else was Ottawacker Jr.’s responsibility, and he did it very well. We landed successfully in Nice and San Francisco and Vancouver and St. Maarten, and in between he learned about various engineering issues on the planes (how do you fly when you lose power in a fuel tank?, for example).
 
Home, where we rapidly decided to order in – so we tracked down coupons we had for Coconut Lagoon in Ottawa, and ordered curries. Pretty good, on the whole, despite the fiasco about them not accepting the vouchers we had been given for the restaurant. One word from Mrs. Ottawacker soon put them right, though.