No excuse

I really have no excuse not to blog more often. I commute in an airplane seat over four hours each way to Chicago, and soon it'll be over five (or six!) hours to JFK. I have a laptop, and have all that time to write something down. So that's what I'm doing now. "Cruising at an altitude of 37,000 feet, the captain has turned off the seatbelt sign." But I'm in my seat, where my ass will be parked for the whole flight. This plane is too small to be walking around and bumping into people.

I just finished a trip out of Dallas that I picked up as open time. I've learned how to be sneaky with my reserve schedule since I wasn't getting much flying. I drop the days I have on reserve (they allow me to drop the day, but it reduces my pay guarantee by a pro-rated day rate) and then find open trips to fly as "make-up time." This makes up for the reduction in pay, and gives me an actual schedule of flying. A neat way to circumvent sitting on my ass all day waiting to get called to fly. This way I can effectively build my own schedule out of open trips and not lose out on much pay, if any.

Since I'm based in Chicago I usually stash my flight kit bag (with all my manuals and navigation charts) in the pilot bag room at O'hare. I remembered this on Saturday morning when I woke up, and realized I had to fly to Chicago to pick it up before beginning my trip out of DFW! Damn. I flew to Chicago, slept the night at my brother's, then flew to DFW Sunday morning to START work. Oh well. It beats sitting around waiting for a call that never comes.

So I had layovers in Abilene, TX, and Fort Walton Beach, FL. The Fort Walton Beach overnight was nice and long-- we arrived at 3:30pm and had the rest of the day and night free. The hotel is on the beach, and I could sit on my room balcony looking out at the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn't terribly warm out, but beautiful nonetheless. The captain and flight attendant and I met at 4:30 and walked down the street to a pizza joint called Helen Back. We sat on their back deck, over the water on the intercoastal waterway. Boaters can dock their boats and walk into the bar. Awesome. Had a few beers and some yummy pizza, then walked back. I took a stroll on the beach for a few minutes, then went down to the jacuzzi and relaxed. I absolutely love the ocean-- any water, really-- because the sound of the waves is just so relaxing. It's unbelievable how just the sound of water can completely clear my head and put me at ease. Needless to say, I slept with the balcony door open so I could hear the waves crashing on the beach.

I think my next coupe blogs will be about things that annoy me in the industry -- mostly stupid people -- or just make me laugh, so look out for that!