Another Empty Kitchen

Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T03:06:00.000-08:00

What does Thanksgiving mean to you? As I reflect upon the last 15 years, I realize that Thanksgiving to me usually means sitting alone in some hotel in a strange city, getting dinner from the corner gas station because no restaurants close by are open. That's okay, because I spend a lot of other days of the year with the people I care about. And I'm thankful for that!

Here's hoping you all have something to be thankful for.

Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

I'd like to add my thanks to all Veterans who have served. It's too bad that the date's initial significance as a commemoration to Armistice Day from the "War to end all Wars" had to be changed to its current meaning. Maybe someday there will be no more wars. When women rule the world. ;-)

Digital TV is coming

2008-11-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

I just bought my first digital TV, a 10" jobbie for the travel trailer. For those of you that are still using rabbit ears, this clip will help you get yourself ready for Feb '09.

Song for Sarah

2008-11-08T15:13:00.001-08:00

Responsibility

2008-11-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

I need someone to blame!!! Do any of you use steepandcheap, tramdock or chainlove.com? Those freaking websites. I just "happen" to look on them and I'll be damned if a couple times a week there isn't something I just "need" to have. I've got more wool shirts and socks, cycling shorts and other crap coming my way and no freaking money left in my checking account. I try to rationalize this behavior since it's the "holidays". But all the stuff is for me. I guess I'm somebody. That I need to shop for. Cripe.

Higher Education

2008-10-31T16:44:00.001-07:00

Since I kinda like wine, I decided to take a distance learning course from UC Davis...Introduction to Winemaking. It's hard to be disciplined enough to regularly watch the lectures, and before I knew it I had an email message yesterday saying that midterms had been sent to our proctors! CRAP! I'll be out of town the beginning of next week, my test center isn't open weekends and the test has to be done by the 6th, so I just sucked it up and went in to take the test today. I had no doubts that I'd fail, but after testing, I think I might have done pretty well. Now I just hope I put enough postage on the envelope that the proctor sends to the University. That would REALLY suck to do well on the test only to have it not even graded. Who knows, maybe I could have a new career in winemaking! I already have a second career in winedrinking, but that one's a money drain.

Vote!

2008-10-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

I sent my early ballot in a week and a half ago, so why don't all you freaking political call center morons that have my home phone number quit calling me? I even changed my answering machine greeting to say "I've already voted, please don't leave a message", but since all of that garbage is pre-recorded, I get those dumb messages anyway.

Not sure I'm overly excited about either candidate, and whoever gets elected will sure have one hell of a mess on his hands. I'd like to see the new president elect tell the whole damn country to man up and start living responsibly. Yeah, I'm all for Social Security and national health care, but if your sorry ass decided to take out a home equity loan for a new car and vacation and now you can't afford your house payment because your interest went up to 6% and you never set aside an emergency fund, TOO FREAKING BAD. Go live in the damn street. Cripe, the stories I'm hearing tick me off. There was a great political cartoon in USAToday last week. Three doorways, one labeled "share the risk", one labeled "take responsibility", and one labeled "share the wealth". You guessed it, big line in the last one, nobody at the first two.

Everybody wants tax cuts. How the hell do we pay for the mess we're in? Two wars and a financial bailout. Let alone paying for bridges to nowhere (I realize the bridge actually links the town of Ketchikan with the island that the airport is on...I saw the site this summer. So it's actually a bridge to somewhere).

Too bad Hillary didn't make it to the finals. So who do I vote for? The inexperienced one or the one who said that airline pilots were unpatriotic, greedy, overpaid bus drivers (never mind that from day 1, a senator makes double what I do with a pension and health care the rest of his life. I was almost ready to forgive his ignorant comments, but I can't get past Sarah Palin)? I went on one of those websites that matches your views to candidates. I was a 100% match with Ralph Nader. LOL! I almost voted for him, but then remembered what happened to my vote for Ross Perot back in the 90s. And although I have voted for both parties and then some, I don't think I've actually voted for a president who got into office EVER. So Barak, if you lose, you can blame me.

Musings

2008-10-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

Sitting in a hotel in Hartford, CT. I hadn't flown into this airport since my commuter days ten years ago, and back then we always had a short overnight very close to the airport. Now I'm in a decent hotel downtown overlooking the river. The trees look to be at their peak of color, and I'd love to go out and explore, except that it's 48 degrees and pouring rain out there. In the old days this wouldn't bother me, but now that I'm a soft creampuff from Arizona, it's just too much.
So somebody tell me about Hartford, because I'm going to miss it.

As I'm sitting here, I'm thinking about my bike back home. Last Tuesday I did a 200k for my longest ride ever (ended up being 131 miles), but somewhere along that ride I managed to dribble a bunch of Hammer gel out of my flask onto the front of my bike. Got it all over the fork, handlebars, front spokes, etc. Next day I tried to clean some of it off (emphasis on "some"), and the stuff was as hard as a rock. It took a freaking chisel and hammer to get the crap off. If it turns into rock on your bike, what the hell does it do in your stomach? No wonder I was feeling lousy the first part of the ride when all I was taking in was hammer gel! What would happen if I left the lid open on my big bottle at home? Would I end up with a big old rock like weapon or a paperweight?

On the other hand, you don't see beer doing that stuff. You pour beer on your bike, it won't turn solid. Would it make better cycling fuel? Only problem is that you'd have to go to the bathroom a lot or pee your chamois.

I think that I might be able to combine the two somehow to get the best of both products. You have Honey Stingers out there (Made from Real Honey!), so why not beer shooters in a convenient gel pack (Made from Real Beer!)? Malt Blocs instead of Shot Blocs. Pale Ale Gu? And maybe some Cabernet Sauvingnon Sport Beans. The possiblities are endless. Maybe we could even get Joe Six Pack out riding when he hears what kind of cool stuff we eat on the bike.

If it wasn't raining out, I'd go get some supplies and do some experiments in my room, but I think I'll just sit here and have a cup of tea instead.

Financial mess

2008-10-09T10:15:00.001-07:00

As one of those poor suckers who has lived well within her means, this whole mortgage mess has me pretty pissed off. I'll be sending another $22k to the feds this year to bail out bozos on Wall Street and the main street losers who always had to keep up with the Joneses. I took a ride today in a ritzy neighborhood and found a dozen multi million dollar homes in preforeclosure.

Anyway, I found this humorous explanation to the whole financial mess. Foul language, so beware:

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true

Mixed Feelings

2008-09-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Since I bought my new touring bike, I have too many bikes. I decided on a whim to put the old Giant on ebay with a $250 buy it now price. Within a few hours, it was sold! The buyer has emailed and says he/she (Japanese(?) name...can't tell the sex) is a student at ASU and will pick the bike up on Sunday. I really needed the room for my new ride, but now I'm kind of regretting putting the old Giant up for sale. I guess I didn't figure it would actually GO, especially that fast! I was planning to take it to Colorado on vacation next week, but now I won't have it. Heck, it made a great beater bike, and it wasn't even beat. Think I'm going to be sad, but I just need to let go!!

Latest Scab update

2008-09-22T15:30:00.001-07:00

So the "union" put out their latest communication stating that they were going to go to a neutral arbitrator to try to have our four pilots fired. Makes me laugh out loud since they've already decided that decisions of neutral arbitrators don't apply to them. Better yet, they've said that half the cost of the arbitration will come out of the individual pilots' pockets. Since they are arguing with a decision the COMPANY made, why try to bankrupt the pilots you are supposed to represent? Oh, that's right! They only represent folks from the east side and are doing everything in their power to screw over the west.
What a bunch of scumbags.

More U-SCAB-A

2008-09-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

So the new "union" of eastholes recently sent out termination letters to four of our (west) pilots, trying to get them fired for not paying union dues. Almost no west pilots have paid union dues to this dirtbag outfit that's sole purpose is to screw us (heck, a lot of EAST pilots haven't paid union dues to them but they haven't sent termination letters to their own side!), so how they picked those four pilots, I don't know. Two of the pilots were women, which surprises me since only about 3% of the pilot group is female (if that). Anyway, our four had a hearing before the company, and USCABAs request was thankfully denied, mainly because they haven't even told these pilots whether they were accepted as union members, and if they were, it was done not according to their own bylaws. I'm sure they'll try more dirty tricks...they're doing everything in their power to get rid of all the west pilots or make us fold. Meanwhile, hopefully the courts move quickly on our DFR and furlough injunction lawsuits and rule in our favor. Not that little things like court rulings or binding arbitration can stop these assholes. What a mess. Unfortunately, they've dragged down our attitudes (although not to their levels). At least I'm still happy when I ride my bike.

Stuff

2008-09-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

So today I was in Costco shopping for stuff, and they already have their Christmas things out. You gotta be shitting me! It's mid September for goodness sake! I was looking for charcoal and they've already stopped stocking it for the year. Do they realize this is PHOENIX? Where it's HOT all summer and the grilling season STARTS in September?

On another note, I got a new bike. Touring bike. Took it for a 25 mile ride today and liking it (other than the saddle). Have a nice pack on the back rack for carrying lots of Cheetos.

And one final thing....two lawsuits have finally been filed against the union of former USAir east pilots by our side. Hopefully this will stop the out of seniority furloughs currently happening, but we'll see what happens.

Union Troubles

2008-09-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted much lately about work, mainly because of all the hostility between the two pilot groups. I'm also afraid to speak my mind lest our new union of scabs try to sue me. That's what happened to a group of our pilots recently. Work has gone from being a lot of fun with a bunch of good folks to being a stressful necessity to pay the bills. We aquired the absolute crummiest airline in the world. Thank God I at least don't have to fly with those scabs since we're still operating as two separate airlines, but they had to start using our callsign on the radio this month, and I hope they're choking on it.
Anyway, I read a good article today in the Phoenix New Times that pretty much sums up the situation:

Warring US Airways and America West pilots have the merged company in a real tailspin

By Sarah Fenske
Published on September 04, 2008

David Braid doesn't look like a gangster. A pilot for US Airways, Braid has the friendly demeanor and wholesome blondness common to many Midwesterners — it's no surprise to learn that he hails from Michigan. Now living in Mesa, the 46-year-old seems about as nice, and low-key, as they come.
If you believe his own union, though, David Braid is part of a vast, vicious conspiracy. In fact, the union has sued him and a host of his fellow pilots under the very laws that were used to stop the Gambino crime family and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO. The union's suit, filed in federal court in North Carolina this May, alleges that Braid and a bevy of his fellow pilots have engaged in extortion and a "concerted campaign of sabotage."

Extortion? Sabotage?

Reading that, you might picture slashed tires. Or threats in the [flight deck]. Perhaps it even brings to mind the pilots who nearly flew drunk a few years back. At minimum, you'd think of a group of conspirators, plotting in smoke-filled rooms (or airport lounges, in these smoke-free days).
But here's what David Braid stands accused of doing.

He posted one message on an anti-union Internet bulletin board. And it was about as unexciting as it gets — in it, he urged his fellow pilots to call the union's toll-free information line. No joke: We're talking about one message that didn't use foul language, post anyone's personal information, or call for illegal behavior. At the time, Braid had never even met many of the pilots he was accusing of conspiring with — some of whom also did nothing more than post a few innocuous comments online.

His lawyer, Patrick Van Zanen, says the lawsuit is ludicrous. "To take a guy who makes one posting, and lump him up in some kind of conspiracy of extortion . . . that's just ridiculous."

But that's US Airways these days. Three years after America West and US Airways "merged" to form the nation's sixth-largest carrier, its pilots are less united than ever. Pilots from the old US Airways have now formed a new, independent union — but even though pilots from the old America West are required to pay it dues, they believe the new union has done its best to disenfranchise them entirely.

America West pilots have fought back. Their US Airways counterparts have accused them of everything from mailing dog feces to union headquarters to hanging a noose in an airplane [flight deck] to making thousands of prank phone calls. Not surprisingly, the two groups aren't even close to a common contract.
Now, there's no need to cash in your frequent flyer miles and book a train: The infighting at US Airways will not affect your safety. But for the 5,000 pilots who count on the Tempe-based airline for their paycheck, the situation is incredibly frustrating.

Thanks to the merger, some pilots will have to be demoted. The question of who that should be — guys who've been laid off for years from the old US Airways, or the younger pilots at America West — has led to some pilots taking extreme positions and refusing to budge.

The situation isn't likely to change anytime soon. Thanks to high fuel prices, the perennially precarious airline industry is in a serious state of contraction. No one can afford to walk away; no one sees an influx of more routes and more jobs on the near horizon.

The pilots are locked into a bitter battle. And the casualties are guys like David Braid: pilots who want nothing more than to keep the status they've accrued over years of flying but have been forced to hire lawyers just to defend their right to free speech.

Three years ago this month, Virginia-based US Airways merged with Tempe's America West. But what was quickly made official on paper has proved much more complicated in reality.
Pre-merger, the companies had little geographic overlap. US Airways had hubs in Charlotte and Philadelphia; its routes were based almost entirely in the East. America West, with hubs in Phoenix and Las Vegas, flew mostly in the West.

They also had markedly different cultures.
US Airways was older, more traditional and — like many older, traditional airlines — more screwed-up. Founded by the DuPont family in the 1930s, it became US Air in 1979 following deregulation and then, finally, US Airways a couple of decades after that. But though it survived merger after merger and recession after recession, it never actually thrived. At the time merger discussions began with America West in 2005, US Airways had lost $3.4 billion in four years, and filed for Chapter 11 protection twice.

As for America West, well, in 2005 you couldn't say it was in great shape. But by the standards of the perpetually beleaguered airline industry, it was at least stayin' alive. The low-cost, low-frills airline, which started in Phoenix in the early 1980s, initially grew rapidly. There was a bankruptcy in 1990, but the company reorganized and managed to avoid subsequent filings. Its pre-merger losses were in the millions — which, unfortunately, are pretty typical for an airline.

But the biggest difference between the two airlines was workforce. The US Airways guys are, generally, much older. Robert W. Mann, an airline analyst and consultant, says that endless financial problems, particularly those following 9/11, led to 1,691 of its 5,000 pilots being "furloughed." That's airline-speak for laid off, yet still on the company's roster, in case the situation were to improve.

At the time of the merger with America West, US Airways hadn't hired a new pilot in 17 years. And, virtually every US Airways pilot who'd been hired since 1987 was stuck on furlough, Mann says. Most had been on the list long enough to find other jobs. Some had landed jobs at JetBlue — or even America West.
America West was growing. Since its inception in the 1980s, it had grown to 1,894 pilots. None were on furlough at the time of the merger.

Because the airline was still relatively young, few America West pilots could match the US Airways pilots when it came to years of service. In fact, if you drew up a combined seniority list, based strictly on original date of hire, 900 US Airways pilots would predate America West's oldest veteran.
That's been the epicenter of the new airline's post-merger drama. The mounting anger between the two groups of pilots, the RICO suit, even the allegations of dog feces in the mail stem from controversy over the seniority list.

But while the arguments have become petty, the issues are not. At an airline, everything depends on seniority. Pilots work as a "first officer" for years just to earn captain status — which comes with not only the right to command your own plane but a big pay raise. And with a limited number of jets in the fleet, there's room for only so many captains. (Not to mention, for a pilot, a good schedule is paramount — and the more seniority you have, the better your options.) If all the furloughed US Airways pilots were allowed to return to active duty as captains, they'd bump the younger captains at America West back down to first officer. If more furloughs were needed, too, the America West guys would be on the chopping block.

The America West pilots didn't think it was fair. Why should they suddenly be in a precarious place, just because their company had absorbed a troubled competitor?
"Everybody saw this as a problem," confirms CJ Szmal, an America West pilot and, at the time of the merger, a union officer. "It's nuclear fusion, it's mushroom cloud stuff. It's the most volatile thing in the world — pilot seniority."

The airline did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment.
The CEOs of the two airlines agreed to become one in September 2005. They kept the US Airways name, the old America West headquarters in Tempe, and America West CEO Doug Parker as their new boss.
After that, it was left to the union chapters representing the East pilots (the older, partially furloughed guys) and the West pilots (the younger, America West ones) to merge into a single unit with a new, combined seniority list. Only after that could they begin negotiating a new contract.

Three years later, they haven't begun to talk about a contract. Seniority has been too great a minefield.
The West guys argue that it can't simply be a matter of date-of-hire: If so, a thousand of them would end up junior to guys who hadn't been working in the industry for years. But the East guys argue that it has to be — and can only be — date-of-hire. The two pilots groups have been so far apart on the issue that they hired a mediator to help them talk then serve as an impartial arbiter when mediation failed. George Nicolau, who's worked for both the airline industry and Major League Baseball, was suggested by the East pilots. When the West pilots acquiesced, both sides agreed that his verdict would be final and binding.
For 18 days, Nicolau listened to testimony from both sets of pilots. It soon became clear, West pilots say, that the East-based pilots were unwilling to negotiate. It was date-of-hire or nothing.

Mann, who assisted the West pilots during previous merger talks and during the seniority negotiations, was stunned by the East pilots' attitude. "I've done a lot of these," he says. "And this was just the most extreme intransigence I've ever seen." In May 2007, Nicolau issued his decree on how seniority should be handled. Suffice it to say, it wasn't based strictly on date-of-hire; he'd crafted a compromise that weighed a host of factors. That should have been it; the two parties had agreed at the beginning that the Nicolau award was to be binding, final, and all those words that mean it can't be challenged or changed or compromised.
The East pilots, though, had other plans. Screw the "binding" bit. Surely, it applied only to the union that had agreed to arbitration.

What if they were to start a new union? Then, surely, Nicolau wouldn't count.
Then they could start from scratch.

In early 2008, the pilots at US Airways began to campaign for the creation of a new union.
Arnie Gentilly, a 24-year veteran of US Airways, says that the pilots didn't decide to head out on their own just because they hated the Nicolau award. They'd been frustrated for years, he says. After the company filed for bankruptcy in 2003, the pilots had agreed to an awful contract just to stay in business, with a 53 percent pay cut and incredibly onerous working hours. Now they were being asked to play a junior role to pilots with less experience?

"The Nicolau award was the straw that broke the camel's back," Gentilly admits. The West guys say they, too, had their complaints about Nicolau's award. "Nobody on our side was happy with it," says Braid, a pilot who came up through the America West system. "They're calling him 'St. Nick,' like he gave us a gift." Not so, Braid says — it's more that the West pilots understood the process had been fair, that no one was going to get everything they wanted. Unlike the East guys, they'd come in knowing that they'd have to compromise.
Plus, there was the principle of the thing.

"We knew whatever [Nicolau] came out with, we had to live with," says fellow West pilot Szmal. "We took that chance." Unfortunately for the West pilots, though, they'd be forced to join the new union whether they wanted to or not. In the airline industry, unions are optional. It's called an "agency shop." If you want to work as a pilot, you are required to pay union dues. And because there were twice as many East pilots, as long as they stood united, they didn't really need a single West pilot's support to break away — and require the West guys to pay dues to an organization that had been formed, in essence, to screw them over.

The East guys selling the new union made just one trip to Phoenix to discuss their plans — an effort they quickly abandoned under intense questioning from West pilots. The meeting is enshrined in a series of 15 YouTube videos, titled "Can't Take the Heat." (Some of the videos have been viewed more than 4,000 times.)
Already, West pilots were convinced they were getting the shaft. Several made it clear that they would not pay dues, or participate, in the new union.

"I believe [forming a new union] is the quickest way to a new contract — and, eventually, unity," one of the East pilots told the assembled pilots.

"Never!" the West pilots cried. "No way!"

"Now," the East pilot continued, "Many of you have told us that you prefer anarchy, and you will not pay dues to us, and you'll undermine us."

"You're undermining ALPA," one West pilot angrily retorted.

"You're fundamentally undermining us!" another shouted.

Toward the end of the meeting, a West pilot asked what would happen if the West pilots refuse to pay dues to the new union. Sure, technically, they could get fired. But, the pilot asked, "Would you think that [US Airways CEO] Doug Parker would just fire 1,800 pilots? Would they lay us off?"
"They could," the would-be union leader replied.

The union organizers had originally planned to stay until 4 p.m., but the meeting grew so toxic, they left more than two hours early.

"What about a closing statement?" one West pilot called as they prepared to go. "Tell us why I need to vote for you."
"Are you guys going to walk out?" another West pilot shouted.

"Sorry, guys," the East pilot said.

"It's not four o'clock yet!" a West pilot shouted.

A few weeks later, U.S. Airlines Pilot Association, or USAPA, was voted in as the official representative of all US Airways pilots. The East pilots had won. But that didn't mean the West guys were about to roll over.
You have to be careful while reading the new union's RICO suit against the West-based pilots. After all, this is a lawsuit that accuses a bunch of respected pilots of extortion — then offers absolutely no evidence to back up the claim. What is clear from the suit, however, is that in the three months since USAPA took over as the bargaining agent for US Airways pilots, a tense situation has flared into open warfare, with plenty of bad blood on both sides.

The USAPA guys put up a toll-free line for pilots to get information from union leadership, at no cost. But the America West pilots knew that "no cost" to them could mean "big cost" to the start-up union.
According to the suit, the West pilots began flooding the line in hopes of bankrupting the "scab" union. In one month's time, the line received a whopping 13,986 calls. And it was pretty clear that guys weren't just calling to get information: One guy, a pilot in Dayton, made 393 calls in a one-week period. Another guy, based in Phoenix, rang up a staggering 1,481 calls over two weeks. The West pilots openly bragged about their shenanigans.

"I took some advice from another thread and called their hotline," one pilot wrote on a West-controlled message board in April. "I did some research, and it costs them seven cents a minute. After 9 p.m., cell phone usage is free and I can run two lines at once, plus my home phone . . . Oh, yeah, and I passed some pay phones, dialed it, and left. So, just today, I probably cost them an easy $30 to $40. If we all do this . . . holy [Edited – vulgar]!"

Then came the prank calls.
"Hey scab," one pilot said on the voice mail of a union officer. "Get ready to bend over and take Nicolau!"
The lawsuit claims that a doll labeled "USAPA" was found hanging from a noose in a US Airways [flight deck]. At least two envelopes containing feces showed up in the new union's post office box. One guy who considered running for USAPA leadership, according to the suit, had personal information posted on a Web site controlled by the America West pilots. (He ultimately decided not to run.)

Then there was the jump-seat issue.
Pilots have a way of hitching a free ride home, or to their next destination, that depends on the kindness of colleagues. If a pilot is so inclined, he can let a visiting pilot join him in the [flight deck]'s jump seat.
But as the merger soured, some West pilots decided there was too much tension between the two groups — no more jump seat rides for their East counterparts. Admittedly, they also tried to get pilots from other unions to join them in exiling the breakaway union's pilots. "They are the pariahs of the industry," one West pilot wrote on a message board. "Frankly, I think it is unsafe to have them on our jumps. They've made their bed, now they get to lie in it."

Finally, there was the money issue.
As a start-up union with few resources, USAPA was dependent on dues from all its members. But — even though they are required by law to contribute — some West pilots decided to say no. The union was formed to screw them, they reasoned. Why finance their own demise? "Eighteen-hundred guys and gals standing on principle and refusing to pay an organization founded for and dedicated to the destruction of their careers?" one pilot wrote on the West message board. "I say let them try to fire 1,800 pilots." Within one month, the union claims, it lost $298,000 in prospective dues.

But rather than hunker down and ride out the losses, or try to compromise with the West pilots, the union made an unusual decision. It decided to sue a dozen West pilots in federal court — for extortion, running a criminal enterprise, and nine other counts. Gentilly, vice chairman for US Airways' newly formed pilots union, says that East pilots knew West pilots were unhappy with the new structure. They weren't surprised to hear grumbling.
But they were shocked at how nasty the West guys got. "We were surprised by what we're alleging is criminal activity," he says. "We were definitely surprised that professional pilots would turn to alleged criminal activity, absolutely."

It had been a rough year for Ron Gabaldon.
The 56-year-old pilot and his wife had long been caregivers for her elderly parents, and in March 2008, her father passed away after a long illness. There was exhaustion; there were a zillion details to take care of; there was grief. It took two months for the couple, who live in Phoenix, to feel that they were getting back to normal
Then came the lawsuit. On June 2, Ron landed a flight at the Sacramento airport and, like any traveler these days, turned on his cell phone before he'd even exited the aircraft. On his voice mail was an urgent message from a fellow pilot. A lawsuit had been filed in North Carolina — and Gabaldon was being accused of defamation, tortious interference, conspiracy, and racketeering.
What did he do? He posted a single message on a Web board frequented by America West pilots.
"I will not allow any scab to ride in my jump seat (in the interest of safety)," Gabaldon had written in April. "I'm networking with all my [union] friends at other carriers to put forth motions . . . to deny jump seats to all [pilots at the former US Airways]." Gabaldon is one of the older pilots to come out of the America West system. Before he took a job there, he says, he'd been in the U.S. Air Force for seven years and then worked for Eastern Airlines.

He resents the East pilots' claims that America West pilots are all young punks. "We are as equal in our experience," he says. "And our safety record is bar none." Gabaldon was hit hard by the suit. At first, told about it from his breathless friend in the Sacramento airport, he thought it was a joke: Conspiracy? He hadn't even been active in union politics. He'd never met most of his supposed co-conspirators. He was so rattled that he asked his first officer to handle the route back to Phoenix. "I needed to concentrate on what I was going to say to my wife," he says. "It was just exhausting to care for her dad and mom — and now another battle to be confronted with . . . When I told her, she got this distinct look, like the life had been sucked out of her."
David Braid remembers a similar feeling when he learned he'd been named in the suit. Braid had made a single post in April regarding the toll-free hotline, noting the irony of the union complaining bitterly about pilots flooding their toll-free line with calls, even as it sent out a message urging membership to "call often to stay informed." Braid wrote, "Look, they said it again. 'Call often to stay informed.' Reach out and call from every pay phone you see . . . They said to call."

Thanks to the work of the lawyers representing pilots from the old America West, Patrick Van Zanen and Mike Kitchen of Margrave Celmins, the federal judge in North Carolina quickly dismissed the RICO suit just two months after it was filed. Even if what the union alleged were true, wrote U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger, the claims simply didn't rise to the level of extortion — or an organized conspiracy. "There is no basis for finding the threat of continued criminal activity that is necessary to establish a 'pattern of racketeering activity' in this case," he wrote. The union is appealing. It could also re-file some less-serious claims — prank calls, jamming the toll-free line — in state court.

"We're just asking these guys to come forward and pay what they owe" in union dues, says Gentilly. "And if they throw in a little for court costs, and promise not to do it again, that would be it. "We've asked that, but I don't believe there were any takers." The West pilots are now trying to figure out their options. Can they somehow get out from under USAPA and get real labor representation? Could they somehow force US Airways to accept the Nicolau award?

It's not a great situation. Gas prices have sent the airlines into yet another tailspin, and pilots are being furloughed again. Without a seniority list, the America West crew is facing the brunt of the cuts. Many furloughed pilots from US Airways were brought back to work while the economy was good, but now it's the newest pilots — America West guys — who are considered to have the lowest seniority and who are being laid off. Really, both East and West pilots have been hurt by the impasse. Forget the anger, forget legal fees — it affects every pilot at US Airways that they can't begin to negotiate a new contract until they have a seniority list.
That hurts the West pilots, who were due to start working on a new contract more than two years ago. But, even more than that, it hurts the East pilots.

They agreed to their last contract while they were in bankruptcy. Analysts say the contract is one of the worst in the airline industry. But until they hash out their union problems, they simply can't begin negotiating with US Airways brass. These guys could have had raises three years ago," says Mann, the airline consultant. "They would have, overall, benefited from an integrated list." He adds, "You can cut off your nose to spite your face so badly that no amount of Botox can fix it."

There may be good reason that US Airways hasn't forced the two warring sides to the table. "From the company's perspective, it saves them money every month this goes on," Mann notes. It's the pilots who are suffering. Pilot CJ Szmal agrees.

"This shows how bad it can get when pilots start fighting other pilots," he says. "I'm just floored that we are in this mess. And I don't see any end in sight."

"For Those Who Dare"

2008-07-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I finally finished the ride that eluded me last year due to a pulled calf. Triple Bypass was everything everyone said it would be; beautiful scenery, difficult riding, but very rewarding. The route took us from Evergreen to Avon Colorado, which is 122 miles over three mountain passes (10,000 plus feet of climbing), all at elevations higher than I've ever ridden before.

In the two weeks leading up to the Triple, I didn't really train at all. Flew to Canada to drink beer and fish with my family, came home and got sick, drank wine with friends, and all of a sudden it was time to leave for Colorado. I had myself talked out of being able to finish the bike ride, so I decided to make the drive up there something of a mini vacation. That way, if I totally made an ass of myself on the ride, I'd have still had a nice time on the way up. I was also kind of half hoping that my bike would get stolen out of my car during the three day drive so I'd have an excuse not to do the Triple.

My drive route took me through Monument Valley to Moab, where I spent the first (Wednesday) night. Monument Valley is quite impressive! In Moab I had a wonderful steak dinner with wine at "Buck's Grill". Thursday morning I woke up and drove to Arches National Park, where I spent a few hours admiring the scenery and hiking to a few arches.

When I'd seen enough of the park, I resumed the drive toward Colorado. I decided to take route 128 along the Colorado River, which is quite scenic. There isn't much civilization wise on the road except for the Castle Creek winery, where I stopped to sample and buy a bottle.

I then returned to the road....next stop, Colorado! I had reservations at Grand Junction, and arrived there fairly early in the afternoon. Checked into my room, then went to REI to look for a jacket for the Triple Bypass ride (really prepared ahead of time, aren't I?) With the whole afternoon in front of me, I drove the eleven miles to Palisade, which is full of little Colorado wineries. I picked two to visit, did some wine tasting, and bought three more bottles. This trip was turning out all right!! Back in Grand Junction, I had a mediocre dinner at WW Peppers across the street from the hotel, then I had a fitful night sleep.

Friday morning I awoke for the push to Avon, where I was spending the nights before and after the ride. Brian from Tucson had gotten me set up at the place he was staying when my original lodging plans fell through. I met Brian at the resort around 10am, but it was too early to check in. We loaded my cycling stuff in his car and drove off to Evergreen, where we hooked up with Kin for a short acclimatization ride and dinner with a group of bikejournalists (Hypoxians) at Tokyo Joe's in Loveland.

The next morning, Brian and I left Avon at 0300 to get to the ride start for a 0445 start. We met all the Hypoxians and Kin and got rolling around 0510. I was struggling from the start, but as with most rides, I kind of just got warmed up, settled in, and ignored the pain. The ride begins with a 15 mile climb to the top of Juniper Pass (which is over 11,000'). Most of us hung together for the first few miles, but then we all kind of broke up into our own little groups. Kin and I made it to the top of Juniper together, stopped at the aid station, then began the descent. Man, was it COLD! Somebody said that the temperature was 43 degrees, but at 35mph it felt a whole lot colder! My legs were shaking so much that one of my feet unclipped from the pedal. I was incredibly happy to get to the bottom of that hill and back into the sun. The riding was nice for a while through Idaho Springs and slightly climbing to Georgetown, where we hit the second aid station. Soon after this, the route joined I-70, where we rode on the shoulder for a while. This was the worst part of the ride for me. I was alone by now, fighting a headwind, hungry, and generally not having fun. Then all of a sudden I see BikePrincess stopped on the side of the highway ahead, taking a break. I stopped beside her, had a couple shot blocks, and we carried on together. It seemed forever until we hit the lunch stop four miles from the top of Loveland Pass. After a lunch of turkey and ham sandwiches, we pressed on for the climb up Loveland. This was a grind. Halfway up the hill, we ran into Kin, who was stopped and taking pictures. From this point on, it seems the three of us stuck together for the remainder of the ride. After almost an hour to ride 4 miles, we finally reached the summit of Loveland (11,990')around 1pm.

The descent off Loveland was much more pleasant than the one off Juniper! We split up for the exhilarating ride down the hill, then regrouped in Keystone. The route now went over the Dillon Dam road, which had very pretty views of the lake. It was an easy ride to the aid station in Frisco, where we fueled up before climbing Vail pass. This part of the ride is on a lovely bike trail. I can't say that the riding was easy, but it was fairly pleasant. We stopped a few times to catch our breath, but made the top of Vail around 5:15pm.

Once you top Vail, it's almost all downhill to Avon. Twenty five miles of pleasant and fast riding, which is very welcome after the slog you just did for the last 95 miles! Very scenic.

The only problem with the last several miles were swarms of bugs we kept riding through. I have no idea what kind of bugs they were, but getting them in my mouth and down my shirt just pushed me to go faster. We three finally reached the finish around 6:40pm. We had a great dinner, provided by the ride organizers, and Brian (who finished an hour ahead of me) had a cold beer waiting for Kin and I. BikePrincess' husband (deadhead), had done the whole ride PLUS Mt. Evans, and still finished ahead of us and had a beer waiting for BikePrincess.

I have to say that the ride was pretty difficult for me, especially the altitude. I was kind of lightheaded going up some of those passes, but am glad I attempted and completed the ride. I met and rode with some great people and feel I earned the right to wear my Triple Bypass jersey. I even pulled last year's jersey out of the unopened ride packet and washed it. Will I be back next year? Huh! Not sure! But this was one epic ride!

Mingus Mountain

2008-06-29T19:52:00.001-07:00

Today I hooked up with a girl from Team Estrogen (motochick) who lives up in Clarkdale, which is two hours north of Phoenix and at a cooler 3500' of elevation. She mentioned that she had a great ride up Mingus Mountain (which is pretty much her backyard), so I jumped on the chance to come up and ride with her. From motochick's house, we climbed up through Jerome, an old mining town which has been brought back to life by hippies and artists and which I haven't been through for at least 7 or 8 years. There's a steep bit of climbing in Jerome, and stupid me had to do it twice for pictures, not realizing how much climbing was still ahead of me.

At the top of the hill in Jerome, I had to get my picture next to the "house of Joy"....LOL! Too bad it wasn't open yet at that early hour.

Outside of Jerome, we continued up Mingus Mountain. It was a beautiful Sunday morning with very little traffic. The temperatures were warm for that area, but felt great to a Phoenician. Motochick's husband left behind us and caught up as we climbed the mountain. Very pretty scenery.

We topped the mountain, then motochick's hubby and I descended down the other side so I could do the climb back up. I was all for it until I got to the bottom. My mind had the mountain done! And the backside was steeper. But it was still pretty!

After we reached the top again and hooked back up with motochick, the married couple left me in the descent back to Jerome. That road is full of divots and crappy bumps, and I'm not familiar with it, so I was lagging. Actually, I usually lag in the descent. Plus I stop to take pictures.

We got back to motochick's house around 0930 and she cooked us up a good breakfast. In the end I rode 37 miles with about 4400' of climbing. I'll be back to the Verde Valley soon, hopefully to do the ride to Sedona that russtaitai loves or to do Mingus Mountain again.

Anyway, another great day in the saddle. Not too bad for someone lacking motivation.

Motivation

2008-06-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, summer's here and I'm seriously lacking motivation to do anything. No motivation to ride, no motivatiIon to work, no motivation to write in my useless blog. But I'm SO bored today, sitting inside to stay out of the 112 degree heat. I've watched all my recorded episodes of "Deadliest Catch" twice, got the bike all ready to ride should the temps fall below 80 degrees (which might happen in SEPTEMBER), so now I'm left with nothing to do but write more garbage in my public diary (or is it "diarrhea"?).

I actually DID work today; just finished a four day trip this morning. Woke up to 60 degrees in Minneapolis, got home to 93 degrees at 8am in Phoenix. I've managed to drop some upcoming trips, leaving a few extra days for training for the Triple Bypass ride in July (and a week for fishing in Canada...which kind of interferes with Triple Bypass training but is much more fun).

I DID have one great bike ride recently....the Double Divide ride out of Helena Montana. This is a two day ride that does a loop and crosses the continental divide twice. I flew up to Great Falls, where yotsbed from Bike Journal picked me up (she's the one that talked me into the ride. I'd never been to this area of Montana before). I rented a bike, we stayed the night at her friend's house in Helena, and started our ride on Saturday. Yots hadn't been riding much, and I left her behind as we started up the first crossing of the Continental Divide (McDonald Pass). Right from the start, the headwinds were a bitch, and I spent most of that first morning by myself. The bike I rented was very ill fitting and I was wearing tennis shoes, which didn't help things. I found out later that yots had sagged about a mile from the top of the pass, and I finally saw her at the end of the day at the campground. Anyway, the scenery was beautiful, and I talked to a few people here and there, but rode mostly alone to the lunch stop around mile 44.

At the lunch stop, a guy named Randy asked if I was from Helena, and I said that no, I was from Phoenix. He mentioned that he'd been born and raised in Mesa, AZ. We talked a bit, and he offered for me to ride with him and his friends. He mentioned that they had cold beer at the overnight stop, so I latched right on. Very nice people, and they took care of me for the rest of the ride. Yots didn't ride the second day so I used her bike, which fit much better! The scenery on day two was just as nice, the weather was perfect, and I had a great time overall (except for a bad sunburn, which was my fault). Some other pictures from the ride:

Then I came home to 110 degree temps. Yuck.

So what now? Three weeks until Triple Bypass and I'm not nearly ready! I hope to ride Mt. Lemmon again on Wednesday, and maybe go do a ride from Clarkdale to Sedona this weekend. Other than that, I just feel like a slug. Morning lows in the mid-80s do nothing for my motivation.

And then there's work and the new scab union suing a bunch of our pilots. But that's a whole 'nother story.....

Santa Fe Century

2008-05-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I took a drive to Santa Fe to do the Santa Fe Century on Sunday with my buddy Kin from bikejournal. This ride was a good training ride for Triple Bypass, since Santa Fe sits around 7000' and the century includes a bit of climbing. I've only done two other centuries before, and the last one was over a year ago, so I definitely need some long rides.

I visited my friend Misty in Los Lunas (south of Albuquerque) the day before I drove to Santa Fe. Misty has a bit of a tortoise collection, so I took a picture of three of her eleven tortoises with her son Reeve looking on.

The next day I drove to Santa Fe, where I hooked up with Kin to see the town (I'd never been there). We went for a short ride on Saturday through the plaza and up historic Canyon road. Kin tried to draft off a few other bikers, but they left him in the dust (or their exhaust)!

Saturday afternoon we picked up our ride packets. We both had registered for the ride early in the year, and I had number 7, while Kin had 11. Team 7-11! When I realized that over 2500 people would be riding, I was pretty pumped up about our numbers. Kin got some good pics of us sporting our "7-11", so maybe I'll post something if he sends me one.

We started the century ride around 0630 on Sunday. It was perfect weather, cool in the morning without a cloud in the sky. Kin is much better than me at taking pics while on the bike.

Sometime not long after taking that picture, Kin said a guy rode past me, glanced my way, saw my number, and took a double take, like "who is SHE?". Made me laugh!

Not far into the ride, I started to realize that the people on this century were much more fit than the cyclists on the rides I usually do. I saw a lot of Triple Bypass jerseys and Enchanted Circle jerseys, and everyone had cut calves and around 7% body fat. Even the ladies! I knew I was way out of my league, and realized I should have been training more rather than sitting on my couch watching hockey and drinking beer for the past month.

Anyway, back to the ride itself. There is a pretty steep hill called "Heartbreak" around mile 39ish. Everyone was talking about it before we got there, and I was kind of pooh-poohing this "hill", but when I got on it, it was a BEAR. As we approached the climb, Kin said "I see suffering!" Some guy riding next to us said "I FEEL suffering!" Tons of people were walking on the shoulder, and others were weaving back and forth all over the road. Kin pranced right up it, and I managed to ride up while wheezing and sucking wind loudly. Fortunately, everyone around me was sucking wind just as noisily! Kin took a pic as I was topping the hill, so if he sends that one, I'll post it as well! After Heartbreak Hill, we found a train of guys hauling ass, and we hopped on for a good ten miles. Unfortunately, between the fast train and the climb, I rather burnt myself out. At the next SAG stop I thought I was going to pass out. I told Kin I'd have to take it easy for the rest of the ride if I was going to finish. Just out of this rest stop we came upon the one solid obstacle of the day.....a mobile home sitting across the road!

The next thirty miles were easy on a flat road with a bit of a tailwind, and we made good time. I was feeling much better at the SAG stop at the end of our eastbound leg. Now we turned north back toward Santa Fe, but this is where the wind hit us. The next forty miles were an absolute slog on an uphill grade through the wind. It was rather disheartening, and at the next two SAG stops you'd see people on the side of the road laying down or looking like they were going to barf. We just kept plugging along. Kin kept busy taking pictures as we rode, and I kept busy looking at my feet and trying not to think about how much my butt hurt. Anyway, after what seemed like hours of pedalling, we finally made it to the finish! Kin bought us a couple of massages at the end, and we went out for some Italian food after the ride. I can't say I felt great through the whole ride, but I finished with some energy, and I know now that I can do a century at altitude. I also know I need to train a lot more if I have a hope of finishing Triple Bypass.

Anyway, it was a great trip all around, a great ride, and great company!

Update: Here's a link to Kin's photos from the ride. He takes some great pics!
http://s20.photobucket.com/albums/b208/Kincannondale/2008%20Apr%20May%20Jun/May18-SantaFe100/

Mt. Lemmon III

2008-05-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

Third time's a charm! I finally made it up Mt. Lemmon in Tucson. No time constraints with carpoolers, no sleet and hail, no nothing to stop me from reaching the ever elusive top of that mountain on my bike!

GABA Tucson puts on a yearly supported ride up Mt. Lemmon, and I took the day off to ride. Those folks do an awesome job (somebody there must LOVE food as much as I do) with SAG stops and support. Four stops up the mountain with more great food than I could ever have hoped for on a ride....Cheetos, Olives, cheese and crackers, V8, cinnamon rolls, etc, etc. I think I actually gained weight on this ride even though it was over four hard hours of climbing to get to the top of the mountain. Here's a picture of Brian with two guys on unicycles who rode up the mountain:

And here's Brandi watching as the two unicyclists make it up to ski valley.

After arriving at Ski Valley, I decided to continue up the unmaintained road a ways. There are grades of 15%+ on that road which is in lousy shape. After three quarters of a mile I figured I'd had enough fun and turned around for a harrowing descent riding the brakes while avoiding potholes. According to one GPS, my total climb was about 7500' in 31.7 miles. The scenery was great, the people were awesome, and I'm glad I can finally say I conquered the mountain.

Twisting in the wind. Reader beware of Rant.

2008-04-19T15:39:00.001-07:00

April 17, 2008 was a sad day for the pilot group of my former airline (let's call us "west"). It's the day that the pilots of the airline we aquired (who outnumber us almost two to one...we'll call them "east") managed to throw out our union (ALPA, which has represented airline pilots for 75 years) in favor of their own in house union, USAPA (which west calls UCRAPA, USCABA, or U SAP ASSES), whose sole stated purpose is to screw over the west pilots for their gain.

I know my one reader of this blog has said he doesn't know a lot of the background or what I'm talking about when I complain about this state of affairs, so I'll start from the beginning:

In May of '05 I was happily working for a friendly little airline with great people that was making money and growing. That month, out of the blue, our CEO announces that we are aquiring a bankrupt carrier that is a couple weeks from going out of business (funny enough, said bankrupt carrier is from my original hometown). A lot of outside money was gotten together to make the deal work, and a new airline was born of two old ones. The bankrupt carrier's name was kept, since it had been in business for half a century longer and was more well known internationally. My little west carrier, although a major airline, had only been in business for 22 years and wasn't really known outside of the western United States. West brought about 1800 pilots to the new company, and east had around 3000 active pilots with probably 1800 who were laid off.

Anyway, part of any merger is trying to work out labor issues and joining labor groups. I'll only talk about the pilots here.

Pilots of both our airlines were represented by the same union, ALPA. www.alpa.org
ALPA has a merger policy in place to facilitate the merging of two seniority lists. One of the tenents of this policy are that there should be no windfall for one group at the expense of another, and there are other guidelines. ALPA also has a procedure to follow in the case of a merger. First, the two groups will try to negotiate a merged seniority list. If that doesn't work, they will move to mediation. If this fails, they will get an independent arbitrator who will, after days and weeks of hearings and evidence from both sides, come up with a seniority list through "final and binding arbitration".

West figured that east should be stapled to the bottom of our list, since they were going to be walmart greeters in a couple weeks anyway. East figured that since they'd been in business longer, their pilots should rule the list, and their furloughed guys should come back on top of our senior captains. Obviously, east and West were unable to reach an agreement through negotiation or mediation, so the East struck for arbitration. An arbitrator was agreed upon, the sides presented their cases, and in May of '07 the arbitrator's award came out. As expected, neither side got what they wanted. East had their top 500 pilots put on the top of the new list, and from there it was a merge of relative positions. Mid-level captains were of one company were merged with mid-level captains of the other, junior first officers were meshed together as well, and so on and so on. There were about 1800 east pilots who were laid off at the time of the merger, with no hope of coming back, and they were put on the bottom of the list. Over the past three years, they have all been recalled and those who wished to return have gotten flying jobs back with the new company. Anyway, nobody lost their seat, and the solution seemed the only fair way to go. With the seniority squabble over, the West hoped to move forward and negotiate a new contract hand in hand with the east that included better pay and benefits for all.

Little did we know what we were dealing with.

East was livid. They had been shat upon by their management for 20 years, and had hoped to get it all back and more off the backs of the west pilots. When this didn't happen, they went into war mode against the west pilots. I won't discuss the ensuing year, but it included badmouthing the west in the media, refusing to try to negotiate a new joint contract with the west, flipping us off in the east hubs when they saw us, and other rather immature behavior. They were able to keep separate operations with their antics, and due to two other arbitrated decisions, they've been taking all the growth and replacement airplane positions, half of which the west was supposed to get when the two sides merged and got a joint contract. They didn't feel they were getting enough blood out of us, and eventually it came down to them resting their hopes on throwing out our union and hopefully, with the union, throwing out the new seniority list and imposing one of their liking. The USAPA founders made it clear that they were out to screw us. They came out west for one single road show to "talk" to us about their "union", but it was only because the NMB required them to do so before holding a representation election, and USAPA left very quickly without actually answering any questions or concerns of the west pilots.

On April 17th, the NMB representation vote closed. I was an hour into a flight from San Francisco to Philly when the unexpected results came over the wire. USAPA had won the election with 54% of the vote. That meant that about 500 of the east guys had voted to keep ALPA, but it wasn't enough. Immediately, my captain and I felt naked, like we were twisting in the wind. USAPA has no reps for the west pilots. All the safety nets, programs, backing, etc that ALPA had provided for pilots were gone. Don't bust an altitude now, you'll probably get fired. We've been left hanging, just because of the greed and self entitlement attitude of the nastiest group of pilots I've had the "pleasure" to run across. Hotel issues? Tough. Crew meal issues? Too bad, so sad. Company not following the contract? Oh, we don't have a grievance committee anymore.

So what's USAPA's next move? Well, we've been operating under separate contracts since the merger, since we are still two separate groups. West has a much better contract, more pay, more days off, better work rules. East's contract really sucks. USAPA has said that they plan to present management with their lousy contract, with just the tiniest of improvements for the east pilots, along with their version of a seniority list. This would mean a pay cut and cut in work rules for west pilots, all so the eastholes can staple us to the bottom of their seniority list. And USAPA "claims" that it had planned to represent all pilots, east and west. GMAFB.

In the airlines, a SCAB has always been defined as a pilot who would cross a picket line, essentially stabbing his fellow pilot in the back for his own gain. Seems to us that the east group is nothing but a bunch of scab wannabes, stabbing us in the back while they try to get something out of us. Never in a million years did I think that a group of people could be so evil.

So they won a battle. But the war is not over. The war will drag on in the courts and on the tarmac for years to come. Greed and self entitlement and stupidity will be their downfall.

In the meantime, for the first time in 11 years, I'm without ALPA or anyone on my side. I am more pessimistic about my future and my career than I've ever been, and that includes when I got laid off for a couple months after 9/11. Thankfully I have my 1800 brothers and sisters with me, as well as the other airline pilots who can see those scabs for what they are and are supporting our cause.

I realize this isn't humorous, cycling related, or anything similar, but I felt I had to get the whole thing off my chest. Hopefully I'll have something more positive to type about tomorrow so this gets buried.

Mt. Lemmon

2008-04-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, a friend convinced me to copy this write up of a recent ride to my blog since I seem to have abandoned said blog. He's right! I kinda lost interest in talking about my boring self. But I'll reprint this story that I put up on BikeJournal. Maybe it'll respark my interest in blogging. Or not.

Mt. Lemmon ride of April 9!

Brian (BDSDVM) and I decided to ride Mt. Lemmon today as part of our training for TBP. The forecast called for a windy day with temps a little cooler than usual, which was fine with me since I'm not a big fan of the heat. I got to the appointed meeting place a little early and stopped at McD's for a sandwich, where I met an out of town cyclist. He had on shorts and a short sleeve jersey, and asked if I thought it would be enough clothing for him to climb the mountain. I told him he might like to take some arm warmers as it would be a bit cool at the top. Little did I know!
Brian showed up somewhat before 9, and I noticed that he was in shorts and a short sleeve jersey as well. I had arm and leg warmers on. Brian said it would warm up quick as we started our ride, and it did! I don't even think we'd made it to the mountain before I stripped off the arm and leg warmers. At this point Brian remarked that the skies were quite a bit cloudier than he'd expected, but that the forecasters said all the weather would stay a couple hundred miles north in the White Mountains.
We started our climb, and although I was a slow slug, it was a rather pleasant ride:

There was quite a bit of wind, and around mile 6, it started to rain on us. Not a lot of rain, just enough to get our attention. It rained on and off until we were almost to windy point, when a light snow started to fall. We were in good spirits and it wasn't too bad, so we carried on. As we got to windy point, the sun came out and we took a short break.
Just beyond windy point it was very pretty, and I stopped to take some pics:

A mile or two beyond this, the light snow began again. I think it was at this point that Brian turned to me and said "Howard would be proud of us".
We laughed and carried on. It was still not bad out, and as Brian said, "It could be worse". Then it did get worse.....the snow turned to snow/ice pellets. They started sticking to Brian's arm hair, so I took a picture.

We kept on trucking as it got colder and the ice pellets continued to fall. I honestly thought the weather would blow over and it would get sunny again. Several times Brian mentioned that we were crazy. We realized it would be safer to keep going up than to try the full descent at that point back through the weather. Unfortunately, at mile 21, the climb turns into a descent for a few miles, and at this point all those snow pellets had begun to melt on the road, leaving standing water and slush, which managed to find its way into my shoes and all over my back. I looked at my saddle and there was an inch of white stuff sitting there. Brian told me to be very careful on the descent, and then I lost him. I was really freezing at this point since we weren't generating heat climbing anymore, and all my concentration revolved around trying not to kill myself. There was no way I was pulling a camera out to take pics since I was barely able to keep from falling. That was the longest two or three miles I ever rode, and I had to stop twice because I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. So I stopped and put them all in my mouth! I don't really think it helped, and at some point I wondered if there was any heat in my body at all. Sometime around now I started to hear thunder, and meanwhile the snow pellets continued to fall. All I could think about was wiping out on the slippery road and freezing a slow death or getting hit by lightning! I knew Brian wouldn't be able to come back and find me!
Eventually the road turned back uphill, and Brian was waiting for me. He said his hands were so cold that he couldn't use his brakes! When I reached him I told him that I had to get my leg warmers back on (I already had the arm warmers on from Windy Point or somewhere). Poor Brian, with no other clothing at all, held my bike while I looked like a monkey using a tool trying to get these leg warmers on. My legs wouldn't bend and my hands wouldn't work, but eventually I got dressed. We pressed on uphill in the hammering ice, and I was shaking so bad that the bike was wobbling all over the place. Brian mentioned that there was another mile or so of uphill and then another mile of downhill, and I knew that I couldn't handle anymore downhill in those conditions. As we reached the top of that hill, I saw a sign and asked Brian if there was shelter there. He said that there was a bathroom, and I told him that I was stopping there to wait out the weather. Being a good sport, he agreed.
We got under the shelter of the outhouse, and I took a couple of pictures of the white stuff coming down.

Brian was able to get cell service and called his wife to come pick us up. We were both shaking uncontrollably, but settled in for an hour wait.
Not long after that, a pickup truck stopped and a woman jumped out and went into the restroom.

When the lady came out of the restroom, she asked if we'd like a ride to Summerhaven. We were all over that! Loaded our bikes on top of the wood in the back of the truck, and gladly accepted a ride the last two miles to town, where we figured we'd sit in the cafe and wait for Brian's wife.

We ordered food and hot drinks, and were still shaking uncontrollably the entire time we were in the place. A gentleman sitting at another table mentioned that he was heading back down to Tucson in his pickup, and would we like a ride? YES, we would! Brian called his wife to tell her not to come, and our second good samaritan of the day got us loaded up and we proceeded back down the mountain.

As we headed downhill, it was nothing but snow, sleet, and FOG! Here's a pic very near the nice rock formation that I took a picture of on the way up:

Halfway down the mountain, I started to thaw out and feel like I might live to tell this tale. Up until then I wasn't sure. The nice gentleman dropped me off at my car, I loaded up my bike and headed home. I see that Brian made it home from his post on the Mt. Lemmon thread. We both figured that nobody would believe our story, but this is one ride I'll never forget. I've never been so uncomfortable in my life!

I only got 27 miles, but feel like I've been beaten with a two by four! My chest hurts, I assume from uncontrollable shaking, and a couple of my fingertips feel like there are needles imbedded in them, but I'm comfy and well fed at home. Funny thing, there was hardly a cloud in the sky between Tucson and Phoenix! Anyway, we owe so much to a few good people that helped us out, and I have a lot of "paying it forward" to do.
Brian mentioned that I still haven't gotten to the top of Mt. Lemmon yet, so I guess I need to head back down soon to try again! As soon as this memory fades, anyway!

Picacho Century '08

2008-02-11T12:05:00.000-08:00

Last year I did my second ever century during this February ride out of Tucson. This year I planned to repeat, riding with BikeJournalists JulieB, EricofAZ and Savagewolf, a temporary Arizonan that I had not met before. EricofAZ wasn't at the ride start at the appointed time, so we took off riding with BDSDVM and his friend Brandy (Brandi?).
Half a mile into the ride, I was pulling up the rear when I heard a rustling sounds in front of me. I watched as Savagewolf pulled a bag of Cheetos (my FAVORITE) out of his jersey pocket and dangled them behind himself! Julie was riding beside him and about fell off her bike laughing.

BDSVM and Brandy (i?) were planning to do the metric, and as we followed them along we missed our turn for the century. At that point we (I) decided that the metric was far enough, and that Julie and I would try for our fastest metric since the guys were pulling at a nice pace. At the first SAG stop I called Eric, who was lost somewhere off the route but said he'd catch up eventually.
The ride was very pleasant, great conversation, nice pace. At the halfway point GABA had sub sandwiches, so we sat and had lunch with Picacho looking very pretty in the background:

After lunch, we were about 2 miles into the return trip when we passed Eric going the other way. He turned around to ride with us, but had been riding hard for 31 miles with no breaks, which wasn't conducive to my fastest metric plans. He told us to carry on, so Savagewolf and I took off. We hooked up with a couple guys and had a paceline of 21-24 mph going into the wind. This is not my usual type or pace of riding, and I started to get lightheaded, wondering how long I could hold on. Thank goodness the last SAG stop appeared! Wolf and I waited for the others, and when they finally showed up, Julie conceded that I would have the fastest metric on Joe's thread. While admitting defeat, she managed to open the bag of Cheetos that Savagewolf had given me! I wrestled the bag off her and managed to get some Cheetos in my mouth before she could get it back.

Brandy (i?) was fighting a cold and feeling ill, so Savagewolf and I took off again while the others took it easy for the rest of the ride. Wolf pretty much pulled me the last 15 miles. My bike computer is screwed up, so I'm using his computer numbers. I was two feet off his tail for almost the whole ride, so it should be accurate! This was by far my fastest metric ever. I really had a great time, pushed myself to ride like I usually don't, and met some great bikejournal people that I hope to ride with again.

On the way back to Phoenix, Julie and I stopped at the "Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch" so I could take some pictures of ostrich legs for a forum thread on bikejournal about showing off calves. Here are the four of us and our hot legs.

Anyway, we pulled up to the big old fenced in area that the ostriches are in. I got out of the car and walked up to the fence with my camera to take pictures of the few ostriches that were hanging out in that area. One ostrich next to the fence lay down on the ground, and I thought that maybe it was posing for me. Next thing I know, another ostrich climbs aboard and those two start going at it! I almost fell over! Afterward, I think the ostrich had designs on Julie.....the two of them were making eyes at each other.

Anyway, great day for a bike ride, and I'm pretty pleased with my time. And I didn't even whine during the ride! Maybe because I couldn't catch my breath.

BowWow

2008-01-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

This weekend, BowWow from BikeJournal came to Arizona from Canada for a visit and some biking. He is originally from this area, so it's kind of a homecoming for him. On Friday the 4th, he and JulieB and I took a nice ride to Saguaro Lake from the northeast valley. I just thought the pictures were pretty, so I wanted to post some.

The hair saga

2007-12-31T16:30:00.000-08:00

Sometime around Christmas, I decided I was sick (again) of my hair. It's streaky, dry, got some gray, and overall annoying, so I decided to go to a salon and have it colored. I've never had my hair dyed before and sure as heck didn't want to screw it up myself.
Met the stylist and told her I wanted the color to be as close to my roots as possible (plain old ugly brown). She mixed up some potion, applied it, and let me sit a while. While she was putting the paint on my head, she kept saying that my hair wouldn't be red at all, but a nice, warm brown. I had no idea why she kept saying that, when I never asked about red and my hair isn't naturally red. Well, after the hocus pocus, the hair is dried and lo and behold, it's RED! Not bright red or anything, but kind of a dark red. I was sorta shocked, but went home thinking that maybe the lights of the salon made me look different.

Nope, the next morning I woke up with red hair. I decided to keep it and try it out for a while.

Had a trip to Sacramento, where I met up with PansyPalmetto from bikejournal. She is a brassy redheaded cancer survivor (maybe more accurately living WITH cancer), and we did the town and took pictures of our adventures. She said that yes, my hair was definitely red, but it looked like a natural red.

By the time I got home from my trip, I'd seen enough red and called the salon to have it fixed. Went in to a different stylist, and she redid my head. Now it's not quite so red, but it is an incredibly dark color of some sort. Not sure I like it, but I quit! No more hair dye for me!

Fast forward to this evening. In typical mtkitchn fashion, I waited until the last minute to look for something to wear to a fancy restaurant for a New Year's Eve "date". And I'll be damned if everything in my not so extensive clothing collection doesn't clash with this new hair color. I've decided to give up, open a bottle of wine, and hope that the fashion fairy drops by and gives me an outfit before 7pm. Or that I'm too drunk to care what I look like.

Hope you all have a great New Year's Eve and a wonderful '08!

2007 cycling season

2007-12-30T17:52:00.000-08:00

Today I took my last "decent" bike ride of 2007. In January I had set what I thought was an unreachable goal of 3050 miles for the year, but I met that goal yesterday riding to the gym. Cycling has not been a big priority in my life, but I joined a lot of great rides and met a lot of cool people this year. I'm going to set my goal higher for next year, and my miles will either take off, or I'll get distracted by some other pursuit or interest.

Anyway, today I rode with a guy I met at el Tour de Tucson who lives in the valley. After finding out that JulieB was in town as well, I invited her. We started our ride in Chandler, rode to Sacaton, visited a war memorial, ate tamales sold by a guy out of a van on the side of the rode, and rode back to Chandler. Very pleasant ride with very pleasant company. I've been in quite the funk for the past several months and this ride was a nice way to finish what's been a decent year on the bike. Other than the calf pull and missing Triple Bypass, I did everything I wanted (as far as cycling) in 2007 (not that I had set many goals).

Maybe tomorrow I'll blog about the misery in my personal life and the ensuing funk. Or maybe not. Who wants to read that crap? Not even me, especially on New Year's Eve. Hope everyone has a great holiday! I'll be out with friends and maybe will find myself in a ditch New Year's morning. Wouldn't be a bad thing.

The Crappy Reality

2007-11-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

Got back a few days ago from my "research" trip to Hawaii with my 757 friend. I'd have blogged about it sooner, but I had to come back to work and have been freezing my ass off in places like Omaha (20 degrees here. Think I could remember a jacket?). My fingers are just now thawing enough that I can type.

The big island of Hawaii is pretty awesome. My friend M's trip consists of one leg flying to Kona, a 55 hr layover, then one leg home. I sat in the back for most of the flight to Kona on Sunday, but came up front for the approach and landing in Hawaii (took a movie of the approach, but that won't see the light of day unless you have clearance :)). We arrived around 4pm, then headed to town to drink beer by the sea and watch live music. After that tough duty, we went back to the resort with a six pack of beer and sat by the water looking at constellations and the sea. Finally went to bed, got up in the morning, worked out in the fabulous fitness room, then hit the road. My friend has a favorite breakfast place up the road overlooking the ocean where we had Kona coffee and ahi tuna eggs benedict.

After a leisurely breakfast, we drove to Volcanos National Park. My only disappointment of the trip was not seeing molten lava in the park, but we found out that we needed to take a helicopter to get to that area, and we're both afraid of helicopters. We did get some great hiking in over old lava flows. There's a good story to insert here about beating up old folks and my friend's new nickname (Ne ne), but what happens in Hawaii stays in Hawaii.
On the way back from the national park, we hit the southernmost winery and the southernmost bar in the USA (of course). We stopped at Black Sand Beach and some other nice places, then got to her resort about dinner time. Picked up her captain (K) and hit a great restaurant in town for some New Zealand style fish and banana wontons eaten out in the warm Hawaiian air.

The next day the three of us headed to Place of Refuge (City of Refuge?) park for some snorkeling at nearby Two Step(after a leisurely breakfast at the same joint as the day before). My friend got out of the water after about a half hour, then her captain and I snorkeled for quite a bit longer. Awesomely clear water, beautiful fish!! Snorkel time over, we went to Place of Refuge park. M sat and watched the sea turtles while K gave me a tour of the park. Quite interesting. After the park, we drove to Cook Inlet, then back to the hotel. At this point, K&M had to rest for the redeye flight home (um, this is their LAYOVER, remember) and I borrowed a bicycle for a ride to town. When I got back from my ride, I toured the resort grounds and watched manta rays. Then I took a short nap myself before we headed to the airport around 10pm. The flight back to Phoenix was okay with me....I just slept on the cockpit floor the whole way while K&M fought to stay awake and give their position reports. It was the only time I felt smug the whole trip.

I find myself regretting that I bid the airbus instead of the 757 when I did. At the time, I thought that I'd get bored flying back and forth to Hawaii or Cancun, but little did I know that I'd be spending more than my fair share of time in places like Philadelphia and Newark in the dead of winter. I guess there's no sense in crying over spilled milk, though. It is what it is. Anyway, can't write anymore as I need to go to bed. There's an ice storm moving in and I have to be rested for deice procedures and so forth tomorrow. Livin' the dream, baby!!

Damn.

Hotel drinking glass cleanliness

2007-11-29T09:08:00.000-08:00

Somebody posted this on our union webboard. Ugh.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3estl_dirty-hotel-secrets_news

Research

2007-11-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

September 2006(in this very blog...have I been posting awful drivel that long?), I was lamenting another night spent at a crappy hotel in Milwaukee, while my 757 flying friend was relaxing on her layovers in sunny Hawai'i. I've always had an open invitation to come along on her trips, and when November schedules came out last month I saw I had a nice group of days off during one of her long Kona layovers. So today I go the Big Island to do a little research about how the other half lives. Funny how much lighter my suitcase is than when I fly to places like Detroit and Philadelphia.
Wish me luck with my research. Pictures to follow.

Thanksgiving (warning...foul language!)

2007-11-21T05:49:00.000-08:00

When you're in the airline industry, holidays are for working, and this Thanksgiving was no exception as I started a four day trip on Tuesday. It wasn't really a bad deal since I didn't bid for Thanksgiving off, and my first layover was in Vancouver where I had a short visit with my stepsister. My stepsister Lori is one of my favorite people in the world, and I'm always happy after I visit with her. At least until I deal with customs and the TSA the next morning, when my mood turns sour. But I digress.

The airports are insane this time of year. It's nice to transport people to their loved ones (or to the slot machines, since I kept flying through Las Vegas), but some folks just have to be difficult no matter the season. We almost booted one guy going to Detroit because he wouldn't shut off his PDA and started getting belligerent with the flight attendants, screaming at them and calling them liars. Come on, people! This is the post 9/11 environment still. We're not afraid to have you dragged off the airplane if you're going to be an ass and/or difficult (or if you wear short skirts on Southwest Airlines).

I got to spend Wednesday night in lovely Detroit. It was raining when we got there, and snowing when we left on Thanksgiving morning. Glad we left.

Thanksgiving Day we flew to Vegas, then San Diego, then back to Vegas. Got to our layover hotel around 1:15pm after being up for 11 hrs already. I managed to get a 20minute nap.

I purposely bid Vegas for Thanksgiving because I figured that some place would be open for dinner. There's nothing sadder than being stuck in a hotel with no restaurants open on the holiday and having to eat corn nuts and drink Old Milwaukee purchased at the gas station down the street for Thanksgiving dinner.
Most of the restaurants near our hotel were closed. We don't stay in the best part of town, and the people you see out on the sidewalks are either homeless people or crew members out looking for food. There was one scary looking guy on the corner of Flamingo and Paradise with a "Please Help, God Bless" sign in his hand screaming "Fuck you" to everyone at the top of his lungs, and I'm not sure which camp he fell into. But as I was wandering the streets, I kept running into a guy that looked like a pilot, and he would say hello, etc. as he passed. After about an hour of this, we finally met up at the same intersection where the happy beggar was, and pilot guy asked if I'd found anything open. I told him I hadn't, but could see a few cars in front of the McCormick and Schmick's down the road, and that's where I was headed next. He asked if he could accompany me, and I told him sure. We made our introductions, his name was Tony, and from his job description it dawned on me that he was from the company we bought (merged with). Our two pilot groups don't get along at all (we affectionately call their pilots "eastholes" because they are, and they call us "inexperienced rookies" because our pilots are mostly young and cool while theirs are old and bitter), and so before we even got to the restaurant, I held up my hand and said "before we eat, I just want you to know that I'm a westie". He said that was all right with him, and we decided to have dinner together anyway.
McCormick and Schmick's WAS open, and we found a table in the bar. My "dinner date" was well traveled and knowledgeable about wine, so we had a lot to talk about. Things were going fairly well until he decided to begin discussing our union (which they are trying to get rid of so they try to can overturn our arbitrated seniority award, which is not to their liking). There were about 15 minutes of terse discussion, where I let him have his say and told him that I completely disagreed with him, and then we went back to pleasant conversation. We had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of raw oysters and Trout Almondine with a Sauvignon Blanc to wash it down. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel, but I asked him to stay a half block ahead so that nobody saw me cavorting with the enemy (j/k). He was actually a pretty nice guy for an eastie.

After dinner, I hooked up with FastEddie from BikeJournal for a drink. We'd met briefly at el Tour de Tucson, and knowing he was from Vegas, I had badgered him endlessly one night in the chat room to take me to his mom's house for dinner. He didn't go for that, but felt sorry enough for me that he agreed to have a drink with me later on. So he picked me up at the hotel and we went to Mandalay Bay for a beer. FastEddie is really pretty funny, and we had a good time talking. After one beer I turned into a pumpkin as far as alcohol was concerned (bottle to throttle rule), so we cruised the strip checking out what was new. Somehow, we ended up at the Stratosphere with tickets for the "Big Shot" ride on top of the tower. http://www.joyrides.com/las_vegas/big_shot1.htm
I honestly believe I was so tired that I couldn't think straight, because there's no way I'd have ridden that thing if I was in my right mind. It's a true adenaline rush, sitting at 921 feet above ground level (and I'm afraid of heights). As we strapped in for the ride, I told Eddie that I wasn't TOO afraid, but when we got shot into the air, I screamed at the top of my lungs like a little girl. Talk about embarassing! When we got back on the deck, the attendant asked if it was me that was screaming. I was still too much in shock and terrified to think to blame Eddie. Man, my heart was in my throat from that ride. What an absolute trip. After the ride, we checked out the view from the observation deck for a bit, then Eddie dropped me off back at my hotel (well past my bedtime...oops). But I really had a fun night. BikeJournal people are the best.

I finished my trip on Friday evening and arrived home completely exhausted. I even managed to lose my sunglasses somewhere between my last flight and home. But my landings were good and we didn't bend any metal.

So another Thanksgiving on the road is in the books. This one was better than some, and I can't complain. Hope all my friends (both of you) had a great time whatever you did!

Tumacacori (metric) Century

2007-10-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty lazy on the bike this past few weeks, but I had signed up for a ride in the Tucson area for Sunday the 21st. Saturday night after I got home from work, I was sitting on the couch drinking a glass of wine and thinking about how much I DIDN'T want to drag my lazy carcass out of bed at 4am to drive two hours for a stupid bike ride. But I had offered JulieB a ride, so couldn't very well back out.
Next morning the wind outside woke me up at 0330. I got up, took a shower, drove over and picked up JulieB (who lives in my neighborhood) at 4:30am, loaded up her bike and stuff, and made it to the ride start by 6:30.
We hooked up with fellow bikejournaler Bolo_Grubb and were on the course by 7:15. The day started out cool, but warmed up nicely. Not a cloud in the sky, but plenty of wind. Rest stops had more food than I've ever seen on a ride. Great SAG support and really friendly people. There was one couple on a tandem that had their little Jack Russel terrier in a basket on the back of the bike. The pooch would bark at anyone who passed them!

The turn around point was at the Tumacacori mission, but there was a wall between us and the mission building, so I didn't get to see it.
Overall, the ride was a lot of fun, the company was great, and I'm really glad I got out of bed to do it. Here are the three amigos at the turn around point:

Today I'll sit around and eat Cheetos and chocolate. As per usual.

Layovers, continued

2007-10-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

So last night we ended up in Albuquerque for a fairly short 11 hour layover. I haven't been to Albuquerque in a couple years, and found that we're back at a hotel we stayed at several years ago. The place had changed names a couple times and the rooms have been remodeled (surprising, since we usually only stay at hotels DURING their remodels, and not AFTER). There wasn't enough time to go out and do anything, so I checked into my room, put my bags away and cleaned up for bed. I hadn't been in that room for 5 minutes when I noticed what I thought was a big clod of mud. Then the mud started moving! I found a shoe and beat the crap out of this two inch long cockroach and flushed him.
Now, I'm pretty much a tree hugger and animal lover. I'd put a grasshopper or spider outside, but I have no use for a roach. It was him or me in that room. Anyway, I figured where I saw one, there might be others, so I hopped up on my bed (after checking for bed bugs in the mattress), not expecting to move out of it the rest of the night. There ain't no way I want to be trotting barefoot to the bathroom in the middle of the night and step on a big old roach, so I gave up my tea for the evening and tried not to drink any water.

There aren't too many channels available on the cable, but as I'm surfing I come across the movie "Snakes on a Plane". It seemed to be the only thing on, so I settled in to watch. A friend called around that time and I told him what I was doing. "Don't watch that!" he said. "You'll have nightmares!"
I laughed and told him it couldn't be that scary.
And it wasn't. It had to be the absolute cheesiest movie I've seen since the one where aliens bombed planes and took over the physical bodies of the passengers right before the plane exploded.
I only caught the last hour and forty five minutes of the flick, so I'm not exactly sure why there were snakes on this plane, but it seemed to have a happy ending and I went to bed a little later than I should have.

And DAMN, if I didn't wake up with nightmares! Not snakes, but if my nightmare had a name it would have been "Cockroaches on a plane". There were bugs all over the back of the plane killing the passengers, but the flight attendants (always the heroes) found somebody that acted as a doctor (he wasn't a real doctor, but had played "Operation" as a kid and stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the night before). About the time he started saving people, the cockroaches attacked the flight deck and took out the captain. He made a big flourish as he died, and I made sure to turn off the autopilot before I got out of my seat to check on him (did I mention the storms we were flying through? Not around, but through). While I was pronouncing the captain dead, the cockroaches attacked me and I was laying on the floor writhing in pain. The (hero) flight attendant came to the front just around this time and saw what was going on, ran back to the passengers and found a fellow who could fly the plane (well, he didn't really have a pilot's rating, but he had a couple thousand hours playing Microsoft flight simulator). Meanwhile, the plane had been slowly descending toward the ground, and the new "pilot" and the hero flight attendant tried with all their might to arrest the descent (never mind that it's a fly by wire aircraft, this is DRAMA, people)! At this point air traffic control pipes up and tells them to "PULL UP"! Amazingly, just before the airplane hits the ground, the new "pilots" are able to level the plane and re-engage the autopilot. No matter that they haven't put any altitude or commands to the autopilot, but the plane miraculously gets back on altitude. Meanwhile, the "doctor" has come up front to attend to us (real pilots), and he spots my crew meal in a box on the floor. As he opens the box, the cockroaches scatter! He pulls out the psuedo chicken and rubs it on my face, which instantly kills the cockroaches! I'm saved! I climb back into my seat, but Mr. Micosoft Flight Sim in the left seat has things so well under control that I let him fly. Mr. Flight Sim tells air traffic control that he'll be landing at Burbank with a tailwind. Air traffic control tells Mr. flight sim that Los Angeles would be better, but Mr. flight sim is in control and he has people to save NOW! So we land, and roll out for about 10 minutes on the 6000' strip until I yell something like "BRAKES" and "TURN LEFT" as we approach the end of the runway. Mr. flight sim pulls it out and we stop just shy of the Chevron gas pumps just off the airport. The passengers are saved, Mr. flight sim gets the girl, and I go surfing or something.

I've been thinking that maybe I should write down this nightmare and send it off to Hollywood, but the storyline is WAY too ridiculous to ever be a movie.

Anyway, I got up in the morning and turned on every light in the room to scare the roaches. And that's when the REAL nightmare started. I saw that I had, not one, but TWO zits on my chin! Then, after I finished my shower, I realized that there were no bath towels in my room, just hand towels. And to top it all off, I had a bad hair day! Oh, the humanity! It was almost more than I could bear, but being the unsung hero that I am, I got it together to brave another day slogging through the skies of sunny Arizona and California.

And so ends another day in the life. Please pass the wine!

Hotels

2007-10-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

A good portion of my life is spent in hotels in various cities domestically and abroad. Last night was no exception, and I trudged into my room at the St. Louis Hilton around midnight. Waiting for me in the bathroom was somebody's used shower cap, hanging on the bathroom doorknob. Yuck. It's not the first bathroom surprise I've had. I hate when you're taking a shower and a dirty washcloth that somebody hanged on the shower curtain the night before falls on your head. Makes you wonder what kind of person was washing what part of their anatomy with it! Ugh! I try to look for that stuff, but sometimes I forget. Just like you always need to check that the alarm clock in the room isn't set to go off in the middle of the night. The heater in my room last night didn't work; no matter what temperature I set the thermostat for, 30-40 degree air came out of the vents. I finally shut off the system when I woke up in the middle of the night and could see my breath.

This hotel does have free computers down in the lobby for use by guests. I tried to log in to BikeJournal dot com to check up on the forums there, but a window pops up telling me that the Hilton "network nanny" has decided that bikejournal dot com is inappropriate for me to view. Maybe the Hilton "network nanny" should be keeping an eye on little Paris instead of barring me from bikejournal, but anyway.

All that stuff is small potatoes, but it got me thinking about hotels I've stayed in over the years....

Before I actually started working in the industry, I had the misconception that flight crews spent layovers in lovely, exotic hotels; getting massages and sipping champagne by the pool. That dream was shattered early on in my commuter airline career at a hotel in Pittsburgh. We stayed at a place that used to be a Howard Johnson's when I was a kid, and I don't believe the interior had been updated since the 70s. We checked in for our short 8 hour layover (try getting a full night's sleep on THAT! The 8 hours includes van rides to and from the airport, getting up, showering, eating etc. All to go work another 14 hour day slogging around in the bad weather). I was sound asleep about 2am when it started RAINING in my room! Storms had started outside and the roof wasn't exactly up to snuff. Spent the rest of the night trying to find a dry spot for me and my stuff. The next morning the flight attendant mentioned that when he tried to take a shower, there was no showerhead; just an open pipe in the shower!

One of the worst hotels currently in our system is a flea bag dump called the St. Tropez in Las Vegas. The St. Tropez is just across a busy street from the Hard Rock, but it's just on the edge of the sleaze district. Over the summer, the hotel van had a problem where the exhaust was venting into the van. To keep people from getting really sick, the driver would keep all the windows open. In 110 degree heat. Nice.
You often pull up in front of the St. Tropez and there are vagrants sitting on the curb in front of the hotel. The hotel underwent somewhat of a remodeling a couple years back, but it's still a dump. Prior to the remodel, I had an entire, huge air conditioning wall unit fall out of the wall onto my couch while I was there. The entire place smelled like cat piss. Since the "remodel", the cat piss smell is gone and the air conditioning units have been staying in the wall, but that's all that's good. If you walk out of the hotel and turn right, you will most certainly be accosted by people looking for money. If you go straight across the street to the Hard Rock, you used to be taking your life into your own hands. I hear that a pedestrian crossing has been installed since I was last there, which might be an improvement. A few years ago I had eaten at the Hard Rock and was waiting to cross the four lanes of traffic back to the hotel when a car pulled up next to me at the curb. Guy rolled down his window.
"How much?"
"Excuse me?"
"How much for a ########?"
YGTBSM!!! Although I might have doubled my take home pay for the trip had I pursued it.....

One of the better ways to cut airline costs and ensure more money in the CEO's pocket is to cut back on the quality of crew lodging. Sometimes we DO get nice hotels, maybe because the union snuck one by the company or there are no other hotels in the area. Those don't last long. We often have hotels that are close to nothing, with nowhere to eat and crappy accommodations. Our airport hotel in JFK is nicknamed "the compound" because it's surrounded by barbed wire, and you take your life into your own hands if you step outside the hotel grounds.

Some of the better stories I've heard over the years about hotels:

Guy I flew with last week was telling me about a trip he'd had several years before. It had multiple layovers at the same hotel, and on the first night he was sitting in bed working on his bid with a green marker. The marker slipped out of his hand and left a big green mark on the sheets. The next night, he checked into the same hotel and happened to get the same room. When he pulled back the covers, he noticed the same green mark on the sheets. Upon further inspection of said sheets, he found all kinds of filth; other people's hair, etc. He called the front desk to complain, and the clerk said, "Well, we always put you airline people in the same group of rooms, and you work for the same airline, right?" Um, hello! I might work with these people and stick up for them in a bar fight, but it doesn't mean I want to sleep in the sheets they used last night!!

A flight attendant checked in to her hotel room, put her bags away and then had to use the bathroom. As she was sitting on the toilet, she happened to glance up to see that the ceiling panels were pulled away and a workman was looking down at her!

One guy I flew with told me about the sheets in his room the night before. As he explained it, he pulled back the covers and noticed that "somebody hadn't wiped his bottom properly and left a mark on my sheets." Oh my!!

The stories go on and on, and maybe I'll add more when I think of them. For now I have to get back to livin' the dream.

A Weighty Subject

2007-09-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Phoenix eight years ago, I've gained about ten pounds. Ten pounds doesn't sound like much until you consider that I'm 5'2" and small boned. So I've been trying to lose a few of those pounds for the past couple years. I hang out at the weight loss thread on bike journal, use a website to track my food and exercise calories, and watch "The Biggest Loser" regularly. Unfortunately, nothing works. Anyway, today might have illustrated why.

I picked up a turn to Chicago to make up for a sick call earlier in the week. We were scheduled to be in Chicago for 54 minutes before heading back to Phoenix, but arrived at O'Hare about a half hour early. There's a great deli right across from our gate that serves gyros and other good stuff. Since I had the time and it was noon (in Chicago), I cruised up to the deli and ordered a gyro dinner. I've had this platter before, and it comes with about 3 pounds of meat as well as the pita, a pound of rice and some yummy potatoes. I grabbed a little table and started to chow down. My captain came by a couple minutes later, gave me a strange look, and exclaimed, "WOW! You can put away some groceries!" Man, I must have looked like a wounded animal (with puppy dog eyes and gyro meat hanging out of my mouth), because he quickly added, "in a good way, of course".

Okay, now how do you call someone a pig "in a good way"? Of course, he was right, and it made me think about why I can ride a bike for 80 miles on a weekend and not lose weight. I didn't stop shoveling gyro in my pie hole, but I thought about it. And I wondered if I had a hidden talent. Maybe instead of training for stupid bike rides, I could train for something like Nathan's hot dog eating contest! Join the ranks of the greats, like Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut. I realize I'd never be in their league, but maybe I could compete with them. How cool would that be? Heck, I won a beer guzzling contest (and a Guns'n'Roses CD) at some dive bar back when I was younger. I even won a wet t-shirt contest once (granted, that was 20 years ago in some rural part of Ohio where the men were men and the sheep were scared, but still. I'd be a scary sight today...wet old hag contest?). But I had felt the competitive spirit! I had the right stuff!

I pondered this over my gyro, and realized that although I might have had the drive in my younger days, it wasn't with me anymore. So I finished my 5 pounds of dinner and went back to the plane to read the paper. I guess I'll just rest on my laurels and my overweight ass.

My Low Cost Carrier Paid Vacation

2007-08-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

Okay, I took my camera on my last work trip to record MY "work paid vacation". I don't fly to Europe like my UPS friend, but this trip wasn't bad by my airline's standards and I was flying with a good guy that I've known for quite a while.
Anyway, without further ado, please enjoy my "Low Cost Carrier Paid Vacation"!

Day one, I found myself on a layover in Oakland, California! We were put up in a fine hotel in downtown Oakland and went out to explore the area. We ate dinner at Jack London Square and then checked out Oakland's Chinatown. It's not as big as San Francisco's Chinatown, but still! Here's a picture of me in Chinatown, Oakland:

The second night of my trip I was in Indianapolis. My captain, who is a little whacked, went out for a four mile run. I headed for an Irish pub.

There's other nice scenery in Indianapolis as well:

The third layover of our trip was spent in Vancouver, BC. Strange and exotic foreign land. Did I mention that my captain is some crazy sadistic bastard? Rides a Lightspeed Tuscany? Runs four miles when he could be sitting in an Irish pub drinking beer? Anyway, he mentioned doing the Grouse Grind while in Vancouver. I figured this was some cool coffee shop in the city, but I should have known better. The Grouse Grind is some stupid hike up a ski slope. 2600' elevation gain in 1.8 miles. So up the mountain we went. This is a picture of the kookoo captain coming up the hill:

And me with the gorgeous scenery after accomplishing the climb:

So anyway, this should dispel any notions that the UPS crowd has more scenic or exciting adventures on their trips. I'm livin' the dream!

Paid Vacation

2007-08-07T08:53:00.001-07:00

I have a friend who started working for UPS about a year ago and recently transitioned to the Airbus A300, which is does international routes. This morning I received several emails from her with pictures from her "UPS Paid Vacation" to Europe, where she was flying freight at night and playing tourist during the day. There were assorted pics of her in Budapest, Rome, and Madrid. Yeah, whatever. I'm not jealous.
When I go back to work I plan to make a photo journal of MY "(low cost carrier's name removed) paid vacation". Ha! Then I'll post it here.

on the road again

2007-07-31T07:27:00.000-07:00

Today I got on my bike for the first time in three weeks. After my doctor said I shouldn't ride Triple Bypass due to my calf injury, I went into kind of a funk and put my bike away.

Fast forward to July 28th, when I got an email from JulieB asking if my calf was better and would I like to join one of her teams for a virtual RAAM competition on Bike Journal? I'm not sure of Julie's motives; whether she felt sorry for me, really couldn't find any other GABA women for her team, or thought I'd read the thread and be upset if she didn't invite me, but whatever the reason, I accepted! The sad truth is that I'm the weakest member of this team, but I know I have to get out of my rut and at least give it a little effort.

Yesterday was the first day of the challenge. I was working out of town and couldn't ride, but today I woke up in my own bed and therefore had no excuses. A lovely cloudy morning in Phoenix, it was actually cool at 81 degrees. I pulled out my poor, recently ignored bike, noticing the new tires and ridiculous 11-34 cassette that I'd had put on in anticipation of TBP. Wearing my Team Sunshine jersey, I headed out the door for my first ride in a long time.

I rode south to Pecos Road to do a loop I often took when I didn't have a lot of time or didn't feel like riding far. As I pedaled, I looked down and noticed my legs. The bulging quads that I'd developed from climbing repeats on South Mountain had been replaced by toothpicks, which reminded me of my nickname in basic training (chicken legs). My abs and back are now weak, causing me to put a lot of weight on my arms, which subsequently made for achey wrists. And I found I was out of breath on a simple flat road! Nevertheless, I pedaled on. The breeze in my face felt nice, and I was reminded of the joy of simply riding a bike.

My calf started to hurt, so I cut the loop short and headed home. I arrived back in my living room with road grime all over my body, hurting muscles, and a good feeling in my heart.

I've read that pain is a sign of weakness leaving the body. Today I said goodbye to a good bit of weakness, and I know that there's a lot more itching to be let go.

And I'm glad.

Doping

2007-07-30T10:39:00.001-07:00

Today I woke up at oh dark thirty in Baltimore for one leg home. After this flight I'm off until the 17th of August (vacation).

Before each leg of the trip, the flight attendants give us huge bottles of water. The company cut out the normal sizes to save money, so we end up with a 34 ounce bottle apiece to get us through our flight. For some reason I have to drink all the water that's put in front of me plus my coffee, orange juice, and whatever else I desire (hey, but I haven't had kidney stones!), so I tend to visit the lav a lot.

Our flight to Phoenix was uneventful, and we pulled into the gate ontime. I was just heading back to the bathroom when a flight attendant poked her head into the cockpit.

"Sue has a drug test".

Oh, for gosh sakes. Can't they leave me alone? The drug lady stepped up and had me sign a paper of notification, then said she'd meet me at the collection room. "You know where it is, right?" she asked with a knowing smile. Hell, yes. I see the drug lady more than I see my boss.
Anyway, I grabbed my bags and booked on out of the plane. The drug room is the next concourse over, and I had to go pee NOW! I ran over a small child and commandeered an electric cart off an old couple and beat the drug lady back to her lair. There was a Mesa pilot waiting for his drug test when I got there, but I told him to have a seat because I was going first, dammit!!

I got the collection cup and instructions to fill it above a certain line. I told her not to worry about that, went into the special bathroom with no running water and blue juice in the toilet, filled the cup to capacity and then some, and brought it out to the drug lady. She has to separate the stuff in the cup into "A" and "B" sample containers, and while she was getting prepared to do that, I admired the training certificates on the wall. Three talented ladies had the honor of having been trained in piss collection as per CFR 49 blah blah blah and had the wood framed certificates to show it. I would have framed mine in gold, taken it to schools and bragged about what you can be if you don't drop out and study hard.

I noticed as the drug lady was splitting the sample that she had a little bit of the shakes and was spilling some. This makes me wonder whether the trained unine collectors ever have to show proficiency like we do. Maybe they go in the pee sim every six months? Show that they don't spill more than 10% or something?

Anyway, I got my receipt (to add to the collection) and headed home. I keep wondering why I get picked for "random" drug testing all the time. If the company saw my landing in Phoenix today, they'd realize that I'm not on any performance enhancing drugs!!

Vancouver

2007-07-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of a four day trip, flying with a somewhat strange fellow. He's a nice guy, but talks really slow, waves his hands at nothing, and smells pretty bad. His stench is kind of a cross between mothballs and bad teeth. The guy isn't married, and one of the flight attendants thought maybe we should TELL him about his halitosis (?) issue since it might be indicitive of a bigger health issue (or it might be indicitive of lack of hygiene IMHO), but I don't think I'm the person to do it. On the bright side, I've been trying to lose a few pounds and have no appetite when I'm around him.

Anyway, we arrived in Vancouver around 2pm. I normally visit my stepsister while here, but she had a birthday party to attend, so I was on my own.
I decided to take the bus to town and look for some dinner and/or drinks. I rode all the way to the waterfront where the cruise ships dock and got out to walk around. The weather was great, so I guess everyone else had the same idea. Talk about crowds! I wandered around for a few hours, but didn't see anything to my liking for dinner. I have different standards for places I go by myself than I do for places I go with other people. What those standards are, I really couldn't tell you. But while I was searching for my perfect restaurant, I did a little people watching. One guy was sitting on a stoop with his hat out and a sign that said "$1.12 from taking over the world" Another unattractive fellow was walking around with a T-shirt over his big beer belly that said "orgasm donor". I had nightmares about that one later.

For something different, I decided to start picking out interesting people and following them into whatever stores or establishments they went into. I found myself in some places I never would have thought to enter, some interesting and some even MORE interesting. Maybe someday I'll expound upon that. :)

Anyway, eventually I tired of the crowds and boarded the crowded bus back to Richmond, where my hotel is. After spending three and a half hours in downtown Vancouver, I ended up eating dinner across the street from my hotel at a place called the "Mad Greek". There was hardly anybody inside when I arrived, but my big, fat Greek waitress was so busy flirting with the bartender that it took her ten minutes to stop by my table. I had crossed the point of "grumpy hungry", so I stayed rather than find another restaurant.

The food was actually rather decent, and after eating a bit I realized that the waitress was pretty nice. The joint started to fill up around 6pm, so I headed back to my room. Another day of living the dream in the books.

tragedy in Phoenix

2007-07-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, two news helicopters collided while following a police chase in Phoenix. Both pilots and their cameramen died.
This is a sad tragedy, but I've often wondered when it was going to happen. I've never understood the reason for news copters. They fly over houses at all hours chasing "news" and making noise. Those pilots not only have to fly their air machines, they also have to follow the "news", report to their station, and watch out for the other half dozen news choppers out flying over the same scene.
Maybe it's time to phase news copters out.

disappointment

2007-07-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

I went to the doctor today for a followup on my calf, and the doc told me he didn't think I should ride Triple Bypass. Since it's a free country, I could certainly do it if I wanted to, and he said that if I tore the muscle again, we'd just start from square one again. That option doesn't sound so attractive.
I had mentioned that I was going to go to Colorado regardless of whether I rode TBP, but I honestly thought I was going to ride! Now that the option is gone, I really don't know what I'm going to do. I'd like to see all the Bike Journal buddies, but there would be a nagging disappointment following me around like a dark cloud. I think I'll just fly to Toronto and meet my family for our annual fishing trip and forget about cycling for a while.

ORD to SMF

2007-07-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

Back on the road, livin' the dream.

Spent Sunday night in Chi-town. Found out that a pretty famous pizza joint will deliver stuffed deep dish pizza right to your hotel room, so I picked up the phone and placed my order! Small spinach pizza; menu says it will feed 1-2 people. An hour later my pizza shows up. Yep, that thing might feed 1-2 people of the 500 lb. variety. Holy cow! I ate one piece of six and put the rest in the fridge (had two of those in my room....maybe they thought I was having a party?). Had pizza next morning for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and finally gave the rest to the flight attendants. Good grief! People in Chicago must like their food. There's a deli in the terminal that serves gyros and gyro platters, and each meal has about two pounds of meat on it. I need to stop bidding Chicago or I won't fit in my seatbelt.

Had an early wakeup in Chicago; 5am Chicago time, 3am my time. Sorry, but I'm really not functioning well at that hour. After some coffee and pizza the fog started to clear. I have kind of a tiny bladder, and on my second trip to the bathroom enroute to Phoenix, I realized I had my underwear on inside out. Nice!

So we're a couple hours into the flight, somewhere over Zuni, when the cockpit starts to smell. As usual, both pilots look at each other, then immediately look up at the overhead panel. Sure enough, the toilet light shows "occupied". For some reason the stink from the front lav partially vents into the cockpit, and when you get a really smelly person up there it makes the ride miserable. Why do people want to crap in a stinky little airplane lav anyway? Some months ago there was a particularly foul odor coming from the lav, which was occupied for quite some time. The captain finally picked up the PA and announced "courtesy flush in the forward lav, please!". Now THAT was funny.

Anyway, made it to Phoenix and then on to Sacramento. A bicycling friend picked me up at the Sacramento airport, drove us to Yountville and we took a nice leisurely ride in wine country, doing some tasting along the way. Now THAT'S how to spend a layover! Sometimes this job ain't so bad.

One last cool thing....
One of our flight attendants for the flight home today races road bikes. Of 10,000 applicants, he was chosen to be one of Lance's 100 teammates during RAGBRAI this year. How cool is that?

Bat For Lashes - Whats a Girl To Do

2007-07-08T08:17:00.001-07:00

Somebody linked this on the TE site. I don't usually post videos, but this one was kinda cool (and cycling related).

Cycling Stinks

2007-07-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

At least that's how I'm starting to feel. Well, let me start from the beginning.....

I was training for the Triple Bypass ride in Colorado. Things were going great! I was climbing South Mountain a lot, doing some cool rides in Tucson, had a professional bike fit, rode with a great gal up in Flagstaff, and was planning to ride Mt. Lemmon.

Then things fell apart. I tore a muscle in my calf three weeks before Triple Bypass (which will be July 14th).

It's been kind of slow healing, and I've been going to physical therapy to speed things up. I still want to go to Colorado and attempt TBP. I've just gotten back on the bike after a two plus week hiatus, and am trying to get a few miles in. Unfortunately, everything feels wrong. The cleat on the shoe of my bad leg is wrong now because that foot wants to toe in (not sure if this will clear up once I'm fully healed). Every saddle I put on the bike irritates the crap out of me after five miles. I have no stamina and feel dizzy and sick after a ride. I'm not enjoying myself.

Things are so frustrating right now. The big ride is in a week; it's paid for, my lodging is paid for, and I have friends who have offered to ride with me. So why do I feel so lousy?

Jamaica

2007-07-04T18:57:00.000-07:00

So what did you do for the Fourth of July?
I was in Jamaica!!!

Jamaica, New York that is. Rather than sunshine and beaches, it was rain showers, barbed wire and a Doubletree hotel.
The crews call this hotel the "compound" because it's surrounded by said barbed wire, fences and a crappy neighborhood.
But the place does have a bar downstairs, so my cohort and I went down to have a refreshing malt beverage. We're chatting away and having a pleasant evening, when all of a sudden the TV volume gets REALLY loud. WTFO?
Well, if it isn't some American Idol singers wailing out some tune on a show filmed in New York. Like we out of towners at this airport hotel really give a rat's ass. Volume didn't get turned down when the commercials came on either. The bartender obviously thought this was so freaking important that she had to drown out everyone's conversation to listen. Needless to say, the bar emptied out within five minutes, but where are you gonna go? Ain't exactly a great neighborhood to wander around in.
So I'm back in my room watching airplanes come in and some folks' home fireworks out my window. And bitching as usual.
Happy 4th!

Countries I've visited

2007-06-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

Saw this cool site linked on bikejournal.

http://www.world66.com/myworld66

Triple Bypass

2007-06-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

Just got my rider number in an email today. Wow. Can't believe I was stupid enough to sign up for this ride. Further than I've ever ridden by at least 24 miles, and more climbing than I've ever done (at least three times as much)!
I'm really looking forward to seeing all my friends in Colorado that week, but I hope I don't kill myself trying to finish this ride! I guess a lot of it's mental, and my mental state is not up to par right now. Tuesday I'll attempt to climb Mt. Lemmon in Tucson, and if I complete that, it should boost my confidence level.

Memorial Day

2007-05-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

Detroit

2007-05-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here I sit on lovely Detroit. Okay, Romulus. Last time I was on a layover here several years ago, one of the flight attendants had a seizure in the hotel lobby in the morning. Paramedics were called, flight was cancelled, lots of unhappy people. Bizarre situation.
We're in a different hotel these days, but in the same area. I went hunting for food for lunch, and it is toasty outside! Like summer already.
Detroit is a hotbed for healthy, organic food, so there was no problem finding something suitable to eat.

NOT.

Got a reuben sandwich at Big Boy down the road. It took care of the hunger, but won't help me lose weight before the Triple Bypass ride in Colorado. Not like losing a couple pounds is going to make up for being in bad shape, but I need all the excuses I can get. You'd think I'd have gone to the workout room to help with the fitness I need, but I hung out on the computer and got in an argument with an "East" pilot on our union webboard. I'm not sure why I didn't just spend a couple hours beating my head against the wall instead. Might have been more constructive.

Armed Forces Day

2007-05-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

Today I had the opportunity to ride my bike down in Tucson at the Davis Monthan Air Force Base on an organized ride. A portion of the ride was to be in the actual "boneyard", where old military airplanes sit awaiting reuse, parts cannibalization, or a trip to the smelter. I got to hook up with a couple Bike Journal dot com buddies for the 26 mile ride. It was an easy pace on a flat route, and for the five dollar ride fee we got a water bottle and t-shirt. I kept falling behind the group since I took so many pictures of airplanes, but what else is new? My mom used to bitch at me years ago because my pictures never had any people in them, just machines.

One of the coolest things I saw on the ride were the tails of two KC-135s I used to work on in Pittsburgh when I was in the Air National Guard. Makes me feel old, though.

After the ride, there was a drawing for a free entry to El Tour de Tucson, and I won! Now I have absolutely no reason not to be at El Tour in November. But it means I have to keep training instead of sitting on my ass eating bon bons. *sigh*

Jerry Falwell

2007-05-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

I see on the internet "news" that Jerry Falwell died today.
I met Jerry Falwell years ago when I was a charter pilot and flew him to Pensacola, Florida when his private airplane was undergoing maintenance. His companion mentioned that their trip to Florida was to pick up a sizeable check from a follower.
Jerry Falwell was one of the rudest passengers I've ever flown. He treated me like a piece of trash, like some little servant girl (when he gave me the time of day). And I didn't agree with his hypocritical mixing of politics and religion either. In 1987, Falwell was fined $6,000 by the Federal Election Commission for illegally transferring $6.7 million from his tax-exempt ministry to a political action committee. Falwell denounced Tinky Winky of the teletubbies as gay and bad for the morality of our children (come ON! Tinky Winky??). Falwell said liberals helped cause 9/11 since they "removed God from the public square" and he outright blamed feminists and gay people for the terrorist attacks.

So goodbye, Jerry Falwell. Can't say I'll miss you.

Seniority

2007-05-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

The arbitration decision about merging our two pilot seniority lists came out the other day. I read the decision, and it seems to me that the arbitrator put together a fair list after much thought and consideration. Unfortunately, the other airline involved is very upset over their perceived "screwing", and have vowed to make our lives miserable, file lawsuits, screw up the operation, and on and on. They were expecting to step all over us and take our jobs, and that's not what they got. Now they're throwing a fit. With that kind of attitude, is it any wonder they were three weeks from shutting their doors before the merger was announced? And I just read that our airline paid their payroll a week before the merger was announced so they wouldn't go into liquidation (in which case we would have been outbid for assets by the 600lb gorilla airline across the way).
Anyway, the whole thing really has me disgusted. You'd think we could move on as a group now and fight the company for better pay and work rules, to get back some of what was lost after 9/11, but those bozos seem hell bent on just making life miserable and running the operation into the ground. Sometimes I'm ashamed to be affiliated with these people.

100

2007-04-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

That's how many freaking degrees it is here in Phoenix. 100 degrees in April. With a huge dust storm blowing outside. What kind of crazy people live in this town, anyway?

Maintenance

2007-04-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

Woke up in Houston this morning. It's only a two and a half hour flight to Phoenix, but I got bored halfway through the flight and started reading old pages in the flight/maintenance log. A couple days ago a crew had written up one of the toilets in a rear lav as not flushing. Maintenance had signed off the write up as "removed an extremely large caliber turd/papertowl combination from toilet. Ops check good."
I seriously laughed out loud at that one.

Another Crappy Day in Paradise

2007-04-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

This morning I got up at 4am to start my early work trip. After checking in at the airport, I found out that somebody had picked up my first turn sometime in the middle of the night, and I wasn't supposed to be at work until noon. Holy cow, was I not happy. I went home and back to bed.
Woke up a couple hours later and spent time with my husband, who got in late last night, and my dog, who I didn't want to leave anyway. Right before I left to go back to work, the dog managed to get too close to the pool while checking it out and fell in. Worried mom that I am, I fished him out and got myself soaked trying to clean him up. Poor dog had just gotten a haircut and was shivering like crazy from cold.
Anyway, got past that scary moment and I went to work for my one leg to Oakland.
Oakland is one of the few layovers where we've been staying in the same hotel since I started working here. The airport Hilton isn't a bad place, nice and close to the airport. Today there were Raiderette tryouts at the hotel, and the bar was full of Raiderette wannabes or guys trying to pick them up, so I couldn't get a seat. Both the other restaurants were closed, so to find food I needed to hoof it.
In over seven years, I've never left this hotel property because too many people I know have been mugged, roughed up, or had guns shoved in their faces in this neighborhood. But since it was broad daylight I figured I might be all right. I found an italian place a few doors down, but it was closed. So were the next three places I passed. About a half mile down the road I finally ran into an open restaurant called Carrows. I believe that "Carrows", roughly translated, means "lousy excuse for a restaurant". The food was horrible, the decor was sad, and the service sucked. No wonder there were only two people in the joint. The only redeeming quality of the place was the busboy, who saw me sitting there for ten minutes and finally asked if I'd like a drink. My waitress took my order, brought my food, and then disappeared for good.
Anyway, I did get food, even if it was some of the most unhealthy, lousy food I've eaten in a long time. I've had wax beans before, but they didn't taste like WAX! And mashed potatoes with a crust? The cornbread was okay once I slathered a pound of butter on it.
After dinner I came back to my room, called my husband, and we promptly got into an argument over who knows what.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself, my life and job are so freaking grand. Livin' the dream.

Training Begins

2007-04-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I hooked up with DMetz and rode the San Juan road at South Mountain. He is also going to do the Triple Bypass ride in July, and reminded me that I had three months to train rather than the two months I was thinking I had.
I was too wimpy to attempt the actual mountain, but that dumb road still kicked my ass! I only rode 19 miles with 1600' of climbing, and I think I'll be able to do a 124 mile ride with 10,000 ft of climbing at altitude in three months? HA! Maybe if I start smoking some crack I'll believe I can do it. But then the drug test lady will have my ass. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Think I'll rest for a couple days and eat junk food for energy.

Virginia Tech Tragedy

2007-04-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

I was so sorry to hear of the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech. I used to live in Roanoke and often flew charters out of Blacksburg Airport. That whole area is so gorgeous and the people are so nice. I loved my time there and am so sorry to see such a horrible thing happen to that wonderful place.

bicycle

2007-04-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

My poor Trek has been sitting pretty much abandoned for the past month while I went on vacation, got sick, went back to work, had houseguests, and drove cross country with a dog. I'm fatter and more out of shape than I've been in a long time. When I get into this slug mode, it's hard to get out of it, but I realize that it's less than two months until the Triple Bypass ride in Colorado. I need to get off my fat butt and train.
I really didn't want to ride today, but I forced myself to get out and put in 10 miles. It almost killed me, but it let the body know that there's no more laying around eating cheetos and cheeseburgers. The time has come to get serious about training! Wish me luck!

Home

2007-04-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

Day four of the drive was only 340 miles. There really isn't much between Gallup and Flagstaff, and I drove 70 miles before I could even find a McDonald's to get some coffee and an Egg McMuffin.

When I finally saw the San Francisco peaks in the distance, I knew I had it made. It really is a gorgeous drive into Flagstaff and down I-17 past the Sedona turnoff all the way past Black Canyon City. Then the traffic starts to build and the ugly strip malls come into view. The brown cloud hampers breathing and people on the road jockey for position like they're on Daytona Speedway. I'm home!!!

Dakota is getting used to his new digs, and I need a rest!

After Oklahoma

2007-04-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

On day three I left Oklahoma and drove into the Texas panhandle. I'm not a big fan of Texas, and neither is Dakota since he crapped on Amarillo. Texas went by soon enough and we were in New Mexico. At this point I felt like I was almost home, what with being in the Southwest and all. New Mexico ticked me off right off the bat by having the first two rest areas closed. That's like 150 miles without a pee break!! But I managed to see a herd of pronghorn in a field about 70 miles into New Mexico, and that made up for things. I sped past Albuquerque (dumb) and stopped in Gallup for the night. Somehow ended up on the west side of town, but found a room in a dumpy Best Western. The hotel staff was nice, but some of the patrons were pretty scary. There was a restaurant right in the hotel and the clerk kept talking up the steaks, so after I got Dakota settled in to the room I went downstairs for some eats. Nothing like a nice glass of wine and a steak after 1800 miles of driving.
I got seated and the host asked if I'd like anything to drink. I asked him what wines they had, and he informed me that Gallup was a dry county on Sundays. Crap.
Nobody told my waitress about this dry county stuff, because she reeked from five feet away. That woman was TANKED. I thought about asking her where she kept her stash and if I could share, but decided that I probably didn't want what she was drinking. Not that I'm a wine snob or anything.
Okay, I AM a wine snob. If it tastes like crap, why drink it? Which is why you won't catch me drinking Coor's light or that two buck chuck. Yuck.
So much for New Mexico. And I didn't even get any Hatch chilis.

Oklahoma

2007-04-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

I request that my Oklahoma friend please not read this rant.

Ok, so I'm trucking along through the states with no problem. Then I hit Oklahoma.
You know, "Oklahoma is OK". Isn't that what they used to have on their license plates? Now it's "Native America". Their state motto is "Like the Play, Only no Singing". Okay, not really. Maybe instead of "labor conquers all things" or whatever it translates to, it should be "Oklahoma, a bunch of money-grubbing bastards".
Why do I feel this way? Well, Oklahoma feels the need to charge money to ride on their roads. $3.50 to get to Tulsa from the state line, $3.50 to get to OKC from Tulsa, and even more if you take the other two toll roads they lead you toward on this route but I managed to avoid. So what do you get for your $3.50? Good roads? NO! Pothole city. They claim a 75mph speed limit, but since half the road was under construction and down to one lane, I spent most of the time at 40mph. I guess the tolls pay for all the signs along the way telling you that you will have to PAY in xx miles. And signs telling you there are ATMs in Tulsa so you can get more money for more tolls. Every 10 miles there is a sign telling you not to drive into smoke. What the hell is that for? Why would I drive or not drive into smoke? If the area's on fire, don't they shut the darn road down? Or do they put up signs instead so they don't have to go to the trouble? And why every ten miles? Just in case I forgot ten miles ago?

Okay, there was a sign for the world's largest McDonald's on the toll road. Whoopee.
So the first toll road was the Will Roger's toll road or something. Wouldn't Will Rogers be proud to know that his name is on a pay road? For God's sake, if I get famous, please don't name a freaking toll road after me. And why do they name them anyway? Do they think it will make people less grumpy about paying to drive on the road? "Hey Madge, I really would have hated paying $3.50 to drive on I-44, but we're on WILL ROGERS TOLL ROAD! Now I'm honored! Can I throw in an extra buck?"

I don't know if "Native America" refers to the amount of Indian tribes in the state, but there were a few Indian casinos enroute. One was named "Buffalo Run", but I didn't see any hint of buffalo (or Bison, for that matter). Then there was the other sign "Hitchhikers are escaped convicts". That makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy! Can't remember what town that was near. I also passed the Port of Catoosa. Hmm, maybe I can hop me an ocean liner to Phoenix! At least there were "free restrooms". Hey Oklahoma! Other states have that, too! They call them "rest areas".

So I got to the first toll booth, paid my money and asked for a map. The toll taker said they didn't have maps and that I could go to the visitor center. I asked what on earth my $3.50 was getting me then, since I just traveled half way cross the country and no other state felt the need to charge me and their roads were better! She told me that people were waiting behind me and I'd better move on before she called the cops.

Anyway, once I got past Oklahoma City, things got better. The roads became free and they were actually nice.
I stopped in Weatherford, hoping to spend the night, but no hotel in that hoity toity town would take pets except some dump that I wouldn't put a rat in. So I pressed on to Clinton. Found a room at the Best Western, where the people were friendly. The town was nice a well kept too.
Got a decent night's sleep, headed out in the morning, and put Oklahoma behind me.

Driving sucks

2007-04-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

I only made 500 miles the first day and ended up in Effingham, IL. I've driven crosscountry in the past and always seem to end up in Effingham. Nice Holiday Inn Express, TGIF next door, high speed internet, nice beds. For some reason I was completely wiped out and spent 16 hrs at that hotel. It was going to take me a week at that rate.
Next morning I finally got my butt in gear around 8am. Unfortunately, during the night a big old storm front had moved over me, and I spent the rest of Illinois and all of Missouri driving through torrential rains, sleet, or snow. Being the well seasoned traveller I am, I managed to bring one pair of long pants and many pairs of shorts. I wore the same ratty pair of jeans for four days. Skanky, huh? I also only had two pairs of socks for some reason. What a freaking idiot. It was 30 degrees, I had no coat, and the dog needs walked for 10 minutes every couple hours. Anyway, we somehow got through those two states unscathed, and then I came to Oklahoma.

A Journey

2007-04-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

So began my cross country trip with a 15 year old broken down mutt.
I flew into Pittsburgh and stayed with Wee Wee, who had plenty of instructions of how to spoil Dakota. I rented a car one way from Pitt to Phoenix and we hit the road the next day.
Now, I hate driving. It's freaking dangerous. And we're talking 2100+ miles with an old dog that I wasn't sure would survive the trip. What the heck am I thinking?

Dakota

2007-04-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

Back in '92, when I lived in West Virginia, my boss and I were having lunch at the local hotdog place. When we were leaving, there was a little puppy begging everyone for food. He didn't have any hair and was a runt looking thing with no collar. I could tell he'd been abandoned, but I picked him up and took him to all the local homes to see if anyone would claim him. People looked at me like I was nuts, because nobody in that part of West Virginia wanted a little mangy looking mutt. So I decided I'd keep him. Upon closer inspection, I realized he was crawling with fleas, so our first stop was to the vet to have him flea dipped and given shots. After that he was all mine. I named him after my favorite airplane, the DC-3, but I used the Canadian C-47 name of Dakota. People ask me why I named a dog after a truck or a state and I just roll my eyes.
After a couple weeks, I got chewed out by my landlord because I wasn't allowed to have pets, so I drove Dakota to Pittsburgh to stay with my dad. My dad bitched and moaned about that dog. "When are you coming to pick up this goddamn dog", etc. I finally came home to visit about a month later, and couldn't believe how Dakota had improved. He had more hair than I'd ever seen on a dog, and this was after I dropped him off with just a few tufts on his whole body. Anyway, I put the dog in the car with me and took him to McDonald's or something; was only gone an hour or so. When I got back, my dad was frantic. "Where you been with my dog? What do you think you're doing?" So anyway, dog became dad's. Dad was divorced and living alone (my mom ran off with a musician, but that's another story), and the dog was great company for him.
Dad died in '96 and dog came back with me. I flew charter and then at a commuter airline where I was only gone usually during the day, but in '98 I ended up in New York working four day trips. At that point I asked my dad's aunt (the adorable wee wee) and my aunt (who were living together) if they would watch the dog. And for the past nine years, that's where he's been, getting fat and spoiled.
Unfortunately, a few months ago my aunt had a fall and broke her leg in four places. My dad's aunt has decided to move in with her son and live it up a little in her older age (she's 89), so it was up to me to come get the dog back or have him put to sleep. I was not going to have him put to sleep!!!

Finally!

2007-04-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Remember that grievance I filed because I wasn't allowed to bid for my December reserve line? Well, it initially got denied by the chief pilot for some bogus reason, so I appealed to the VP of Flight Ops, who said the chief pilot's reasoning was good enough, so I appealed to the grievance review board (made up of three union people and three company people), who admitted that I should have been allowed to bid for December, and awarded me 8:34 pay as a settlement. Woo hoo! That only (sarcasm) took four months to resolve, but I'm glad it's over and I actually won.
I can see why people don't file grievances, though. What a freaking hassle.

Sick

2007-03-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to go to work today, but had to call in sick. Yesterday evening my nasal passages closed up, and by midnight I couldn't breathe well, had a terrible sore throat, and felt like somebody had been beating me around the face and head with a two by four. Needless to say, no sleep was gotten.
I don't get sick very often, and this SUCKS!
I think perhaps it had to do with the high winds we had in town kicking up dust and pollen. I never had allergies until I moved here. Doc gave me some prescriptions, and hopefully I'll be good as new soon. In the meantime, I have to burn sick time being sick. Damn.

Australia

2007-03-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Got back the other day from our trip to Australia. Why do vacation days pass so fast (except time spent in a middle seat on a 14 hr flight, which felt as long as the whole time down under)?

It was a good time, but Australia didn't really feel "foreign" to me. I felt like I took a terribly long and expensive flight to spend time in overpriced US cities. But really, it wasn't bad.

We first flew into Sydney. Sydney is kind of like San Francisco without the funk, character, and natural beauty. It is a clean and safe city, though, and generally agreeable. We stayed in Sydney harbor and took the ferry to Darling harbor several times for food and shopping. Our first full day in Sydney we hopped one of those double decker sightseeing buses to get an overview of town. Not a lot to see, but some nice low bridges that almost took off the heads of a couple doofuses in our party who stood up on occasion.

The second full day, Max (being the only one who'd spent time in Sydney previously) suggested taking a bus to Coogee Beach and doing a 2 mile jog on a path to Bondi Beach. Max and Ross jogged, and the other three of us walked. The scenery on that path was pretty nice, but the afternoon was HOT. I was walking with two whiners, one who hates physical activity and one who hates warm temperatures. Max's name was taken in vain several times during our little journey, but we made it to Bondi in one grumpy piece. When we got close to Bondi, Max and Ross were walking back toward us along the path and accompanied us to the beach. Once at Bondi, Ross and I took a swim and did some body surfing while the others enjoyed a Victoria Bitter.

The day after Bondi, we all took a ferry to Manly Beach. It rained on us that day, so time was spent at a bar watching the people go by.

The day after that we got on a plane to Cairns.

When you step out of the terminal in Cairns, you feel like you've arrived in Hawaii. The scenery and climate are the same, but Cairns itself has no beaches, and even if it did, there are poisonous jellyfish around the coast until May, so you can't swim anyway.

The cab dropped us off at our hotel in a pouring rain, and as we got ready to check in, the owner informed us that the pool deck was torn up so the pool wouldn't be available. She wanted us to know before we checked in. Like, what were we going to do about it now? We'd all dealt with her directly to make the reservations and had never been informed of any pool construction, she'd already charged our credit cards for the room, it was pouring rain outside and we didn't know crap about Cairns!! Uh, hello! This pool issue would have been nice to know YESTERDAY!!

Anyway, Cairns itself is a nice laid back town, and a great jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest up north. Our group only had two days in Cairns, so one day we did our own things and the second day we all went on a snorkel trip to the reef. DH and I rode the Skyrail over the rainforest to Karunda on day one. Not so very exciting, but a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Day two we all got up fairly early and boarded our boat to the reef. The lady at our hotel had said the winds were forecast to be in the 20kt range and she didn't recommend going out to the reef (rough water), but I was damned if I was coming all the way to Australia and not seeing the Great Barrier Reef.

Lemme tell you, about a half hour into that 1.5 hr boat ride to the reef, I thought I was gonna die. We had a half dozen or more pukers running out of the cabin onto the back deck. It was the most unpleasant boat ride I've ever been on and the group of us was GREEN (all except Ross, who lived on a sailboat for a while and thought it wasn't bad. Freak.) During one of the bounces in the waves, we came down so hard that the fresh water tank exploded. No showers after snorkeling, and we got to wear a nice salt skin all day.

Once we got to the first spot for snorkeling and the boat was (fairly) still, it wasn't nearly so bad. We visited three sites on the reef, each better than the last. The waves and current were more than I bargained for, but it was still a good time. The next morning Ross went back to the states, and the remaining four of us left for Melbourne.

We flew Jetstar Airlines to Melbourne, and that has to be the cheapest, crappiest airline I have ever been on. They stuff 177 people into an Airbus A320 and charge you for a damn coke. Anyway, we arrived in Melbourne in one piece. Thank goodness the other flights were on Qantas.

Max and I had run into trouble finding a decent hotel in Melbourne because of all the events going on there in March. So we were booked into the Grand Chancellor. When we told the cabbie at the airport where to take us, he kind of laughed. We asked what was so funny, and he mentioned that it wasn't so "grand" anymore. Oh well. We had booked "remodeled" rooms, but I'd hate to see what the unremodeled ones looked like. It was satisfactory, and the location was great, right near Chinatown in the city center.

Now Melbourne is my kind of city. A melting pot of cultures, it has a European feel and mixes neat old architecture with new buildings. Much better food here than in Sydney, and things are a lot cheaper. We spent a day seeing the sights, riding the city center tram, shopping at Victoria Market, and the next day we went on a wine tour in the Yarra Valley. Then Max and his woman left for home, and DH and I had Melbourne to ourselves. We went to the Zoo, saw the old gaol, rode the tram to Port Phillip, and had a great supper at Southbank. One thing I didn't have time for was driving the Great Ocean Road out to the twelve apostles, but I'll come back to do that sometime. Melbourne was a gem. We met some great people on our wine tour, and have offers of places to stay in Australia and New Zealand when we return. Nice end to a pleasant vacation, and the fifth of seven continents for me to visit in my lifetime. (I'd actually like to visit the other two before this passport expires and get all the stamps in one passport).

Anyway, it sucks to have to go back to work. And it's funny how I can sound bitchy when describing my vacation. But that might be because my ALLERGIES are kicking in since I got back to Phoenix!!!

Vacation

2007-03-12T07:41:00.001-07:00

We're heading off to Australia today. Pretty excited and plan to post a lot of pictures when I get back!

Max turns 40

2007-03-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today our buddy Max turns 40, and his birthday has been a three day long celebration of family and friends having a good time. Last night was the big blowout, and folks flew in from Omaha, Denver, Memphis, Orlando, Holland and more! I got to see a couple guys I flew with at the commuter ten years ago, and it was great to catch up.

Managed to eek out 24 miles on my bike today trying to burn off a few of the calories I took in last night. I'd have to ride a triple century to undo the damage, I believe.

The party continues tonight with a barbeque, and then will move on to Australia for the next two weeks. Party will end on the 24th. Life is good.

Rode the old Costco bike today

2007-03-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

Logged it on bikejournal:

Comments: Rode to Safeway to get coke. Forgot helmet. Bad mtkitchn. Coke machine was broken and I didn't have bike lock, so I rode home. Too hot out to go anywhere else. Unhappy and thirsty mtkitchn. Will drink beer.
Update: decided to get back on bike and ride to Basha's for coke. Success! But hot and sweaty and must shower off now. All for something that makes me fatter and rots my teeth. And I'll probably drink beer anyway.

Ft. Lauderdale

2007-03-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

I've been screwing around with my schedule, dropping some trips and looking for others on the trade board. I saw a two day Fort Lauderdale overnight and picked it up.
I hadn't flown to Ft. Lauderdale (FLL) before, and was feeling pretty smug. The rest of the country is gripped in cold, but the forecast for FLL was warm and sunny! I pictured myself drinking umbrella drinks by the ocean.
The flight out here was great. No weather, smooth air, and on time. The flight attendants are on our overnight with us, which is unusual. When I asked everyone what they were doing, they all kind of hemmed and hawed, then said they'd probably just stay in, which crew members sometimes do. They did say that the hotel was recently remodeled and close to a lot of restaurants.
Van came and got us and brought us to the hotel, which is right next to some highways. As we were getting on the elevator to our rooms, the second flight attendant said "By the way, if you go walk around, be careful. This isn't the best neighborhood."
Say what?
Well, she wasn't kidding. I decided to go out and check out the place. Not only is it of questionable safety crime wise, there aren't any sidewalks! What the hell? The nicest thing I found during my walk was a Big K (at least it had a sidewalk in front of it). And those restaurants? McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell. My dreams of fresh seafood and a mai tai by the beach dissolved into a horrible bean burrito at the dirtiest Taco Bell I've ever seen. Not that I go into many taco bells. I can't imagine how much effort the company must go to to find these horrendous places we stay. I understand that maybe we're not at work to have fun, but if I have to be away from home, can we at least be in a decent area?? I won't be bidding back here anytime soon. Give me cold weather and a place to eat. I never thought I'd miss Milwaukee, for goodness sake.
Speaking of layovers, one of my favorites was Seattle. Our long layover was in an old hotel downtown, which had tiny rooms but a great location a couple blocks from Pike Place Market. Well, the hotel must have raised their rates a buck, because we're out of there as of this month. We'll be staying at some Holiday Inn way over by the space needle in the low rent district. According to our hotel committee, the new hotel is a ten minute walk from the market. HA! Maybe if you have a rocket strapped to your ass. I've been down there, and it ain't no ten minute walk.
But at least we're negotiating for a new contract. Oh, that's right! The company wants concessions from us.
Man, I'm so happy I could just burst. Can ya tell?

Keith

2007-03-04T16:51:00.000-08:00

Back in 1996, I was part owner of a fixed base operation in West Virginia, giving flight instruction and turning wrenches on general aviation airplanes. West Virginia was the 8th state I'd lived in over the previous 10 years, and as a result I never seemed to make long time friends. I moved so often that I would get to know people, then move on and meet new people at my new home. I have very few friends that I've known for more than a few years.
Anyway, I decided to go to a weeklong school in Memphis to prep for my Inspection Authorization exam, which is an add-on to the Airframe and Powerplant certificate and would allow me to sign off annual inspections and major repairs on general aviation aircraft. While in school, I met Keith. Keith and I hit it off immediately, both because of our love of flying as well as the fact that we'd both lost an important family member recently. We became fast friends even though Keith lived in North Carolina and I lived in West Virginia (later moving to Roanoke Virginia; Washington D.C.; Queens NY; back to Pittsburgh; and eventually to Phoenix). At the time, I owned a 1957 Piper Apache, and Keith had a beautiful Cessna 170. We were kindred spirits who loved the old flying machines. Over the next few years one would fly to visit the other, just to hop in an airplane and cruise the skies or to hang out at an airport looking at airplanes. Keith took me to fly-ins down south where I was introduced to delicacies such as squab and quail on the grill served by his flying buddies. We'd slip the surly bonds and dance amongst the clouds. Keith is married to a great southern girl, and he told me a story one time about making love to her, hearing the unmistakable sound of a radial engine outside the window, and jumping out of bed to see what kind of airplane was flying over. The fact that I found nothing wrong with his behavior might be part of the reason we got along so well! Over the years I kept moving and changing jobs. Keith sold my old Apache for me at one point when I couldn't take it with me to my commuter job. When I finally settled in Phoenix and got married, our visits pretty much stopped, especially since it's rather far to fly here in a Cessna 170, and his town is kind of hard for me to get into commercially. Then there are the old excuses of life getting in the way. I think I've made it to North Carolina one time since moving here. Our communication, although less frequent, still continues. Christmas cards, emails, occasionally phone calls. Whenever I hear from Keith I'm reminded of all that I used to love about aviation, including just hopping in an airplane to see the world from treetop level, turning wrenches on one of our airplanes, or stopping at a little airport to chat with the old-timers and hear their stories. Nowadays my view of aviation is clouded by the TSA, management, reinforced cockpit doors, surly passengers and crappy hotels.
While I was sitting in one of those crappy hotels last night, I thought of Keith and what he's meant to me over the years. He recently had to sell his prized 170, and has been sick enough that he doesn't get out much. I cried a little (and I really don't cry very often) for all the good times we had back in the innocent days of flying, how we've grown apart, how sick Keith is, and how time has marched on. This post is my "thank you", "get well", and "miss you" letter to a good friend who has been with me sometimes in body, but always in spirit through some of the happiest times of my life.

C

2007-03-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

Found out today that my father-in-law has prostate cancer. He of the (getting more advanced) Alzheimer's. He can't really comprehend what's going on....after being told of the cancer by my DH and the doctor, he asked, "But I'm healthy, right?".
Anyway, I feel bad for my DH. Lost his mom last year in April, and now his dad is not far behind. Lotsa weight on his shoulders as the "guardian", and now he has to break the news to his siblings.
I suppose a lot of baby boomers are going through the same stuff with aging parents, but it doesn't make it any easier.
Am I lucky that people in my family die young and suddenly? Not sure I want to go that route, either.

The Adorable Wee Wee

2007-02-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

I left sunny 70 degrees behind and flew to rainy, cold Pittsburgh this past weekend for my great-great (?) aunt's 89th birthday poker party. This woman has outlived most everyone in my family and is still kicking, lives alone and is known as "the adorable wee wee". She can be crabby and demanding as all get out, but I think she's great. She loves casinos and gambling and getting the family together for poker. The day after the party, she and I went to lunch at her favorite Chinese buffet. What is it with old folks and buffets? (Wait a minute....I like buffets, too. Hmmm.) After the buffet, she took my money playing knock rum.

I also got to visit my aunt in her rehab center, so that was nice.

Lots of upheaval back home. Wee Wee will be moving in with a son who lives far north, so I won't see her when I go back to Pitt. That is quite a bummer. Regardless, it was good to get back and get caught up with the family. Even if it is cold and crappy there.

Took the old home movies that I had put on DVD up there. My brother and I had a lot of laughs watching them, and he thought it was the best (late) Christmas present ever. So although I didn't get any exercise and ate and drank too much, I still had a great long weekend back "home". Wednesday it's back to work.

2007-02-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

Went up to the high country to ski again. It was President's Day, so the mountain was more crowded than we're used to. Monday night it snowed, and I wanted to stay another day and ski, but Mr. "Hurry up and Get Home" overrode me. We were already off the rim when I talked him into stopping so I could get out a camera. The snow was gorgeous. This pic was taken just east of Christopher Creek.

I'm Watching You

2007-02-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

I sometimes feel like a voyeur when I fly over the hometown of somebody I know. Maybe in a way, I am.

Folks from certain cities have been crying about the snow and bad weather and boo hoo. You people know who you are. HA! I was there and saw nice weather and have the pics to prove it! So get out and ride those bikes and quit crying!!!

Riding with the Beautiful People

2007-02-17T05:53:00.001-08:00

I'm on day four of a four day trip. I usually hate four day trips, but this one has been pretty easy, other than freezing my tush off in Boston. And to think I used to like winter. It was 13 degrees with winds blowing at 40mph up there. Crazy!

Anyway, day three gave me a long layover in Sacramento where I managed to hook up with four folks from BikeJournal....GT, Sadie Kate and her husband (WrenchBoy?), and PansyPalmetto. I was fashionably late and found the four of them lounging outside the hotel on the grass, sharing laughs and fudge. GT lent me a bike, SadieKate lent me a helmet, and off we were up the river trail. What a nice bunch of people. We rode 31 miles in the sunshine, and it was a great time all around. Far too soon we were back at the hotel and the beautiful people of California had to go home to their families and dinner.
As for me, I was starving! I decided to skip the shower and throw on a T-shirt and jeans and walk to the nearest brewpub. There are a lot of homeless people in the area we stay at near the capitol, and I'm surprised I even got served at the restaurant since I looked and smelled like I'd been sleeping under a bridge for a week. I have an uncanny ability to not care about my appearance in public, which might suit me well should I ever decide to live in a van by the river.
A couple beers after a long day had me a little buzzed, but thankfully I left before I started dancing on the tables.

Pictures to follow when I get home and can download them......

Century!

2007-02-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I rode the Picacho Peak Century ride in Tucson with three other BikeJournal members. The weather was perfect, the course was fairly flat, and I finished with strength to spare. My last 100 mile bike ride was in Illinois at the BikeJournal reunion last July, and I honestly thought I was going to die afterward. I've had a mental block ever since then about doing a ride of this length, but I learned from my mistakes last time and this ride went much better. Picture is of my cycling companions at the lunch break around mile 66.
My bike needs some tweaking as I was in a lot of pain for many miles and my knees are killing me today, but I can work on those issues. The big story is that I finished the ride, even with howling headwinds for part of it. Had some help and company from great people, and am very pleased about the accomplishment.

I know you're wondering where the crabbing and whining is....will get back to that once I've rested. :)

Sunrise

2007-02-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

Sunrise ski resort, that is.
If there's one thing I like as much as complaining and stuffing my face full of junk food, it's downhill skiing. DH* and I drove up to NE Arizona yesterday to hit the slopes. Weather was the warmest I think I've ever been skiing in; forty two degrees on the thermometer at Sunrise Lodge and not a cloud in the sky! Sunrise Lodge is not really a "lodge", but a small snack bar with one total employee. They do have some awesome chicken tortilla soup, though.
Other than a couple slushy spots on certain runs, the snow was pretty awesome and there weren't many people to clog up the slopes. No lines at the lifts, either. I only had one wipeout, but it was on a pretty steep slope and I slid about 40 yards before I could get stopped. Thankfully, it was on the opposite hip from the one I slid on after my bike crash Saturday and there was no road rash involved.
After skiing, we went to our favorite steak house and spent the night at a hotel on the rim.

*DH stands for "dear husband". On Sunday it stood for something different. Take a couple rowdy guys, too much booze, a football game and mix. You end up with something akin to "Richard Cranium". Thankfully the husband woke up as a (hungover) little angel on Monday or I would have left him behind and gone skiing by myself.

Somebody Help Me

2007-01-30T19:42:00.000-08:00

I'm on a binge. Or binges. Eating and spending. Can't stop stuffing food in my face, and when I'm not doing that, I'm buying crap online. I've got over $300 worth of bicycle related stuff on its way to my house. Just bought $75 worth of new clothes today and I almost never shop for clothes.
What's going on here???

GRIEVANCE DENIED

2007-01-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I rode my heavy Costco bike over to the post office to get my certified letter. Upon reaching the post office, I realized I had forgotten I.D., so I had to ride home, get the driver's license and do it all over again.
Got my letter, and saw that it was in relation to my grievance re: not being allowed to bid for a reserve line in December. My grievance was denied on the basis that I asked for personal leave for my husband's surgery for two days at the end of November, which made my projected "release" to the line date unknown. The funny thing is, I requested the personal leave AFTER the December lines had already been awarded, so it was well after I wasn't able to bid. This had NOTHING to do with my grievance! I was ready to scream, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.....laugh because it's so ridiculous, or cry because I waited a whole month for THAT!
Needless to say, my grievance will be appealed.
What a lovely process.

On a lighter note, it's been raining here all day. We sure like our rain. I manged to get a 22 mile ride in during the one dry spell today. Legs hurt for some reason, and I haven't even been doing that much. I have no idea how I'll finish a century next month, let alone the Triple Bypass in July. I think some of us are born to be couch potatoes and not cut out for this athletic stuff.

Genie in a Bottle

2007-01-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

Just got home from a three day trip.
I had no idea beforehand who I was flying with since the captain was listed as "restricted crewmember". Usually guys who block their lines from being viewed are really pricks, but this guy turned out to be OK. He was a former chief pilot for the company who had all the former inside scoop. Not that it matters.

Last night was spent in Orlando, where my mom and her husband drove down to meet me. Hadn't seen them in a year, and they haven't changed a bit. They were waiting at the hotel when I got in yesterday afternoon, and my mom looked like she was ready to bust a button or something, she's so excited. Then the videocamera comes out for pics, especially of me in my uniform. Never mind that she has thousands of such pics from over the years, she always wants another one. Maybe because I always make ridiculous faces in the pictures. I told her there was some TSA regulation banning crewmembers having their pictures taken in uniform and I made more faces.
We had a nice dinner and they stayed in my room, so nobody got any sleep what with snoring and everyone taking bathroom breaks in the middle of the night.

Today was just one leg home from Orlando, which is a pretty easy day. As we pulled up to the gate (almost on time!), I see the jetway driver and a lady with a clipboard. The lady with the clipboard can only mean one thing, and that's that one of the crew is getting a "random" drug test. The crewmember getting the "random" drug test is always me. I know people who have been here ten and twenty years who've never gotten a "random" drug test, but I see the lady with the clipboard in the jetway every couple months. The haven't found any drugs in my system the 22 other times I've been tested, but maybe they suspected I was partying hard with my 65 yr old mom last night and they'd better come out on Sunday morning and check me out.

Sure enough, the second flight attendant sticks her head in the cockpit to warn me. Like a warning is going to help now, but it keeps me from using the lav before I get off the plane, then sitting in the drug test room for an hour trying to go pee.
So I got my stuff, shook hands with Mr. Restricted, and headed out with the drug test lady. She didn't look familiar to me, and it's a long walk from where we parked the plane to get to the substance testing room, so I tried to make small talk.

"So you guys work seven days a week, eh?"

"No, I'm from a contract company that comes out on the weekends."

"Oh. Well how many other people are you nabbing today?"

"None. Just you."

Well. Don't I feel important! A contract person out on a Sunday morning just to give me a drug test.

I asked her about her job...

"So how did you get into this line of work? Fascination with urine? Have you known since you were a little girl that you wanted to collect pee?"

She started walking faster and left me behind. She knew I could find the testing room, having been there before.

So I gave the lady what she wanted, signed the bottle seals and took my receipt. I used to keep those receipts at home in a file, but the file got so big I finally threw it away. Hopefully those biscoff cookies they serve on the plane don't have any banned substances in them because I went a little crazy on them this morning.

Got home to find a receipt for a certified letter from the company waiting for me. Can't pick up the letter until tomorrow since the post isn't open Sunday, but I'm wondering what I've done now??? Can't I just do my job and be left alone????

Never Did Finish My Post Yesterday

2007-01-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

Feeling Helpless....

I live in Phoenix. I'm from Pittsburgh, and that's where most of my family is, other than my mother. My father's dead, but has a disabled sister who lives with my father's 89 year old aunt in my grandparents' old house. My father's aunt had promised her sister (my grandmother) that she would take care of my aunt when my grandmother died (is this getting complicated? It gets worse, so you might want to stop reading....).
A couple weeks ago, my aunt fell and broke her leg in three places. She was walking their dog, which is an adorable little mutt I found abandoned 15 years ago when I lived in West Virginia.
So now my aunt's been in the hospital and rehab and won't get out until mid February. In the meantime, my 89 yr old (great?) aunt is living alone with that old dog. I just found out that my great aunt will be moving in with her son at the end of February, nobody wants to take in my aunt (who will be in a body cast for months), and my cousin wants to have the dog put down. I feel so far removed, living 2000 miles away and not able to do anything to help the situation. The weather's lousy in Pittsburgh as well. I called my great aunt today, and there's nobody to shovel the driveway so she's out sprinkling salt. The people that usually come help her are sick. She also has to walk the dog since my aunt is in rehab. I feel guilty being so far away. Why did I move here? I followed my dream, which was flying, but is it worth it to be so far from family? Now I'm married, and my husband's father lives in town with Alzheimer's, so there's that side of the equation (i.e. I doubt we'll be moving to Pittsburgh anytime soon).
I looked into flying to Pitt after my next work trip, but all the flights are oversold. I just feel useless and helpless and sad.

Feeling Helpless

2007-01-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

How to Win Friends and Influence People

2007-01-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

Just returned from a fairly easy three day trip. The first night was spent in Baltimore, where I didn't get much sleep. A girl without sleep is like a day without sunshine for me and like a day from hell for everyone around me.
The route from Baltimore had 170 kt headwinds and took close to 6 hrs. I haven't really gotten used to these long stretches of sitting, and that coupled with the lack of sleep might have spurred me to mention something along the lines of (some) airbus captains being anal. It's not really untrue....I've flown with three anal guys in the past two months whereas I flew with zero in the last few years on the Boeing. Anyway.
The guy in the left seat perked up and said "What?"
Oops.
Needless to say, I did not have any company for dinner on the long Ontario layover last night. Such is the lonely life of a grumpy female who speaks her mind.....

So tomorrow we're planning to go skiing in Tahoe, which hasn't had snow in over a week. Northeastern Arizona, however, has been dumped on recently. Hmmm.
Regardless, skiing it is, be it AZ or CA/NV, although legs are still kind of sore from a yoga class I took on Thursday. That stuff is killer!

Phoenix is a Crime Ridden Hole

2007-01-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

Actually, I'd been feeling pretty good lately, which is why there's not much in my blog. Been riding my bike a lot, getting good schedules at work, and lots of great vacation trips coming up.

There's an organized bike ride out of Tucson next month that I plan to do, and I figured I could get my little trailer out to camp the nights before and after the ride. Two great things, trailering and bike riding! I decided to go get the trailer and truck today and bring them home to clean up and stock. When I got to the "secure" storage area, I found that the license plate had been stolen off my truck. Real nice. Still waiting for the cops to call me back. Needless to say, I'm not driving the truck today. Funny thing is, the truck was put into storage with the trailer because it used to be in my garage while my car sat outside. There was a rash of broken windows and slashed tires in my neighborhood (my car tires were slashed while the car was in the driveway), so we put the truck and trailer in storage. So now this. This is the fourth time I've been the victim of some crime since I've moved here. What is wrong with people? I know there are some nice people on earth, but it seems for every one of those, there are ten that are a complete waste of air. Anyway, I'm TICKED. Must go find out what I need to do know.
My plate is probably on some pimpmobile or crack dealer's car.

Suck it Up

2007-01-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

After cleaning the kitchen of all tasty food, I decided get off my rear and go for a bike ride. It was around 37 degrees out when I left, which is pretty cold for me! I've got some cold weather gear on its way from Performance Bike, but it doesn't do me any good somewhere out in Postal Land.
Had a decent ride down to the foothills, but cut it sort of short to get home and watch football. Glad I got out. Usually you see bunches of cyclists out on a Sunday, but they were scarce today!

COLD!

2007-01-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

Here I sit on my day off in Phoenix, and it's in the 20s outside! Hasn't been this cold here since 1990, at which time I lived in the northeast and thought the 20s was pleasantly warm in January.
I was going to ride my bike but I'm very afraid. So I'll sit around in the heated house and eat bonbons instead.

In Memory of Larry

2007-01-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

Finished a pretty tiring three day trip yesterday and found a new favorite overnight.....Reno. I haven't been on a layover there in years, and we used to stay at this dump of a Holiday Inn where I was afraid to venture past the front doors. Well, now we're in the Circus Circus, which is next to the Silver Legacy. Booze, gambling, food, and not a workout room in sight. What more could I want? But I digress.

Today was the Casa Grande Century ride put on by the bike club. Last year I did the shorter version of this ride and it was my first ever metric century. I wasn't even going to go today because I was tired and crabby (as usual), but a bikejournal.com member emailed me last night and said he'd be there. I've been going through some periods of self doubt about my cycling abilities after my century in July, and really haven't ridden any long rides since. Anyway, I thought that maybe I could go out and do the 34 mile version. So around 7:30 this morning I loaded up the bike and went to ride. Hooked up with Dave and his posse and had a great time. Picture is of Dave saving my place in the portapotti line.

Anyway, three miles into the ride, we get cut off by fire trucks and emergency vehicles and are told our route is closed due to an accident. There is much speculation about what has happened, but by the end of the ride we find out that there was a fatal car/bicycle crash and the victim was a guy that Dave and his buddies had ridden with only yesterday. The car didn't even bother to stop.
Sometimes I wonder about the quality (or lack therof) of people in this world. Thank God there are good folks riding cycles that I can interact with, but I'm so sorry that one of them is gone. I didn't know this gentleman, but still feel the loss.

The month from Hell is Over

2006-12-30T11:47:00.000-08:00

Holy cow, I can't believe I'm home, and I can't believe I survived this past month. I've been sitting on reserve, and the company has been whipping me like a rented mule the entire time.
Yesterday, I was going to exceed an FAA flight time limit, but the company informed me that since I was legal to start the day (by ONE MINUTE), I was legal to finish it, even if I went over the so-called "limits" because of weather or company idiocy delays. Anyway, the whole month has been pretty much like that. I had almost 99 hrs this month, and I usually only fly around 60. I feel like I've been rode hard and put away wet. Next month things go back to normal and I won't be the company's whipping boy any more.
These last four days were a pain in the butt. First day we got the crap kicked out of us back and forth between California and Las Vegas, and day two in Vegas was even worse. 45 mph winds can cause quite a bit of turbulence around those mountains.
So on day two we were waiting our turn for takeoff out of Vegas when a "Ted" airplane taxied by. You know Ted, "the end of United". Anyway, the captain tells me that those Ted airplanes were going to be flying to Europe. I said "Europe in those A320s?". He said, "Yep. They're going to call it FarTed." Cracked me up. We're an easy bunch, though. Seemed I was flying with the comedians this trip. Captain wanted coffee and the flight attendant asked how he liked it. He said he liked his coffee like he liked his women, and she replied "OH! I won't charge you for your coffee!".
When I got home, one of the first things I saw was my bicycle with about an inch of dust on it. Sad sight. No wonder I've had to let out my belt a notch this month. That and ten tons of cookies and candy.

Anyway, I'm glad to be home. Time to pop a bottle of wine.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

Made it home last night (early....woo hoo) around 10:30pm.
Today we're having my father in law over for Christmas dinner and presents. He has alzheimer's, so doesn't really remember what or when Christmas is. My husband bought presents for us from him and for him from us, and his dad will be all excited over the hoopla. I was going to buy myself some racy negligee and say it was from my father in law to see his face when I opened it. He wouldn't remember that he hadn't bought it, and I thought it would be kind of funny. Anyway.
Merry Christmas to everyone, especially those who have to work or are serving in the military far from home.
A special Merry Christmas to those in my airline family who are away from home this holiday. I've been there, eating beef jerky bought at a convenience store for Christmas dinner in some strange city where nothing near the hotel is open. It's much better being home, I'll tell ya!

Christmas Eve in Philadelphia

2006-12-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here it is Christmas Eve and I'm in Philadelphia. Got here last night and (hopefully) will leave tonight for home.
This hotel is no prize, what with lumpy beds and a toilet that ran constantly until I turned off the water valve at 5:30am, but it's located in the historic district with lots to see. Unfortunately, most everything is closed since it's Christmas Eve AND Sunday to boot.
There's a really great Cuban place a few blocks away that we went to last night for a drink and light dinner. I liked it so much that I went there for brunch today.
Not much else to say.....my creative well has dried up. Maybe I'll get some inspiration for Christmas.

Boise

2006-12-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

The company is trying to get me 100 hrs in this bus, so I'm working every day I'm available. The current trip I'm on is the kind of crappy stuff I'd never do if I had a line, but oh well. Right now I'm in Boise, ID after a long day yesterday. This is a four day trip with three hard days of flying and one day sitting in Boise. We're in a new hotel since the last time I was here, and this hotel is not really near anything. We arrived around midnight, got our room keys and made the 15 minute trek to our rooms, which are half a mile from the lobby. The carpets in our rooms had been shampooed that day and heaters were cranked to 90, perhaps to help dry the carpets faster. It stunk and the carpets were still wet, but we were all so tired we weren't going to walk back to the front desk and ask for new rooms. I opened the sliding door for a half hour before I went to bed to try to air out the room, then went to bed. Woke up a couple hours later and couldn't breath. Had a huge headache on top of it. Opened the door again and left it that way, but didn't go back to sleep.
I was not a happy camper when I went downstairs this morning to ask about van transportation or local busses to town. I was told neither were available and that it's a two mile walk to town. I was almost ready to walk away in disgust and go peruse the exciting gift shop, when the clerk offhandedly says, "Well, we do have bikes that airline crew can borrow". Come again? All of a sudden the sun came out! I grabbed one of the two motive mountain bikes and a lice ridden loaner helmet, and I was on my way, jeans and all. There's a great paved trail along the river here, so I rode to town, had a great breakfast and then rode the trail some more. I really wish I had brought my camera with me as I saw blue herons, loons, and many types of ducks. There weren't a lot of people on the trail since it's windy as hell and only 42 degrees out, but it beat sitting in my room sniffing fumes.
I'm hoping my room airs out a bit by tonight so I can sleep. This trip turns into an early morning thing with a 4:30 wakeup tomorrow, and we'll have a 1:30am (PHX) wakeup time in Atlanta for our early morning departure out of there Sunday. YIKES!

Bonus!

2006-12-10T14:08:00.000-08:00

When we were in range to Phoenix from Columbus this morning, I called to find out our arrival gate, then asked about the gate for our next flight. Our next flight had gotten an equipment change to a 737, so we were released when we got back to Phoenix! Got home five hours early! Nice! Was home with time to put up the Christmas tree, take an hour long bike ride, and watch football.

But lest you think I'm entirely happy, I'm not. I don't want to disappoint you who think (rightly so) that my glass is always half empty.
One of the biggest reasons I bid the airbus was to get in on the 32 hr layovers to my hometown of Pittsburgh. As I perused the January bid packet, I found that we don't even fly to Pittsburgh any more as of next month. I was ready to choke on my pilot pellets. Now what do I do? I guess there's always Sewerk or Filthydelphia.
ARGH!

Columbus

2006-12-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

This morning I had no sooner gotten out of bed when I got a call from scheduling, who said they had a two day trip for me going to Columbus. Scheduling "dropped the ball" (in their words) and forgot to call me with the requisite two hours notice, so they asked me to get to the airport as quickly as I could. I leisurely played on the computer at home, got a shower, ate some breakfast, watched TV a while, and then headed in. I actually got to the airport early, which really pissed me off.
Anyway, we got to Columbus on time, smooth flight and all. I was looking around for Drew Carey until I remembered that he's actually from Cleveland, also known as "The Mistake on the Lake". Home of the Cleveland CLowns, the city sits on a river that was so polluted it caught fire and burned for several days one year. Anyway, I'm not in Cleveland, I'm in Columbus, which is not nearly as exciting as Cleveland. It's the first new city I've seen since I've been on the bus. Whoopee.
We stay at an Amerisuites here, which is nicely located in who knows where, but there are plenty of restaurants around. The flight attendants and I went to a nice Italian chain restaurant next door for dinner. The captain bowed out because he hates me. We butted heads a few years back when we were both in union positions and I thought he was a company suck up and management ass kisser. I said quite a few unkindly things about him back then when he was pushing what eventually became our current (crappy) contract, and was quite shocked when I showed up at the airport to find out I was flying with him. Out of 500 airbus captains, this is the one I get. He's actually decent to fly with, but I think he'll stop short at socializing with me.
;-)
So anyway, Amerisuites hotels generally suck. I've been in brand new ones, and I think they get their mattresses at the Goodwill. They can't seem to buy sheets that fit said mattresses, and when you pull down the bedspread, all the bedclothes come right off the bed. I wish they'd just hand me the sheets when I check in since I have to remake the bed anyway.
The nice thing about Amerisuites is that they have free breakfast and USA Today newspapers in the morning. Flight crews LOVE free breakfast and newspapers. A pilot won't blink an eye at a fifty dollar bar bill, and he won't hesitate to spend $10 at Starbucks, but he'll be damned if you see him part with $.75 for a USA Today. He wants one nevertheless, and will get one somehow. Next time you're in the terminal, watch the pilots nonchalantly cruising the seats looking for abandoned papers. You see a pilot spot one, and he's on it like white on rice. The sad part comes when there are no abandoned papers and he must resort to dumpster diving. At an airport like Seattle where there are paper recycling receptacles, it's easy to find a paper. At other airports, it's more perilous. You never know what might be in that trash can with the paper. Sometimes a guy will pull up his prize to find it dripping with coffee or baby poop. You never know. Pilots live on the edge, though.
Tomorrow is Sunday so there's no USA Today anyway. I won't get home until afternoon, so I will miss all the football games. Thankfully my Steelers played already (although they were on the NFL network, which my hotel in SLC didn't get), and even though the Steelers suck this year, they still beat up on the Cleveland CLowns.

Salt Lake City

2006-12-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day on call after finishing IOE and training last Friday. I was sound asleep when scheduling called this morning to notify my that they'd given me a trip. I thought they said I was going to Philadelphia, so I was quite surprised when I pulled my schedule up on the computer and saw that I was flying one leg to Salt Lake City. My ears hear funny things when I'm half asleep. Anyway, here I am in Salt Lake. Last time I was here I flew up in a 737-200, and those birds have been gone for years. On that trip I went to the geaneology center to research my family tree. I found out that my family and I don't exist.

Salt Lake is an interesting city. People walking on the sidewalks talk to themselves quite a bit, so I decided I'd try it as well today. Me and myself had quite a lovely conversation, and next time I might invite I along as well. It was a nice sunny day in Salt Lake with no wind, which means there is thick brown air over the whole town. YUCK! That coupled with the elevation can give a person a headache. Only one thing can combat such a headache, and that's a glass of Polygamy Porter at Squatter's Pub (why have just one? is the slogan for the beer). Polygamy Porter reminds me of a guy I flew with a few years ago who has since retired. He used to live in Salt Lake next door to a man with four wives and a bunch of children. My friend always wondered what it would be like to have four wives and a lot of female children who all hit PMS around the same time. He said he couldn't imagine coming downstairs on a Sunday morning, just wanting a nice short stack of pancakes, and having a dozen angry women with their hands on their hips glaring at you. I used to watch "Big Love" on HBO, but they never really addressed that issue.
Maybe I should ask a local.

On the Road Again

2006-11-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

Got a call Saturday night to start my second IOE trip on Sunday morning, so here I am in Denver in the middle of a three day pairing. Today, as I sit in a hotel room, I realize that I spent every night of almost the last two months in my own bed. I don't think I've spent that many straight nights in one place since the late '80s. So now things are getting back to normal. I fell asleep to the sounds of people banging each other in the next room, and woke this morning to the same thing. I was tired enough to sleep through it though....yesterday was a hellaciously long day and I forgot how much this job really tires you out.

Funny thing, I bid the airbus to fly to new cities, and so far everywhere I've been assigned to fly to are the places I've been to (and used to avoid) on the 737. Minneapolis, Mexico City, Denver, Chicago. ARGH! Where's Costa Rica and Fort Lauderdale? Miami? I want to lay on the BEACH, not freeze my butt off.

Yesterday I had both my worst and best landings ever on the airbus (of all four total landings I've made). One really was awesome and one really did SUCK. I tried not to poke my head out of the cockpit after the latter. That was the last one of the night and I blame it on being tired. The flight attendants asked if we crashed and why they weren't forewarned.

I did have a first yesterday; my first cooked crew meal since I started airline flying. Most of the 737s didn't have ovens so we got rolled up lunchmeat or green cold chicken product, and there was no such thing as crew meals at my commuter airline.
Anyway, let me tell you about my cooked crew meal! I was waiting with such anticipation I was almost shaking! I opened the foil package and there it was! A stuffed shell, grilled chicken, and broccoli!! Wow! Just like mom used to make.

Of course, my mom is the worst cook in history.

Giving Thanks

2006-11-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all. Thanksgiving is a day to sit on your lazy butt and watch football and stuff food in your face. How is that different from any other day in my life, I wonder?
I do have some things to be thankful for....
Good health, good friends, good family, good job, nice home, some time off, great wealth (okay, strike that last....that was in my dreams).
And oh! Nice bike, too! All four of them. Got on the new one today and did about 29 miles, some of it with the club. Nice and cool outside.

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday and finds something to be thankful for.

Drivin' the Bus

2006-11-20T07:26:00.000-08:00

Did my first trip in the airbus on Saturday. The plane is a lot bigger than I thought it was, as I noticed when I did my walk around with the checkairman.
Going through training, the sims seemed to do a lot of funky stuff....warnings coming up about stuff that didn't exist, etc. Well, the real airplane does the same thing! Freaky electronic machine. We were flying one of the original, old planes, so maybe it had more quirks than most. One thing it DIDN'T have was a comfortable seat. My back and rear were killing me after eight hours in that thing. We used to complain of "Boeing Butt" in the 737, but that has nothing on "Airbus Butt".
I offered to fly the first leg, thinking I'd get my work over with, but ended up flying both legs. I will reserve judgement on the jet until I have more time in it......

Sunday I woke up feeling lousy. I suppose I finally have the tough stuff behind me and can relax, so all the stress of the past couple weeks is catching up. Got a few miles on the new Trek though. I think I have a few days off, and maybe I can get my body back to normal. Gotta lose the extra pounds I gained the past two months abusing junk food and such.

HAPPY DAY!

2006-11-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

I passed my A-320 type ride! WOO-HOO!
Happy days are here again!
I was hoping to ride in El Tour de Tucson tomorrow, but scheduling has my number and is sending me to balmy Minneapolis tomorrow. Ah well. Can't dampen my spirits today!
800 lb gorilla is off my chest and I can breathe again!

Still Crabby After all These Years

2006-11-16T06:48:00.000-08:00

I believe that was a popular song in the 70s, no?

Anyway, I'm crabby for the following reasons:

1) I take my checkride tomorrow. They already have me scheduled for a trip the next day. When do I celebrate? And what if I don't pass? However, because "they" (company) says I'm not projected to finish training by the 26th, I wasn't allowed to bid for December. This means the company builds me a reserve line of their choosing (meaning I sit by a phone and get all the crap trips everyone calls in sick for) and I have no input to days off or anything. This ticks me off since I'm senior enough to hold all the holidays off.

2) Vacation bid awards for next year came out yesterday. I was awarded some funky weeks in February, while junior pilots have the weeks I bid for. I'm not sure if this happened because I'm changing equipment or whatever, but it has me royally ticked off. I bid the week for RAGBRAI and will have to figure out an alternate plan.

3) Our company made a bid for another bankrupt airline and we haven't even finished merging with the first bankrupt airline. Pilots from the first bankrupt airline, who would have been on the streets in three weeks if we hadn't bought them, are trying to take our jobs and put us out of work. Now we'll have a whole new group to fight with. Great. I think the CEO wants to be king of the biggest airline in the world. And he just might do it. So I hired on with a nice little "hometown" airline, and I might (if I keep my job) be working for some kind of world dominant carrier. Mind-boggling. And unsettling. If I don't keep my job, I'll be fighting with thousands of other displaced pilots for the few greeter jobs left at Wal-Mart.

Okay, rant over. Back to my normally scheduled sarcasm.