So, I am going, like so many old people, south for the winter. Naturally, being a type A personality, I'm going all the way south.
So, no moderating, or snide advice (which will delight many of you, I'm sure
), I'm off to go fly. A lot.Some sage elder in the far east once said the the longest journey begins with that first, small step. Bullsh*t! It begins with an enormous stack of paperwork. Ferry permits, overflight permits, ceretificates of qualification, authorization to export technology, re-weights, amended W&Bals... fortunately, all I had to do was show up, throw my junk in the plane, and go. Or so I thought...
In any event, we are enroute. I say "we" with some conviction, since the prep work by engineers, and admin staff to garner the 300,000 permissions and approvals is mind-boggling. But they did, and we are underway.
Fortunately, the petty details like my training, ride, dental work, oh, and finding my luggage
filled the time between rolling into the big city, and launching at an obscenely early time.Having served as the referring party to a number of former FO's for AC, Jazz, Cathay, and WestJet, I daresay that had I been interested, I could have aced the interview, and gone on to do different things. But- I discovered this week that there are apparently TWO 4 O'clocks in every day! Good God! Nossir, it's the easy life of the five O'clock Tuk sked for me!
We enjoy the modern-day airline life for the next week. Thermos full of Timmies; locked in the seat for a 14 hour day, and grooming the aircraft at the end of the day.
It would of course, be far easier to drive this little guy in terminal D, and at least be close to a Starbucks.
The flight down runs the gammut from fun to frustrating and fatiguing all in the same ten minutes, and starts up again the next morning at a really inconvenient hour.
Okat, yeah, not everyone gets to go... but the hours are long, and most of us going already have one of those pesky ATPLs, so it's not like we're trying to build the time. It is, if you are an old married guy (and I am), an astonishingly long way away from home.
I think for almost all of us, that we have gone down just for the hero shot that some clever 12 year-old could have photoshopped for us, but over the years the reasons change.
As we travel along, I will try to explain what it is that drives us to it, and some of the things we have to do to accomplish it, but now, I'm just gonna sleep. And not check my PMs.
Later,
JC
