Posts (page 2)

Since others are getting nostalgic in their blogs...

Four years ago today was the worst day of my life.

Fuck you Cinco de Mayo.

Lucky for me, better days followed.

Anyway, still in Alabama.  Found out that I'm deploying to the big sandbox in late August for at least 11 months.  Maybe by the time I get back, the airline industry will have settled down a little.  Or better yet, I'll have enough time/experience on my hands to get a better job where I'm not away from home so much.  We'll see.

I think it's time for a margarita, Cinco de Mayo be damned.

I have succumbed to Steve Jobs and his evil empire...

I now own an iPod.

And I love it.

*cries*

Cut and pasted, names removed to protect the innocent, etc. etc...

Talk about feeling old...Elaina, you ain't got shit on me.  :D

 

President of the United States:
Bill Clinton
United States Population:
270,298,524
Price of a Gallon of Gas:
$1.03
Best Picture Academy Award:
Shakespeare in Love
Number One Song:
My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
Baseball - World Series:
New York Yankees d. San Diego (4-0)
NCAA Basketball Championship:
Kentucky d. Utah (78-69)
Super Bowl:
Denver d. Green Bay (31-24)
Interesting Fact:
An estimated 76 million viewers watch the last episode of Seinfeld.

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm on military leave right now.  I'm sitting in my hotel room here in Alabama, where I'll be until June.  I should be studying some now, but everything we're doing right now is stuff that I've done before, and I'm feeling fairly comfortable.  Right now we're flying the Cessna 182, an airplane in which I've taught.  We're not doing anything special, which makes this part of training easy, if not a little boring.

At any rate, the Major that's in my class is trying to convince me to go back on active duty.  I've told him no, but he's planted the seed in my head.  Add to that the fact that I just looked at my pay stub for the check I'll get on Friday, pay period 3 March - 15 March, and it's a compelling argument.  I made for 13 days twice the amount that I would make in a month at my civilian job.  But the answer, for right now, is a resounding "No".  I feel no need to subject myself to that misery just yet.  In a few years, maybe.  For now, no.

The hotel room doesn't have a kitchenette, so I've created my own.  I have a fridge and a microwave, but two nights ago I went to Walmart and got a single burner plate for $20 along with a pot, pan, a few utensils, and plenty of food to cook.  It's a thousand times better than eating fast food every meal, that's for damn sure.  For lunch today I had a salad with grilled chicken that I cooked last night.  I'm going to save money in the long run and end up eating much healthier as well.

Nothing else profound to convey - just wanted to give an update.

Yup, I said it. I'm back in the Army. Sort of. It's only a temporary thing. Let me explain.

After I left active duty, I remained in the inactive reserve. I spent two and a half years in that status. Well, for a multitude of reasons I've decided that joining an actual reserve unit is probably a better course of action. Some of those reasons are financial, but the biggest reason is to keep myself from getting called back to deploy and do a job that I'm not qualified to do. I know several guys that did get called back and are doing jobs that are totally unrelated to what they do in the civilian world, as well as what they did in the army. I'm in control of my own destiny by being in this unit.

I could've just gotten out completely, if that's what you're wondering. But with nearly 10 years towards retirement, I'm halfway to the 20 that would guarantee me a check every month for the rest of my life, in addition to the rest of the benefits offered to retirees. And with the instability that currently exists in the airline world, I need all the help I can get.

So I'll be back in Alabama for the next three months undergoing training for this new airplane. I'm sure I'll end up having to deploy to the middle east sometime in the next year. But I'll be flying an airplane that transports generals around, and the army doesn't like their generals getting shot, so i should be fairly safe.

So I have a recurring dream.

It's not always the same, but the end result is.

As it starts, I'm walking down a city street.  Not downtown, but away from the city center, still within the city itself.  I'm walking down a long slow hill that overlooks a lower part of the city, almost valley-like it it's appearance.  On the other side of the street, walking up the hill, is a group of Chinese people, all college-student age in appearance.  Don't ask me how I know they're Chinese - I'm half-Asian, I can tell these things.

Anyway, they're doing their thing, I'm doing mine, when a scream is heard overhead.  Not a person scream, but the whine of jet engines.  Of course, being a pilot, I immediately recognize that sound, and the fact that it is not right, and look up.  I see a big jet (737-size) in a gradual descent, but it's facing way off to the side in relation to its direction of flight.  And the nose of the airplane is continuing to come around, causing the plane to fall faster, until it ends up crashing inverted in the city valley.  I caught a look at the plane as it was screaming by -China Airlines.

Everyone has stopped and is looking at the crash site.  Some people in the Chinese group are crying.  I'm speechless, thinking to myself that maybe the Chinese were putting people in the jets who weren't qualified (my flight school trained Chinese, and many of them, well, that's another blog for another time).  At that moment, in the sky over the valley, appears an Alaska Airlines MD-80, upside-down, with it's engines falling off.  It is rolling as it falls to the ground, powerless.

Now more people are crying, and I'm wondering what the hell is going on.  Has there been a nuclear explosion with the resultant EMP causing these crashes?  All of a sudden I look up to see an American Airlines jet falling out of the sky.  Right over us.  It lands in the street, inverted.  Oh yeah, no explosions; nobody on the street is hurt.  The only explosion happened when the Alaska planes engine fell off.  This plane is fully intact minus its wings.  I'm standing at the front of the airplane and attempt to look into the cockpit, but the windows do that tempered-glass shatter pattern and I can't see anything inside.  One of the Chinese guys is up close, looking at the planes finish, which has taken on a spiderweb pattern.  He looks at me and says "Oh no - collosion" (corrosion).  With that, I wake up.

I've had a very similar dream in the past, with the three planes falling out of the sky, and the group of Chinese kids nearby, but it wasn't exactly the same.  And this has only started since I've become an airline pilot.  Anyone have any thoughts?

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things seem to constantly work against you.

 

I seem to lack the ability to get to the airport with a reasonable amount of time before my flight. Every week I try to fix it, and yet every week it gets worse. I'm typing this on a plane that almost left without me, which would have been completely my fault.

 

First issue - getting out of bed. I set the alarm for 8am. I got out of bed at 8:30. No big deal, as my flight wasn't supposed to go until 11:30. Well, after spending half an hour drinking coffee, checking email, and just generally dicking around, I decided to finish packing. I got most of it done last night, but I had to wash some unmentionables and socks to fill out my 4-day supply. The clothes were clean; they just needed a quick fold and then they were good to pack. fifteen minutes. Then I still had to shower and shave. Thirty minutes. Get dressed - ten mi...WHAT??? A button missing? I had the button, but now I had to sew it back on. Fifteen minutes. Now it's 10am. Get dressed - 10 minutes. By the time I get everything loaded up, it's 10:20. I wanted to stop at the store to grab some soups and granola bars. 10:30 now. Drive to the airport, park, wait for shuttle, ride shuttle - 11:08 when I get off the bus. I still have to go through security!!! Luckily it only takes 5 minutes to get through and get to the gate.  I made it.

 

I've got to figure out a better system, and then stop being so lazy and actually implement it. Anyway, i'll be in houston in 2.5 hours, so I guess all is well for now...

...and something to which the Army should pay attention.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0712.tilghman.html

PART ONE

 

So since I've got this fancy new phone/PDA, I thought I would try to do better at blogging.

 

OK, first things first - no more capitalization. This small keyboard is not conducive to that. Maybe at the beginning of sentences, since it does that automatically anyway. ;o)

 

I just finished a 4-day and am on a plane home right now. The trip itself was fine. The crew was fine. But for some reason I just didn't enjoy it that much. I even got to have a beer in nashville the other night, but it still wasn't that great.

 

I guess it just started off poorly, with a very long day at the front end, and then ended with me running through the houston airport to get on this flight. Late. The first day I was up at 4am raleigh time and didn't sleep until midnight or so nashville time. Then last night they played musical jets and didn't get us a plane until late, which caused us to be late into dallas, which caused us to have to leave later this morning due to rest requirements. When we got into houston, our new plane was broke, causing us to have to wait for another plane, which made us an hour late again! We did a quick turn in guadalajara, but we still got back to houston 40 minutes late, mainly because houston approach was putting everyone at 20 miles in trail (and the weather wasn't even that bad!) and vectoring us all over texas. My flight was supposed to leave one hour after our original arrival time, so if you do the math, you'll see I only had 20 minutes to clear customs and move my ass to the other terminal.

 

I made it. I'm on the plane. I'm going home to my beautiful wife and whiny cat. More later...my thumbs are getting sore.

 

PART TWO

 

And then I realized that I have a fully functional notebook computer sitting in the bag at my feet, upon which I am now composing the rest of this.  My fingers do hurt, but that's really just from cutting the fingernails too short, not from typing.  Dork.

 

I was really starting to get pissed off earlier when Houston Approach was vectoring us all over the place.  I mean, c'mon, 1500 broken is not an excuse to run 20 miles in trail all the way down to the Mexican border.  You non-pilots have no idea what I'm talking about, I know.  Sorry.  Basically the ceilings were low, but not low enough to necessitate the amount of space that they were using to separate aircraft - 20 miles.  On a clear blue day with low traffic volume, it would probably normally be about 10 miles separation at that point, closing to 5 miles on final.  Well, it was still 5 miles in trail on final, but 20 at the southern Texas border.  Ridiculous.

 

Anyway, I just recently found out that my company email account has been activated.  The address is myfirstname.mylastname@expressjet.com.  I don't need anyone farming my address for their spam bots, so figure it out yourself if you want to send me something.  I'm trying to work it out to have that email pushed to my phone, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.  I may need some help from our IT department, and if that's the case, forget it.  They're about worthless.  I'm decent with computers, but by no means a professional, and yet I could do a better job than they do.  Maybe the company will realize this eventually and hire some talent.  Of course that would mean that they would have to pay more.  Yeah, right.

 

I'll put some pictures in this post.  First up, some pics from the flight back from Guadalajara.  This picture is actually near the town of Saltillo.

 

I believe this next one is the actual famed "Copper Canyon".

And, finally, me driving:

 

 

Last one, I promise:

 

We had some crazy winds the other night.  I actually saw our groundspeed get up to 608 kts at one point.  Quick math works out to 691 mph across the ground!

...is a whiny bitch.  And a crybaby.

There.  Just wanted to get that off of my chest.

Pansy.