The New World

Tonight I am in Albuquerque, land of enchantment, or as the conquistadors called it, The New World. On the approach into the Albuquerque area I saw a tall spire of rock that cast a precise and long shadow. It had to be known to the natives who lived here centuries ago. It looked like a huge sundial. It is truly beautiful here. As a child growing up in New Mexico, Albuquerque was a small, dusty New Mexico dent in the road. Amazing!

I have a forty-four year old female co-pilot. She is very pleasant to be around and a darn good pilot. This trip is going to be OK. More later...

Back to the Past

Main gear touchdown in Kansas City right on schedule with 117 passengers. I used to live in Kansas City when I was flying for another airline. I also used to fly freight out of Kansas City to points west. This place is one of the stormiest places on earth for an aviator, but tonight the weather was beautiful with light winds. Out my hotel window I can see my old apartment building where I lived many years ago stationed in Kansas City. My, how fast life passes.

Orange County

This is one of my favorite overnights. The runway at the airport is very short and requires a maximum stopping effort which is fun. The terminal building is small and never too crowded. Our hotel facilities are excellent. Last night I strolled down to the Corner Office, one of my favorite watering holes. The weather was cool and ocean air humid. I feel like I'm getting recharged. Yesterday, flying from Seattle to Phoenix my co-pilot became ill with stomach flu, I think. He made several trips to the bathroom. In Phoenix a replacement co-pilot showed up. I could sense that the replacement was nervous about me; did I throw the other guy out of the cockpit? He was relieved when I told him it was illness. I remember those days of being a new guy worried about the Captain. Is he an a-hole?

Being a major airline pilot is probably one of the top jobs in the world. It is similar to being in the NFL, in as much as it pays well and you never know when your last trip might be. A health issue which is no big deal to a ground bound job will end a pilot's career. A small nuclear weapon detonated in Manhattan or a suicide attack in a large shopping mall and the airline business, as we know it, is done. No job security at all. This is very frustrating for a large percentage of pilots. Myself, I have learned to live with it. I keep my weight under control with a low calorie diet. I exercise at least five days a week. The most important, though, keep debt under control. If you live like a king but there is no gold in the palace coffers to pay for job loss, then of course, one has a problem.

Nor Cal

Not a dieters term; but Northern California approach control. I escaped the frying pan to fly to San Jose for a few hours. It was beautiful, cool, and smelled of the ocean. Ah, relief. It is burning hot in Phoenix these days. My poor little plants are starting to suffer under the onslaught of heat. Our yard cat spends most of the daylight hours behind the air conditioning air handler. For eight years I have watched this cat deal with the seasonal changes. It is amazing how well she adjusts. She is a once feral cat that my wife started feeding; after that, veterinary care. Then, it was cat trees, cat houses, cat toys, special cat food and on it goes.

Back to 390...I am preparing for work in Seattle; nice cool Seattle. I see that Phoenix is under a cloud of hot, blowing dust and pollution. Sounds like the surface of Venus. We are doing a quick turn into Phoenix and then on to Orange County. That will be So Cal!

Sitting at my little hotel desk reading the paper, USSR Today, and watching cable TV news, Chinese News Network, it is readily apparent that our nation is split down ideological lines. Should we split the country into separate nations? Could we do this without civil war? Many questions...

Mayberry

Arrived one hour late in North Carolina; Andy Griffith country. The weather is foggy and very high humidity. We originated in LAX, but our inbound plane was one and a half hours late. We could not make up that much time. The flight took us to Las Vegas, then on to Raleigh-Durham. There was mucho big weather in the midwestern states. This has been a rough spring for aviators; more than a month of storms in the midwest. I know the farmers need the rain, though.

Nothing like waking up to sicko news from the middle east. Unbelievable!! Those folks over there working for big money are taking big chances, obviously. I wish I had a crystal ball to see into the future of this area. Will it be the four horseman of the apocalypse or will western television win the day as it did in the old Soviet Union? It is only too easy to scream for B-52 sponsored revenge. The media coverage on this issue is quite revealing. They are surrounding the home of the victim like a pack of jackals. If the world does descend into the toilet of hatred, the average American citizen will be shocked at how soft bellied America is, both physically and mentally.

Canadian Airspace

It is fifty minutes after midnight in the city of angels. I just completed a transcontinental flight from New York City. Due to weather, we were re-routed into Canadian airspace. Re-entry into U.S. airspace was in the Detroit area. It was a marathon cross continent flight "against the wind." The company requested that I check the auto-land equipment at our LAX landing. We use this system to land in very low visibility conditions. The auto-land system rarely makes a smooth landing; instead the aircraft usually plops onto the runway like a drunk goose. It's kind of embarrassing...but, they do sign my paychecks. Luckily, this particular aircraft's autoland system worked like a charm as it plopped onto the runway softly.

There is a lot to do here in Los Angeles. Where to start? My report time isn't until tonight. We are scheduled to fly to Las Vegas, then on to North Carolina for a sunrise arrival. More later...

I went to see the movie "Chronicles of Riddick." I would rate it five out of ten stars. Entertaining, but forgettable. It had the potential to be great, but fell short.

JFK late

A week has passed since last blog entry. My lovely wife and I traveled twelve hours each way by automobile to visit my father in northern New Mexico. We try to get out there twice a year. He is a real cowboy still working at seventy-seven years old. He and his friends are in a totally different universe than I. It is refreshing to see people who have not been overrun by the rat race. Hang in there guys!

Last night (day one of a four day trip) we departed the frying pan of the nation for New York's JFK airport. Weather was OK. One of my flight attendants lost a filling while eating a cacker. She is in agony. We are trying to find a dentist for a temp filling before the flight to LAX tonight. More later...

Later...went across the street to Bally's for a quick workout. A gym in a working class Long Island neighborhood is vastly different than the silicon breast showcase that I belong to in Phoenix. We did find a dentist to repair the flight attendant's toothache.

The humidity today is oppressive. All my clothes are damp. Thunderstorms are probably brewing west of New York City. Hopefully no delays tonight.

Nikon 8700

I bought my first digital camera last week. Initial impressions are: Why did it take me so long to go digital? This camera is great! It is small, light and easy to pack in my overnight bag. The photos are amazing; crisp and clear even at low resolution. The optical/digital zoom feature is really handy. No more shooting photos only to wait for the results. I know this reads like a commercial for Nikon, but I am impressed!

OK, back to Flight Level 390...this morning we landed at Washington Dulles airport about twelve minutes late. We had no tailwind eastbound. The visibility went south when we were about twenty miles from the airport. We quickly prepared for a low vis approach to runway 1R. At minimum descent altitude we saw the runway; Whew! We had been flying since 6:00 P.M. the previous day and were tired. The thought of going to our alternate (Philadelphia) was not palatable. The company would want us to refuel and try it again. Tonight, we are going to Las Vegas and Reno. Later...

Canada

Well, here I am back on the airways after three days at home with my honey. She had a little bit of surgery on her nose to cut out cancer. Thankfully, I was home to help her with this matter. As a youth, she would mix baby oil and iodine; then lay under the sun for hours. It is catching up to her now.

My travels took me to Vancouver, Canada on this four day trip. Nice folks up there and nice weather in the summertime. I noticed their customs agents wear body armor, but have no weapons. Hmmm? Take one for the state but don't fire back. Strange times we live in; PC run amok. We were assigned a brand new aircraft. It was tight and powerful. Very nice!! The First Officer showed me something interesting. While he was pre- flighting he discovered our new aircraft had been bound for another airline which is now teetering on the edge of the abyss. You could see traces of the first paint job in a few places on the fuselage.

I have been a bad boy for about three days. I call it alpha behavior, i.e., not taking care of one's self. Eating too much and the wrong kind of foods/poor sleep habits/no exercise, etc. I mounted the treadmill in Las Vegas today and could not perform to my minimum standards. This is risky business for a middle aged airline pilot. I know better, too.

Maximus

Ronald Reagan is gone. He was surely one of the great presidents of this country. Maximus, go home...

Texas weather

En route to Dallas-Ft. Worth our dispatcher sent us a message saying he had notified Austin that we would probably be diverting to their station. He gave us the latest DFW weather and ended the message by wishing us "good luck." The weather was ugly; black bellied thunderstorms north of the field. We arrived into DFW airspace on schedule. The weather was truly bad; tornadic super cells bearing down on the field from the north. I received clearance for a short approach; gear down/flaps three/wing spoilers full up and hang on... we landed a few minutes ahead of the storms. The squall line hit with Texas ferocity; blowing dirt and horizontal rain. Thankfully no hail struck our area. We loaded 150 new passengers and taxied to the runway. After a 1 hr. 38 min. weather delay we blasted off for Phoenix. We weaved our way between thunderstorms for 150 miles; finally clear weather ahead. Both of us were exhausted at Phoenix. Later, a flight attendant told me three passengers were bitching because of the weather delay(the worst airline they had ever flown/bad pilots, etc.) Victims of public education...after all, we are required to tell them the flight deck is located in front of the airplane during our briefing.

Capella

May 2004 is gone forever. June met us at 33,000 feet over New Mexico. We were enroute to North Carolina flying a red eye. With a little help from tailwinds, our groundspeed was over 600 mph all the way across our country. Capella, a blue-white giant star, was visible on the northeastern horizon in the morning twilight. What an amazing sight! Twilight is a very interesting phenomenon. We arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule. Tired pilot must sleep...later...
Five hours later I am up drinking nasty coffee and watching nastier news. It's hard to keep politics out of my blog! I must find a treadmill and attack it. Tonight, we go to Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Personal note: My little wife is back from Spain. Yeah! Without her, a house is only an empty house, not a home.
I observed an all to familiar phenomenon while eating lunch today. I walked to a beautiful mall in Morrisville, N.C. The only patrons were a few techno types, with their families, from India. These folks were well dressed and obviously commanded good salaries. Probably employees of a recently built high tech operation wooed into the area by the chamber of commerce. No locals with wife beater t-shirts or Bud ball caps. The mall was a ghost town. One could hear a pin drop; maybe three people eating in the food court. I theorize there is not much discretionary income in this area of the country. The financial landscape for much of the U.S. population is changing rapidly. Time to saddle up for this night's flying.