Musings from the Field

London Swansong?

2012-02-13T22:58:00.000-06:00

After a hiatus of several months I was able to get a London trip. Kind of bittersweet because with the changes coming down the pipeline at work, I probably won't be getting back there as often as I used to.

I was flying with a pretty "senior" crew but they were nice enough and there wasn't really any drama on the way over. We were very light, which made it an easy trip.

Once we finally made it to the hotel (the Hammersmith flyover is under construction making the ride in a bit longer), I made my way over to Sainsbury's to stock up on a bunch of my UK products I can't possibly live with out (since who knows when I am going back). Ladyfriend is also a fan so I bought several bottles of shower gel and got a few cans of shaving cream.

I tried to get some Paracetemol with Codeine for my friend Bruce, but apparently now you can't buy it over the counter anymore. The damned addicts ruin everything!!!!

I was torn about what I wanted to do on my layover. I was thinking of taking the train out to see my college friends Amanda and Aaron and their wonderful dog Wolfie, but snow was expected in the evening and I was worried about making it back into town.

I decided to stay in the city, and when I woke up from my nap, I headed over to St. Paul's for their 5pm Evensong service. I just love the "high church" experience and the building is so wonderfully designed for the music from the choir. I hadn't been to St. Paul's since the whole "Occupy" movement started. The last time I was there, the movement has just begun and all the protestors camped out around the cathedral had caused quit a controversy. Several of the clergy resigned over the issue. This had settled down a bit. I would say that the size of the group is now about half as big as it used to be. I am sure the temperatures have not helped. The weather was brutally cold.

One thing that I noticed this time was that Paternoster Square, the area adjacent to St. Paul's, is now blocked off and you can only enter and leave thru designated alleys. I guess the stores around the area were afraid of potential disruptions from protestors.

After the service, I made my way over to Yo! Sushi for some dinner. Since I have the new iPhone 4S, I can shoot video, so I got a little shot of the conveyor belt with all the dishes going around.

I had been toying with the idea of seeing Backbeat, a new musical that just opened about the Beatles and their early years in Germany as a cover band. But part of me still wanted to see Warhorse, the Tony-award winning play about a boy and his horse in WWI. I had tried numerous times to try and get a seat for the play, but it's perpetually sold out. For some reason, I was feeling lucky, so I blew off Backbeat and made my way over to the National Theatre in Covent Garden to see if I could get in. I waited about 30 minutes (in the falling snow nonetheless) and they started clearing the line with return seats. I was next to go and the gentleman came out and I was sure he was going to tell me that I had a seat, but instead he told me that they had no more returns and the theatre was full.

I hung my heard in sadness and started to make my way back to the hotel. It was cold, but I was well covered with my P-coat, gloves, and my woolen cap from Iceland. I ended up walking the entire way back to the hotel and enjoyed the falling snow.

I ended up running into my friend Kathy, who is Raleigh based, in the crew room, and enjoyed chatting with her for a bit before turning in for the night.

The flight home was full, but people were surprisingly friendly. We flew a very northern route coming home and we ended up passing just south of Akureyri in Northern Iceland. It made me think of my wonderful vacation there in October.

До побачення!

2012-01-12T11:44:00.000-06:00

This is how you say Goodbye in Ukrainian! (I have not the slightest idea how to pronounce it) but I thought it would be an appropriate title for this post. Last month I brought 87 children to the United States from Kiev, Ukraine to spend Christmas with host families in America. Now it was time for these sweet orphans to head home.

Initially they had planned to send me all the way back to Kiev, but we realized it was going to be a lot less expensive if I just took the three girls that I brought to Dallas back to New York, where they would reunite with the rest of the kids and their chaperones before continuing their journey.

I met the Franklin and Atchley families at the Delta counter an hour and a half before our departure. We were able to check their bags all the way to Kiev, so we would not have to mess with it in New York. The Delta agent also gave gate passes to everyone so that we could all go to the departure lounge and visit a little longer before boarding the plane.

It's always a sad time for the kids and the families. The Atchleys and the Franklins had hosted these same kids previously, so there is already a strong bond!

When they announced the call for final boarding, it was time to say goodbye. The girls remained strong though and we made our way down to the plane. It was booked very light, which gave our little regional jet the feeling of being a little bigger.

We had a fast and easy trip up to New York. They were all fascinated with my Nook e-reader and were pretty good at reading the english, even if they did not always understand!

After we arrived in New York I was supposed to be met by another flight attendant who would take the girls over to Terminal 4 to the Aerosvit ticket counter, but no one was there. Turns out there was some problems with another group connecting from Charlotte and so they were trying to handle that. I got them over to Terminal 4 and made the hand off and hauled ass over to Terminal 8 to try and catch a 4pm departure on my airline back to DFW.

I made it just in time and settled into my seat, thinking I could relax and enjoy my 50% discount off wireless internet, but got an email that one of the escorts returning to Dallas with me had forgotten to hand over the passport for the child she escorted. Thank goodness we had wifi onboard. After working thru various scenarios, we figured out we could ship the passport via my airline's cargo division and get it back to New York the next morning. The child and her Ukrainian chaperone would travel the next afternoon, so it all worked out in the end!

Catching up.....

2012-01-11T22:43:00.000-06:00

I found myself pretty busy thru most of December so now that I am sitting reserve in January, I thought I would try to catch up on my mundane existence.

Some of the highlights from December included a rather "different" looking woman we had in First Class coming home from Maui. This was a once in a lifetime passenger for sure, and I made sure to only capture her back to preserve her anonymity. It's not every day someone wears curlers on the airplane! This photo was quite the hit on Facebook!

I also tried Loco Moco for the first time at the Kihei Cafe down the street from our hotel. It's a weird breakfast item, with a beef patty, eggs, rice, and brown gravy. It was wonderful!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day found me in Panama City. It's a quick trip, with a short layover, but we tried to make the best of it. We all planned to bring food, so the day of the trip we had turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, and dessert! I went above and beyond and also put together little gift boxes for my crew (even the pilots!... what can I say, it was the holidays and I was feeling generous!).

Our take off out of Panama on Christmas Day had us flying from one end of the country to another and we got some pretty neat views of the Panama Canal as we climbed out!

January 1st marks the beginning of my reserve month. Not a fun time, but it goes with the punches. So far, I've only flown one trip. I got called out for Madrid. I had all these wonderful plans to go to the Observation Tower at the main post office on Castellana and then hit the museums, but we had a man who brought his own portable oxygen concentrator and about three hours into the flight it malfunctioned. We had to divert to JFK because the man could not be off of oxygen for more than a few minutes without going into distress. By the time we took off again, we were several hours behind schedule and ended up landing in Madrid around 1pm and after nap time it was going to be too late to do anything.

Surprisingly, not one of the passengers complained to me about the delay. The majority of the passengers were students going over to study for the semester. It made me feel a bit old because I realized that it was about 15 years ago that I was in their shoes, going to Spain to study abroad! It's a good thing I color my hair because these "moments" that remind me of my age are probably causing more and more gray!

My friend Catherine was on the trip, so we met up around 8pm and walked down to Puerta de Sol and the Plaza Mayor trying to look for a restaurant that a couple on the plane had told me about, but we never could find it. We did walk several miles though, which was my only source of exercise for the day. We never could find a place that really jumped out at us for dinner, so we ended up taking the metro over to Principe Pio so we could eat at Casa Mingo, a Cider house with great Asturian cuisine. I first ate there when I studied abroad and you can't go wrong with their food!

The only pictures I snapped were the next morning from the back door of our plane. The airport was pretty quiet that day because Iberia pilots had gone on strike. It was a pretty day as you can see... not a cloud in the sky!

Ukrainian Orphan Airlift

2011-12-16T00:09:00.000-06:00

This past week I had an opportunity to participate in another Orphan Airlift for New Horizons For Children (NHFC). In June I participated in their summer airlift and brought a group of Latvian children from Riga to the United States. This time around I would be escorting 87 children and 11 Ukrainian chaperones from Kyiv (Kiev) to JFK Airport in New York. From there, the groups would fly on to different cities around the country, and I would take three girls from JFK on to DFW.

I left the states on Sunday afternoon and flew to Chicago and then on to Paris. I had an A-12, my airline's version of a confirmed seat for employees, and was able to upgrade on both flights, which was nice. We arrived into Paris right on time and the only hiccup was a terminal closing due to a bomb threat, so I took a shuttle bus around the entire airport to get over to 2B and my departure on Ukrainian International Airlines. The flight from Paris to Kyiv was about 3 hours, but I slept thru most of it.

I arrived into Kyiv around 2:30pm and had a driver pick me up at the airport and take me into the city. NHFC booked me into an apartment, which was nice, although a little more than I needed for a one night stay. It was fully furnished and even had a collection of Ukrainian Playboy Magazines!

The location was great, just off of Maidan Nezalezhosti, or Independence Square, the sight of protests during the Orange Revolution in 2004. After meeting the manager at the apartment, I had to go across town and pay for it since he didn't have a credit card reader on him. The traffic was terrible so by the time I got back to the flat it was dark, but I still went out in the blustery cold weather and walked around the Square. I "think" I was propositioned by a Ukrainian prostitute, because she was dressed provocatively in spikey high heel boots and a tight skirt, but after thinking about it, most of the women there are into heels, so she could have just been asking me if I had seen her lost cat.

I was getting pretty hungry, so I wandered around the corner from my flat to a place called Walter's that I passed on the ride into the city. I had a spinach and ricotta cheese pizza and a big ice cold glass of Ukrainian beer. I have no idea what it was called.

By this point, I was brain dead and tired, so I made it back to the flat and went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night wide awake and never really did go back to sleep.

I checked my email and learned that 5 children were denied travel because the government official who authorizes the trip was out sick. Additionally, 10 kids were denied a VISA into the US, so they were going to make a last ditch effort the next morning to see if they could get them issued in time.

By 6am I was starving again, so I showered up and got packed and then walked down to the McDonald's at Independence Square, however, they don't open until 8:00am! I think it's the only Mickey D's that isn't open early for breakfast. I went back at 8 and gobbled down an Egg McMuffin and hash browns! Whereas it was cold and dry the day before, it was now cold and wet.

At 8:30, I was picked up by Natasha and Tetiana (Tanya) and we made our way to the airport. They are translators with the Ukrainian charity that partners with NHFC. Tanya would be coming on the flight as a chaperone and also one of the three who would speak English.

The children started arriving in groups shortly after we made it to the airport. Some had come all night via train.

We were traveling on Aerosvit, a Ukrainian airline. We asked for assistance in checking in the kids, and at first they were reluctant. Once they saw how big our group was and that we would be half the airplane, they worked with us and started checking us in for the flight in groups.

For many of the kids, this would be their first airplane ride!

I sat across from these two kids: Mariya and Andrii, ages 7 and 13. They are brother and sister and live together in an orphanage. I was really touched by how protective Andrii was of his sister. It hit me that they were all they had in this world and that at 13, Andrii was head of their little family. What a hard reality to face at that age!

The kids were very excited and I have to give credit to the cabin crew for doing a great job of helping them all find their seats. And we were very happy to see the final 10 children board at the last minute. A U.S. congressman made a call to the embassy in Kiev and had the VISA's issued. A courier rushed them over to the airport and the kids made check in with 5 minutes to spare! Talk about answered prayers!

Unfortunately, Aerosvit is not set up to provide movies or music, so the kids really had no entertainment on our 10 and a half hour flight to New York. They handled it pretty well for the most part. I thought they would eventually fall asleep, but every child took black coffee when the crew came by with after dinner drinks, so they were wired the whole time. The girls sitting in front of me kept reading me phrases from the Ukrainian/English phrase book! It was published during the old Soviet Union days and had funny sayings like "The Soviets are show the world how to use the atom for peace"!

I sat next to Tanya, our translator. We had to complete a customs form and an I-94 immigration form for each child and chaperone, about 100 in total. We started after the first meal service (if you could call it a meal) and it took us about seven and a half hours to fill all the forms out. I had nothing else to do, so it helped pass the time. My hand was pretty cramped by the end of the trip.

Our arrival into JFK was pretty chaotic. We had some kids with tight connections and some issues with luggage not being checked all the way thru. Everyone made their connections except for two groups going to Charlotte and Cincinnati. They just did not have enough time. Once my Dallas group was ready, we headed over to the Delta terminal. I had three girls, two sisters, Olena and Kateryna, and another girl, Mariya (or Masha). I also had the Washington group with me, and helped them get thru security. The kids were super excited to ride the Airtrans from Terminal 4 to 3! Tetiana, another of the chaperone's was exhausted and terrified as it was her first time outside Ukraine. She looks less than thrilled!

We had a minor issue on our flight to Dallas. Due to headwinds, the plane was going to have to make a fuel stop in Nashville, but we ended up only being about 20 minutes late, arriving around 11:30pm. I got the girls to pose for one last photo with the host families.

They'll be here for a month and then I will take them back to New York where they will meet up with everyone else and fly home to Ukraine.

Punta Cana

2011-12-03T19:30:00.000-06:00

The month of November also took me on a trip to a new city, Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic. There isn't much there but all-inclusive beach resorts and our layover hotel was one of them.

We arrived just as the restaurants were closing and we quick changed and ran down to try to start enjoy our all inclusive meals, but they shot us down. We ended up going to the lobby bar and enjoyed a few rounds of drinks until we closed that place down.

By this time we were starving and the only place we could get food was the all inclusive 24 hour room service. We grabbed all the complimentary waters and beers in the mini fridges from everyone's room and headed to my room, the in Preferred Club section. It wasn't any different except for the hot tub on the balcony.

We ordered two of everything from the room service menu and by the time the food arrived we were ravinous.

We did not leave until the next afternoon so we all met up at the beach and enjoyed some of the nice weather. I stayed under the covered hut and read my book.

Not a bad way to spend a layover, for sure!

Avila

2011-12-02T12:38:00.001-06:00

Catching up with blogging from 39K feet as I deadhead from Dallas to JFK. We get 50% off the inflight internet rate, so I thought I would give it a try.... Gotta say, it's pretty cool (even if we are bankrupt).

Last month I had a two day layover in Madrid. During the low season, the flight only operates five days a week so two trips per week have a longer layover. I was fortunate to get to fly the trip with several of my friends.

After a little power napping upon our arrival, we all met up for tapas and dinner. We made our way down to a tapas bar I had been too the week before called La Discubierta. It sits right across the street from a brothel. We call the entrance the "Hooker Door".

They have calamari that is incredible as well as "papas con dos salsas", potatoes with two sauces. One sauce is a creamy garlic aoili and the other is a spicey tomato sauce.

Our food journey continued at the Mercado San Miguel, an old converted wharehouse off the Plaza Mayor that now houses different food and drink stalls. I had some delightful sangria!

The eating continued at Casa Mingo, an Asturian restaurant I have visited many times. We enjoyed a lovely meal of pollo asado, tortilla, sidra, and a regional dessert called Tarta de Santiago.

The next morning it was up at the crack of down to catch the train to Avila. We left out of the Charmartin train station.

It was pretty early in the morning and some of us fell back asleep.

We arrived into Avila in the late morning. I decided to wake up with a chocolate covered churro.

It's a sleeply little town known for it's medieval castle walls that surround the old city. Work on the walls began in 1090. The city rose to the height of prominence under the Catholic monarchs in the 16th century, but had entered an era of decline starting in the 18th century. Today about half of the walls have been restored and reinfoced so as to allow visitors a chance to walk around the perimeter.

Santa Teresa of Avila is the patron saint of the town. She was a Carmelite nun who also was a reformer of the church and a dabbler in mysticism.

The total distance of the wall is 2,516 meters and covers 31 hectares of land. The wall is 3 meters thick. There are 88 semi-circular towers along the wall and 2,500 merlons, or little parapets that stick out of the top of the wall.

It was a rather chilly day but at least it was sunny and the weather cooperated. We enjoyed a lunch at a restaurant called Barbacana. We originally went upstairs but realized we were in the expensive section so we went downstairs and ate at the bar like the lowly commoners that we were.

By the time we got back to Madrid the wind had pretty much gone out of our sails. We had all planned to go to dinner together, but by the time we got back to the hotel, I could barely manage to walk into the room before collapsing. Too tired!

But all in all a fun trip and a nice change of scenery with good friends.

My Beach Week

2011-11-13T22:18:00.001-06:00

Just in time for the cold weather, I had a week of fun in the sun. My week began with a trip that had a long layover in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I had never been there before. It was a beautiful island and our hotel was right on the beach. I had a wonderful view while I was eating breakfast!

The layover was long enough to allow me a chance to walk around the property and enjoy some of the warm weather.

We spent the second night in Miami and while I was on that layover, I was able to pick up a Maui trip for later in the week. The week started at one beach and ended 5,900 miles away at another.

In Maui, I was lucky enough to connect with some of my frequent travelers that I have had on my previous Maui flights. A while back I had a nice lady named Lisa and her partner Debbie on my flight. While chatting, Lisa and I discovered that we were both big Words With Friends addicts, so we started playing Scrabble together. Lisa always said to let them know when I would be back on the Island and they would show me around. When I told her I was coming, they immediately offered to come and take me to dinner, as their guest. We went to Mama's Fish House, probably the nicest restaurant on Maui. I had Ahi Steak for dinner that was out of this world!

So while everyone was freezing in the colder weather at home, I was enjoying some warmer climes and getting to know new friends!

Occupy London

2011-11-13T21:46:00.001-06:00

My first trip back after vacation was a London trip. I needed to go to the Olympic store and get a few things and I was hoping to go to St. Paul's Cathedral. They were having a service commemorating the 150th anniversary of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Because of the Occupy Movement, St. Paul's was closed to services and the service had been moved to Southwark Cathedral. After we got what we needed at the St. Pancras station Olympic Store, we headed over to St. Paul's to see the protestors.

The whole set up was very clean and organized. The tents were very orderly and there was designated fire lanes, a library, a prayer tent.

After our visit with the protestors, we made our way over the Thames and down to Southwark Cathedral for the service.

While not as big as St. Paul's, the cathedral was still impressive and the music for the service was wonderful!

We tried to get in to see War Horse, but after waiting in the return queue, we did not have any luck so we went over to Covent Garden for a pub dinner. It was a nice evening. The next day, Melissa and I were the talk of the crew with our spiffy London 2012 Olympic Lanyards!

Spelunking and the Blue Lagoon

2011-11-13T20:39:00.001-06:00

We left Sellfoss early the next morning and made our way back to Reykjavík. Along the way we stopped at a greenhouse where we learned a little bit about the Icelandic flower industry from Axel, who's family runs the business. It was kind of interesting to learn how they have used the greenhouses and artificial light to turn it into a year round growing season.

On our way back to Reykjavík, we stopped at a pseudo crater who's name I cannot recall, but I did get a photo with Steini and our Viking caps. Original Viking hats did not have the horns sticking out of the side like we imagine. That was a 19th century invention for the opera.

Once back at Reykjavík, we had the afternoon to go around town and do a little last minute gift shopping.

Marty had a little shoe malfunction when the sole of her boot started to come apart. The hotel in Sellfoss had tried to tape it back together for her, but with the rainy afternoon in Reykjavík it started to come apart. We stopped at an art supply shop to buy some heavy duty tape, and Stu performed the necessary repair.

While our intentions were good, the tape only stayed on about 20 minutes. At that point, it was really starting to rain so we made our way to the original Ice Bar, to drink some Brennivín in a sub zero room, but when we got their we learned that the bar had "melted" a few weeks before at the end of the high season for tourists.

Our alternative was an English pub that was playing Beatles music. We left Stu and Marty there and went and did some more shopping. We wanted to explore the possible venues for the Iceland Airwaves concerts, but all the "name" bands required a ticket.

We ate dinner at unique little diner called The Laundromat Cafe. I had some chile con carne that was out of this world! After making our way back in the rain, we soaked to the bone as you can see.

Because of the colder temps, there was not more white water rafting excursions after September, so we went to the Blue Mountains to go spelunking instead.

After signing all the necessary legal wavers, our guides took us down into a hollowed lava tube known as the "End of the Road Cave". We only went about 10 to 15 meters below the surface during our hour long tour as the lava tubes do not sit that far down below ground.

The cave gets it's name because of the dead end of the lava tube. At the end of the cave are the remains of a baby sheep that probably wandered into the cave or was chased in by a predator, and was trapped. They estimate the remains are several hundred years old.

The spelunking was a bit stressful for me, with it's small closed-in environment. After the traumatic experience, what better way to unwind than at the Blue Lagoon, the famous geo-thermal spa located outside Reykjavík.

The waters contain both sulfur and silica and many people go to the lagoon because it helps people with skin ailments. Water temperatures average between 98 and 102 degrees. The lagoon is fed by the water output of the nearby geothermal power plant and is renewed every 2 days. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal hot water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in.

We spent our last morning in Iceland with a visit to the National Museum. Susan, Rocky, Paul and I stole away for an hour to have one last hot dog at the famous hot dog stand. When we made it back to the museum, we had some amazing hot chocolate and saw some of the exhibits before heading to the airport.

After some drama with the VAT refunds, we boarded our flight for New York and a mere six hours later, we were back in the United States. We spent the night near JFK and then made our connection home the next morning.

The trip to Iceland was an amazing experience and definitely in my top 5 of places I have been in the world. We were pretty lucky with the weather for the most part. There was only a few rain days and while it was cold, we were dressed appropriately, so we were comfortable. The scenery was amazing and the people couldn't have been friendlier. I suggest that anyone interested make the journey!

Eyjafjallajökull

2011-11-13T19:20:00.001-06:00

As we made our way east from Sellfoss, we made our way thru some of the highlights of Southern Iceland. As we drove along the coast, we had a decent view of the Westman Islands, located off the southern coast.

Our first stop was at the farm that sits in front of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. This was the volcano that shut down air travel to and in Europe for two weeks back in 2010. I shook my fist at volcano to express my anger at my cancelled trips.

Just beyond Eyjafjallajökull likes Katla, another volcano, which usually erupts shortly after the former. Many people think that when it does, it will put the chaos of last year to shame. Katla has the potential to really wreak havoc on the planet.

After leaving Eyjafjallajökull, we made our way to Mýrdalsjökull, Icelandic for "mire valley of the glacier". The top of the glacier is just under 5,000 feet and covers the Katla volcano.

One thing that was surprising was how quickly the glacier has retreated in recent years. Steini told us that the point where we took this picture was the end of the glacier only 20 years ago. The warming of the planet has caused the ice to melt at a faster pace.

After a brief stop in Vík where I purchased a woolen cap, we made our way to the beach head at Dyrhólaey. It's the southern most part of Iceland and is a popular nesting area for puffins during the summer time. By the time we got there in October they had already moved on though.

The name Dyrhólaey means "door hole" and gets it's name from the hole created by the erosion of the cliff. A stunt pilot named Tommy Taylor flew thru the arch as part of a daredevil act.

The first waterfall we visited that day was Skógafoss. It's one of the larger falls in the country, with a width of over 82 feet and a drop of over 200 feet. Because of the height of the falls and the direction it faces, on clear days a rainbow is visible.

According to legend, a Viking by the name of Þrasi Þórólfsson buried a treasure in a cave behind the waterfall. A local boy found the chest years later, but was only able to grasp the ring on the side of the chest before it disappeared again

We left Skógafoss and made our way towards the town of Skógar, which means "forrest" in Icelandic. The town has a population of roughly 25 and the main attraction is the folk museum.

Almost the entire collection was amassed by one man, named Þórður Tómasson. Now in his 90's, Þórður started collecting when he was 14 years old.

He was a curmudgeonly old man who would enter and leave at various points in our tour and either give us a lecture or sit down and play us a song.

At the end of the tour, we joined Þórður at the old church and he led us in the singing of several hymns.

The final stop of the day was to Seljalandsfoss. It gained some notoriety after appearing as the starting point of the Amazing Race in season six. Because of the unique position, it is possible to walk behind the falls, which fall over 200 feet from the top.

As we were leaving Seljalandsfoss, the sun was setting, creating a spectacular view.

Gullfoss

2011-11-13T17:52:00.001-06:00

After leaving Þingvellir, we made our way towards Gullfoss in the east. It's another one of the more popular tourist destinations in the country. The falls are located along the Hvitá River and are another popular stop along the Golden Circle. The Icelandic word for gull is golden.

We learned that in the early part of the 20th century, plans were made to use the river to generate electricity. Doing so would have created a permanent change in the falls, and thanks to the work of Sigríður Tómasdóttir, daughter of the original farmers of the land, the plans for hydroelectric power were withdrawn and the falls were spared. When Sigríður died, she left the land to the government, with the stipulation that they be left in their natural state.

We thought we saw Yoko Ono at the falls, but it was just a random Japanese woman. Yoko was in the country for the Iceland Airwaves music festival. As we made our way down into the canyon, we had to be very careful because it was below freezing and the steps were rather steep.

We had our lunch at Gullfoss at the little Visitor's Center and while at the gift shop, Stu and I both went native!

After leaving Gullfoss, we made our way to Haukadalur, the last stop on the Golden Circle and known for it's geysers.

The biggest two geysers in the area are Strokkur and Geysir (how original). Strokkur erupts about every 4 to 8 minutes on a regular basis and Geysir erupts about 4 to 5 times per day.

The two geysers were formed after an earthquake in the 17th century allowed some of the geothermal heated water to rise to the surface.

The Strokkur geyser was the only one was saw erupt. The water averages about 15 to 20 meters high, but sometimes can reach 40 meters.

After our experience with the geysers, we headed to Skálholt to see the cathedral. For about eight centuries, this city was the cultural and political center of the country. It was one of two episcopal sees (or seats) in the country.

The cathedral was rebuilt in the 1950's as part of the countries millennium celebrations of their faith.

One of the highlights is the stained glass windows created by Icelandic artist Gerður Helgadóttir. The work was commissioned by the Danish government.

Þingvellir

2011-11-01T11:59:00.001-05:00

After three nights in Akureyri, it was time to go back to the south and do a little exploring east of Reykjavík. Our bus driver, Lindi, left the night before with our luggage, and we departed the following morning via airplane to Reykjavík on Air Iceland Express.

Marty and I posed for our obligatory "in front of the airplane photo" like we did in Cambodia and Egypt and then Stu felt the need to jump in and ruin it!

It was pretty neat flight over central Iceland. We made our way over the Langjökull glacier, the second largest ice cap in the country. There are actually two volcanic systems beneath the glacier. In terms of mass, the ice is up to 2000 feet deep and the glacier peaks at 4,700 feet above sea level.

Susan enjoyed a nice cup of tea and a chocolate on our 45 minute flight down to Reykjavík.

Once we made it to Reykjavík, we started out east along the Golden Circle, a popular tourist route. Most people that come to Iceland never venture west or north like we did. I guess we are just diehard tourists. The Golden Circle is a 300km loop that starts in Reykjavík and makes it way out towards Þingvellir (Þ is pronounced Th), the National Park and then hits popular tourist spots in a big loop.

Þingvellir is one of the most popular places to visit in Iceland. It's the site of the Mid-Atlantic rift, one of the only places where the North American plate and the Eurasian plate meet above sea level. This was a very big deal for our resident geologist.... Dr. Stu. Of course we all had to stand on the divide so that we could say we were half in North America, half in Europe.

Here is Stu in his moment of glory.

Marty of course had to go for the glamor.

Susan and Steini....

Paul and Rockie, two of our tour mates....

We had a little accident while we were at Þingvellir. Two of our travelers (who shall remain nameless) were posing for their picture on the rift and fell into the hole. Nothing serious, but we sure had fun cracking jokes about it.... I asked them how they enjoyed their "journey to the center of the earth".

Of course leave it to Marty and Susan to find the sun had created a unique vantage point for shadow puppets.

And of course I had to join in.....

Þingvellir is also the site of the first Icelandic Parliament which was founded in 930. The is now a cultural heritage site. One of the houses below is actually the official residence of the prime minister, although I cannot remember which one.

The park is also the site of the largest lake in Iceland, Þingvallavatn. Silfra, an underwater fissue, is a popular place for divers who wish to swim in between the two plates. We saw a couple of folks heading into the water. The expressions on their faces as they went into the cold cold water was pretty funny!

We saw a school of Arctic Char in the lake. No doubt they were on their way to the place where they would be prepared to be our lunch the next day! They were quite tasty!

With not a cloud in the sky, it was a perfect day to visit Þingvellir.

Northern Lights

2011-11-01T10:02:00.001-05:00

Rewinding a bit, I received the following pictures from Elaine, one of the members of our Iceland tour group. Her husband Bill is quite the photographer and was the only person in our group successful in capturing the Northern Lights when we saw them in Akureyri.

So a big shout out to Bill for taking such great photos of this natural phenomenon!

Akureyri

2011-10-27T10:45:00.000-05:00

After we had our fill of rotten shark meat and black death (Blennivín) it was time to say goodbye to the Snæfellsness Peninsula and make our way north and east to Akureyri. As we left the Peninsula, our first stop was to the Leifur Eiríksson (Leif to us English speakers) home near Búðardalur.

We visited the presumed site of Eiríksstaðir, the name of his farm in the Haukadalur valley. A replica of his house was built in 2000 as part of the Leifur Eiríksson Heritage Project in conjunction with the 1,000 year of the discovery of North America.

We had a Viking re-enactor named Siggi who gave us a little history about Leif and the area we were visiting. Leif was born around 970 in Iceland. His dad was Eric the Red, the man who discovered Greenland. While living in Greenland with his papa, Leif went west and landed on what is now Newfoundland in eastern Canada.

While the farm house was pretty accurate, Siggi explained that the gas drop fire we had on the floor was a more modern addition.

After becoming experts on all things Viking, we continued north and east, our comfortable tour bus. We made a point of asking our driver Lindi to turn up the heat because we were cold. This proved to be a mistake, as he proceeded to blast us with heat until the end of our trip 10 days later!!

Every time we would stop for a "comfort break" we'd go into the coffee shop or gas station. In the bustling town of Staðarskáli, we took a moment to try on some native clothing and accessories.

One of the highlights for us that day was a visit to a horse farm. Iceland is very proud of their horses. The breed is completely pure. Many people refer to them as ponies (I am guilty of this) due to their smaller stature, but we were told this was not correct.

We were greeted at the farm by the family dog. We enjoyed lunch with the family and then one of the daughters played us some traditional Icelandic music on her violin.

The breed is pure and no horses may be imported into the country. Once an Icelandic horse leaves the country, it is not allowed to return. As a result, they do not participate in many international competitions.

Due to the rocky and rugged terrain of the country, the horse is very sure footed and is a master of five different gaits.

The breed is very popular worldwide. A little internet research showed me that while there are about 80,000 horses in Iceland, there are 100,000 Icelandic horses abroad. Our tour guide, Steini, told us that the cost of owning a horse in Iceland is very small. For the daily price of a pack of cigarettes more or less, one can own and care for a horse.

As we continued east towards Akureyri, we started to pass thru some higher elevations and ground covered in snow. The night before they had the first snowfall of the season.

We arrived into Akureyri that evening and into our small tourist hotel. The next day was kind of a bust because it was extremely windy with heavy rain. Our planned outing for the day was to the town of Húsavík, west of Akureyri, to go on a whale watching boat excursion. Due to the choppy water and cold driving rain, we were not able to do the tour. We did get to visit the Whale Museum where we learned about some of the whale species that are found in the area.

In order to fill the time, Steini had us stop at a Vintage Car Museum for an hour. It was actually kind of interesting, with all the old cars they had on display and in very good condition.

And like all the other places we stopped, there was a domesticated animal for us to play with.

On our way back to Akureyri, we stopped at Goðafoss. It's another spectacular example of a waterfall in Iceland. It's located in the Mývatn district and sits along the Skjálfandafljót River.

Goðafoss means "Waterfall of the Gods". The story behind it's name comes from when a "Lawspeaker" made Christianity the official religion of Iceland in 999, and he threw his old Norse god statues into the waterfall.

As we returned to Akureyri, the skies sort of cleared up! As a bit of background about the city, it's referred to as the northern capital because it sits just 40 miles below the Arctic Circle. It's the second largest city in Iceland with a population of about 17,000 people. It's protected harbor never freezes so it's also an important shipping area.

The official symbol of Akureyri is the heart, so every red traffic light is shaped like on.

One of the highlights of our stay in Akureyri, indeed of the entire trip, was our home hosted dinner. OAT creates their tours in a way that allows you to experience part of the life of the country that you might not otherwise get to see. Our group was split in to 2 and Stu, Marty, Susan and I were part of the group that would be having dinner with Arna and her family.

They were such wonderful hosts. Arna's daughter Hera was quite taken with Susan.

Arna was a school teacher. She presently teaches 7th grade. We learned that in Iceland, the students have the same teacher from the time they enter school until they move on to high school, so every year she advances with her students. Her husband Finn is a professional photographer. He studied at the University of Michigan and lived in Ann Arbor for 5 years back in the late 80's. All three of them of course spoke perfect English and we had a wonderful time talking with them.

For dinner, Arna made a casserole type dish consisting of haddock, potatoes, onions and layered with hard boiled eggs. It was wonderful! Dessert consisted of a type of spice cake that was a special recipe of her mother's. I had three pieces! (And I wonder why I came home 5 pounds heavier than when I left!).

At the end of the evening, Arna gave us jam she made from currants in her garden and Finn gave us each a matted copy of a landscape photograph he had taken. We had brought them host/hostess gifts consisting of a trivet with Texas wildflowers, some Texas themed coasters, and some Texas Champagne (aka Hot Sauce).

As we were leaving their home, we had a wonderful view of the Northern Lights! While it could not be captured on film with my sad little camera, I can only describe it as green and purple ribbons of light dancing thru the sky. It was so beautiful and perfect way to end a great evening!

We started our second morning in Akureyri by heading back to Goðafoss. All the snow from the day before had melted. Notice the difference before....

and less than 24 hours later....

We had a little more time to explore the falls this time and catch some different views of the area.

This is one of my favorites that Susan took because you can see the sun just starting to hit the top of the waterfalls.

We next made our way to Skútustaðir to see the natural pseudo-craters. The name comes from the farm that was owned by the Viking Víga Skúta, who was the owner of the deadly battle axe Fluga! The pseudo-craters that populate the area are formed by steam explosions when burning lava encounters lakes or wetlands.

Now the area is primarily a place for sheep to graze.

Note the geo-thermally heated steam pockets on the other side of the lake.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, Iceland is full of geo-thermally heated water. The Laugaland fields near Akureyri is the first and oldest geothermal source to be commercially developed. The steam just pours out of the ground! I seem to be a little nervous standing so close to it!

We also visited some very messy and smelly sulfur like mud pits.

After lunch at a dairy, we made our way to Dummuborgir. The english translation means "dark cities". It's a barren area with rocky lava formations and volcanic caves. In Icelandic folklore, it is believed this is the portal to hell. Probably best not to get lost here!

Dimmuborgir is also the place where the famous Yule Lads live. They are the Icelandic version of Santa Claus and while they are generally benevolent now, they started off by harassing villagers and were even known to steal children from their beds and take them back to their mother, who would grind them up and turn them into soup. The 13 lads have weird names like Spoon-licker and Candle-snuffer. But if you are ever chased by the one named Sheep-Cote Clod, don't worry, he has stiff peg legs which make it hard for him to run. They even have a Yule Cat who goes into town and kidnaps children who did not get new clothes for Christmas. Notice how Susan is clutching Marty as they walk thru this area in total fear.

Nowadays, children leave their shoes on the window for the 13 days before Christmas and every night, one of the Yule Lads comes and leaves treats and presents. Sounds better than being turned into soup or dragged away by an over aggressive cat because your clothes aren't new.

Snæfellsness Peninsula

2011-10-22T15:22:00.001-05:00

After leaving Reykjavík, we made our way north towards the Snæfellness Peninsula and the town of Stykkishólmur. We would spend the next two days exploring the the area and it's many natural sights.

Our first stop was the waterfall near Borgarfjörðour, called Hraunfossar. This was the first of many waterfalls we would see on our trip. It's fed from water coming out of a glacier thru lava flows from a previous eruption.

Adjacent to Hruanfossar is Barnafossar, which flows from the river Hvítá. It takes it name from an old Icelandic saga. According to legend, a husband and wife went to church and told their two boys to stay on the farm. They did not listen and tried to follow their parents to church taking a shortcut over a bridge. They grew dizzy over the bridge and fell into the waters below and drowned. When their mother learned of their death, she put a curse on the bridge that anyone who tried to cross it would meet the same fate as her sons. Later the bridge would be destroyed by an earthquake.

We next made our way to Reykholt and a visit to the Icelandic Settlement Center and a light lunch with some excellent soda bread. The Settlement Center gave us a little information about the original Viking settlers from Norway and the formation of a permanent settlement. The original government was one of tribal chieftains who ruled over various sections of the country. A commonwealth was formed in 930 and the world's first parliament was created. All of these stories were passed down in the oral tradition until they were permanently recorded into stories or sagas.

One of the most important writers of sagas was Sorrí Sturluson. He was twice elected lawspeaker of the country, and was pretty influential until inter-clan feuding took away his power. He was ultimately murdered.

We also made a visit to Deildartunguhver to see the natural hot springs. Because of the volcanic activity on the island, there is an abundant supply of geo-thermally heated water.

The springs at Deildartunguhver are just such an example and significant because the water flows at a rate of 180 liters per second and the water comes out of the ground at 97 degrees Celsius. It is the highest flowing hot spring in Europe.

Steini, our guide, told us that the water coming out of the spring is so clean and clear that is can be used for hot tea. Huge clouds of steam would float over us at the site, which was a great feeling since it was so cold outside. It was so hot it even fogged my glasses.

We rolled into Stykkishólmur in the late afternoon. The city is located on the northern part of the peninsula and has a population of about 1,200 people.

We made a visit to the new church that just opened. It had a beautiful interior, with a nordic themed painting of the Virgin Mary and Jesus above the alter and individual lights hanging down from the ceiling, like stars.

The pastor of the church came out and spoke with us for a bit. He told us about the Church of Iceland and it's Lutheran traditions and how it functions in the reformed faith.

The next morning, we made our way outside the city to Helgafell, or Holy Mountain. It's not really a mountain though. The hill peaks at 240 feet. We were greeted by two sheep at the base of the mountain. They are very used to visitors and came right up to us! I hope they could not sense that I had eaten a lamb dog in Reykjavík!

According to tradition, you have to climb to the 240 foot peak summit without saying a word and facing forward the whole time. Once you make it to the top, you face east and make three wishes. They have to be benevolent wishes though. No wishes of ill will on anyone. You have to keep the wishes secret until they come true and then you can tell everyone!

As you can tell by Marty's huddle, it was very cold and windy at the top, but it sure was a beautiful sight!

Our next stop was the Snæfellsness National Park and the town of Hellnar where we took a nice hike along the cliffs and coast. The park features a diverse array of rock formations.

Towards the end of our walk, Stu had to stop and ponder everything he saw. He was the star on that day because his background in geology made him quite the know-it-all about the various types of rocks and formations we were seeing.

This is me posing in front of Snæfellsjökull, the volcano featured in the Jules Verne story Journey to the Center of the Earth.

One of our most interesting stops that day was to a shark meet processing farm to sample some Kæstur Hárkarl, or "cured" (rotten) shark meat. The meat comes from the Greenland shark, which is fermented and then hung out to dry for four or five months. The meat is toxic when fresh, but once fermented it is fine to eat. Let's just say it's an acquired taste!

It has a particularly strong smell of ammonia and I had to fight the urge to gag when I tasted it. We ate ours on some rye bread and chased it Brennivín, the national liquor of Iceland, which is common since it masks the taste of the shark meat. Brennivín translates to english as "burning wine". With a 37.5% alcohol content, it is affectionately known as "Black Death".

Our guide Steini loved it!

Susan and I were not so sure!!!

Góða ferð (Bon Voyage)

2011-10-21T07:50:00.000-05:00

Just back from my annual "Big Trip" vacation, and this year proved to be just as amazing as the others. Now the rush begins of trying to getting it all blogged while it is still fresh in my mind. After years of vacationing in the desert or humid tropical climes, I decided that this was the year to go cold. Additionally, after breaking up with my traveling companions Stu and Marty last year (I went to Israel, they went to Turkey) we came back together for a new adventure. We also added one more person to our fold, another friend and co-worker of mine, Susan. And were did we go?...... Iceland!

I have always had a passing fancy in that little island that sits between Europe and North America. I fly over it several times of month when I am luck enough to work Europe trips. My interest was piqued last April 2010 when that damned volcano that no one can pronounce erupted and brought air travel to it's knees and ruined my month. At the time I was boycotting all things Icelandic, but after more than a year of holding out, I decided it was time to go and see what this place was all about, and I am sure glad I did.

We left the morning of October 3rd and after a 5 hour sit at JFK airport, we took off for Reykjavík on our all night flight. Flying time going over was pretty quick, at just under 5 hours. Given that Icelandair is pretty much the only game in town, we opted to purchase tickets rather than try our luck at employee standby travel. What a refreshing change to wear jeans and tennis shoes when you travel!

We arranged to be part of a tour called "Untamed Iceland" thru Overseas Adventure Travel. They specialize in small group travel with unique itineraries. Ladyfriend had done an O.A.T trip to Turkey a few years ago and highly recommended the company. It certainly wasn't cheap, but vacation options in Iceland are somewhat limited, especially towards the end of the high season, so this was just what we were looking for.

Our tour guide was a gentleman named Steingrímur Gunnarsson, but we just called him Steini. He was there the morning we arrived to meet us at the airport and get us downtown and checked in to our hotel. In total there were 16 people on our tour from different places in the United States.

Keflavík International Airport is about a half hour from Reykjavík. We had a quick little bus tour of the city before heading to the lovely Hilton Nordica for an awesome breakfast buffet (not good for my waistline) and a little nap. We all reconvened at noon and made our way downtown for a walking tour of the city with Steini.

Central Reykjavík is not very big and it pretty easy to do on foot. The city has a population of about 120,000 (out of a total population of 300,000 for the whole country) and is the economic and political center for the country. The first permanent settlement here was here in 874 by a Vikings.

Our first stop was Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland. It's named after the 17th century Icelandic poet Hallgrímur Pétursson, who was the author of the Passion Hymns. The church was commissioned in the late 1930's, but construction did not begin until 1946 after the war and it was not finished until 1986. The design is inspired by the basalt lava flows seen throughout the country. While the country is predominantly Lutheran, many traditions from before the Reformation remain. Each church pays homage to the Blessed Mother and the Crosses are in the style of a crucifix.

The main shopping district of the city is along Laugavegur. It means "Wash Road" in English and back in the olden days led down the Laugardaler hot springs where the women would go to wash the clothes.

On the side of one of the buildings, there was great painting of a giraffe in 3-d glasses saying "I have come hear to chew bubble gum and kick ass". I thought it was genius! It comes from the movie "They Live" and the line ends with "...and I'm all out of bubblegum".

We continued our walk around the city, visiting City Hall, the Cultural Heritage House, Parliament, and other landmarks.

One of the highlights is the Tjörnin, a large pond in the middle of city. It is situated along City Hall and the University of Iceland and is populated with many varieties of ducks and swans. It's a popular place to come with small kids and feed the water fowl.

Quite possibly the most genius photograph I took on the trip, I had my fellow travelers pose next to a statue outside the Cultural Center.

For me the best part of the day was the Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur (translated means The Best Hotdogs in Town), the most popular place to eat in Iceland. It's a hot dog stand that opened in 1937, and is located downtown near the harbor. Every Icelander is familiar with this place and it's where all the foreign dignitaries come when they visit Iceland. There is a picture behind the counter of Bill Clinton chowing down on a few dogs. In 2006 it was voted the best hot dog stand in Europe.

Marty decided she did not want to play since the hot dogs are made of lamb.

For 300 kr you get your tasty dog and can have ketchup, sweet mustard, fried onion, raw onion and remolaði, a kind of mayo and relish sauce. I opted for both onion types and the sweet mustard. It was yummy!

We ended the day doing a little light shopping as we walked off our lamb hot dogs.

After getting back to the hotel, Susan and I went across the street to the local supermarket to get some snacks for our trip. I love going to grocery stores in foreign countries! We were impressed by their large selection of flavored cheese spreads and butter!

Lost In Translation

2011-09-16T15:37:00.001-05:00

The month of September is my reserve month, which is about as fun as a root canal. Usually you end up getting a trip when you want to be home and when you want to fly you sit around. Last year I got called out on my birthday, the 3rd, when I had plans. This year, for the first time in many years, I was on reserve over Labor Day and did not go anywhere, which I found surprising. Well come the 10th of the month when I went back on call, there was no one with less hours than me (0.00) so I was first to go for a trip when I called the tape the night before. Of course I had plans all day on Saturday, and sure enough the phone rang at 7:00am for an 8:40 sign in to Narita, Japan.

The trip itself was fine. My friend Alane was on the trip with me and we decided we would go into town for some brew and noodles. After a stop at the hardware store, we hit the Jet Lag Club for some beers and then made our way to the Noodle Shop for dinner. We had what Alane described as a "Lost in Translation" moment, when it was time to pay the bill at the restaurant and we realized we each only had ¥2000 each. This left us short ¥236. We started to panic (they don't take credit cards) and I told Alane to pull her hair back because we were about to go on dish patrol. She had dollars so we were trying to find a way to make it work. Her cool head prevailed and she grabbed the last group of English speakers (pilots) before they left the restaurant to try to buy some of their yen, but they were actually quite generous and just gave us the ¥236 we needed (which is only a little over $3.00) but still, it's pretty rare for a pilot to give you anything.

I was of course waiting for the random aftershocks, but we only felt two very minor ones, and for all we know if could have been a truck going by.

I did have a chance on the way over to talk with a young man named Jon, a recent high school graduate from Colorado Springs. He had grown up in Japan as a child and was putting off his first semester of college to go over and work as a missionary supporting the rebuilding effort after the horrible earthquake last March. He's going to blog about the experience so he was kind enough to share his blog with me, titled, Redemption.

In Bruges

2011-09-13T15:53:00.000-05:00

It's taken me a while to getting around to blogging about my impromptu trip to Belgium. Perhaps because of the horrible food poisoning I got and the ensuing terrible terrible evening spent in my hotel bathroom..... but more on that later.

Rewind back to August and my last trip blog. I had been on a 4 day, turned 5 day trip to London and gone to see the White Cliffs of Dover with my friend Amanda. I ended up missing my next trip due to a schedule conflict and then dropped the trip after that because I did not like the people that were scheduled to work it with me, so I was sufficiently low on time. Around 7:15pm on a Tuesday evening in late August, I was sitting at home and looked on the computer to see that a last minute position had opened up on Rio de Janiero trip. Now there is now way that someone could get to the airport in 30 minutes to cover the 7:45pm departure, so they got someone off the 9:10 London departure and thus created an opening on that crew. I called Scheduling and said that I could make it on short call make up if they waived the sign in and next thing I knew I was slashing my face with a razor trying to chop off 3 days of whiskers and hopping in the shower getting ready to go to work.

I was with most of the people I flew with the week before on the London trip. This trip was also a 4 day trip with a 2 day layover. After visiting Dover the week before and seeing the ferries heading to Calais, I got the idea that it would be fun to take a day trip to the continent if I ever got the 2 day layover again. I guess that planted the seed, because I started off the trip by joking that I wanted to go to Belgium for the day and by the time we landed at Heathrow I had made up my mind that it was something I was going to do.

I decided on Belgium because I had never been there before. I was going to go to Brussels, when the First Officer suggested that I look into Bruges. It was the same price for a ticket so I thought, why not? I was excited because I was going to get to ride the Eurostar under the English Channel, via the Chunnel. I am embarrassed to say how much this last minute train ticket cost me, but justified it as an early birthday present to myself and once in a lifetime opportunity.

I had to be at London St. Pancras station for a 7:23am departure. I was pretty excited so I did not sleep much the night before. I settled into my assigned seat and fought the urge to sleep because I wanted to be awake for the Chunnel experience. It was actually a non-event. No announcements were made. One minute we were traveling along above ground, and then our ears popped and it got dark. It took about 20 minutes to travel the 31 miles under the English Channel and at the lowest point we were at 250 feet below the earth, which would explain the ear popping. I sat next to a nice man from York who lived outside London. He was heading to Amsterdam to pick up his 8 year old daughter who was away at summer camp and decided she did not like it and wanted to come home early.

After a short stop in Calais, France, we made our way up to Brussels, arriving into the station about an hour and a half after leaving London. A quick transfer to the next Bruges departure and I was on my way, arriving into Bruges about 45 minutes later.

Bruges is located in northwest Belgium and is the capital city in the province of West Flanders, which is in the Flemish region of the country. It's often referred to as the "Venice of the North" because of the complex canal system that runs thru the city. It got it's city charter back in the early 1100's and experienced it's golden era during Medieval times.

Today it's big draw is tourism, with folks coming from all over to see the architecture and eat the food, which is exactly what I intended to do! After leaving the train station, I made my way towards the city center with all the other tourists. I had no idea what I was doing beyond the suggestions I got off tripadvisor.com, so I just followed everyone else.

The first major landmark I saw walking into the city was St. Salvator's Cathedral. It's unique for having survived with no major damage for so many years, thru wars, regime changes, religious reform, etc.

Upon arrival into the center of town, I decided to take one of the 30 minute boat rides via the canals. It was the best way to see the city and offered views from a vantage point one doesn't get on land.

This is where I caught the boat. The building across the dock was actually a medieval pharmacy and hospital.

This must be what happens to the tourists after too much beer!

The most famous church is the Church of the Holy Blood. It is purported to contain some of the blood of Christ, brought back to Europe after the Crusades.

We passed a group of men who were enjoying their beer. They cheered and saluted us as we made our way past them on the canal.

The tower in the distance is the Belfry, located in the city center. This bell tower was built in 1240.

After the boat tour was over, I made my way towards St. Salvator's church. I wanted to get a look at their organ, which was built in 1717. After taking three pictures inside, I was informed photography was not permitted so I wasn't able to get a picture of the organ, but it was still impressive.

One thing I noticed was lots of artists, like this gentleman, who had set up canvases along the canals and were painting the landscape.

From the church I made my way to the Markt, "Main Market" near the Belfry. I was getting hungry and I wanted to enjoy some of the local cuisine. This would prove to be my downfall later.

I found a little outdoor cafe with a snooty waiter who obviously hated his job and had a little table outside overlooking the Belfry. It was the restaurant under the green and red awning on the right of the photograph below.

I started my lunch with a local beer and they also served a glass of sweet red wine with lunch.

Next up were the muscles au gratin, which were wonderful, but in hindsight, probably the culprit of the food poisoning.

The main course was Flemish stew, with potatoes.

After lunch, I made a quick trip to the post office to mail some postcards and then continued my walk around the city. It was rather warm, but thankfully it was overcast.

This quiet little part of town is called the Béguinage. The Béguines were a religious movement made up of single women. War and famine had reduced the male population, so many women had no means of finding a husband or support, and this group was formed out of that need. The small houses all surround a courtyard with tall trees. The Béguinage of Bruges is one of the best preserved examples of this Roman Catholic order.

My next stop was the De Halve Maan Brewery. It's the last surviving working brewery in Bruges. Most Belgian beer is brewed in other parts of the country. I wasn't permitted to take photographs as they don't want their "trade secrets" divulged (whatever), but it was an interesting tour and I got to sample three different types of local brew.

I finished the day with a waffle covered in chocolate. It was wonderful. Also keep in mind that every store I went in to was selling chocolates and so you always got a sample as you entered.

I was on a 6:40pm train out of Brussels and I wanted to make sure I had ample time to get back since there were no other trains to London that night. I left Bruges around 5pm and arrived into Brussels at 6, before catching my train back to London. On the train ride back I blew the remaining Euro's I had on a pizza and gin and tonics. I was so tired I slept all the way back to London. Arrival into St. Pancras showed the Olympic Rings in honor of next summer's games.

I was in bed by about 10pm and totally exhausted. It was a long day, but totally worth it.

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ALERT

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Stop reading here if you wish to remember this trip as all good with no bad parts. If you are brave, you can keep reading.

Before going to bed, I noticed I had a little heartburn and my tummy was a bit crampy, but I thought it was understandable given the food I ate. I took some antacid and went to bed.

Around midnight, I shot up in bed and realized immediately that I was going to throw up. I got sort of panicked, trying to figure out where this was going to happen. I ran into the bathroom and was preparing to do the deed, when I realized I was going to have some problems from both the North and South ends of my body. Long story short, I ended up planting myself on the toilet and throwing up into the bathtub. The walls are real thin at the hotel and I guess I woke up the person next door to me with my unpleasant sounds, and so she knocked on my door to see if I was ok. I guess I sounded pretty bad. She offered to get me help, but I told her I was ok and probably just had food poisoning. I got cleaned up and went back to the bed, only to repeat the incident that just occurred 3 more times.

The next morning I went to Boots for some medicine before our pick up. The crew said my skin was ashen and my lips were green. I felt terrible, but at least I had stopped throwing up.

I felt quite improved when I woke up from my break though, but it still took a few days for my stomach to get back to normal. Looking back, perhaps mixing all those different food types wasn't the best idea, but if I had to bet, I would say it was the muscles that caused my discomfort.

We Remember... 9/11 A Decade Later

2011-09-11T17:09:00.000-05:00

As I sit here in my hotel room in Narita, Japan, September 11, 2011 has officially ended here, although it's just 4:45pm on the 11th back home. Looking back on that morning, the situation still seems so surreal to me. For my generation, I always guessed up until 9/11, that the defining national tragedy would be either the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion or the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. Those two events were something the entire country was caught up in and grieving around.

That all changed on that Tuesday morning for me, for all of us. Of course I remember the first person to call me, my college friend Jenny. To this date, we always make sure we talk to each other on the 11th every year. I remember initially being so unable to comprehend was was going on. It just didn't seem possible. The phone kept ringing with calls from people who knew me wanting to know where I was. I remember I was originally supposed to fly a turn around that evening to San Diego and before learning that the airspace was closed, I was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I might have to get on an airplane.

I remember the heartbreak I felt when I was able to learn who the working crew members were. Flight 11 was staffed with Boston flight attendants, and I had just transferred from that domicile to Dallas, so those people were still fresh on my mind. Seeing the names of friends and co-workers and knowing they were dead.... it's still hard to think about some times. My mind plays back to that day a lot and I try to imagine what it was like for them on board the airplanes. I don't think I will ever be able to fathom the hell and fear they experienced during that last period of their lives.

One of my most vivid memories was walking my dogs that evening with my mother. Living so close to the airport in Dallas, a plane would fly overhead every 60 seconds. That night, there wasn't a single plane in the sky. No distant airplane lights lining up for approach. There were no cars on the road. There was no movement. It was just so eerily quiet.

So in closing, I dedicate today, like I have done every September 11th for the past 10 years, to the reflection and remembrance of my friend and co-worker Sara and all of the people who lost their lives that fateful morning. It is our duty to remember and keep their spirits flying.

There'll Be Bluebirds Over....

2011-08-28T13:07:00.000-05:00

the White Cliffs of Dover....

Tomorrow....

Just you wait and see

But more on that later.

I got onto yet another London trip after I traded the radiation and earthshaking of Japan for the two day London Heathrow layover (which actually ended up being a 3 day layover, but more on that later as well). I guess I should consider myself lucky that I am able to fly there so much since I certainly don't have the seniority to hold it on a regular basis.

We had a great crew and a couple of my friends were on it, including Mary Beth. Due to light loads and a long layover, she brought her mother and her daughter Olivia along for a sort of mini-vacation. I learned Olivia reads my blog, so a quick shout out to Olivia!

My plans the first night were to meet up with my friends Charlotte and Robin and go see a play. Charlotte and Robin were friends back from my "777 Domestic Mafia" days, who just came over to International. On the suggestion of my friend Bobby, I wanted to see Pygmalion. It's a play by George Bernard Shaw. The movie and stage version of My Fair Lady was based on the play (which everyone knew about but me apparently). I would be closing in early September so I wanted to see if before it went away. I've pretty much given up on seeing Warhorse until some time next year when the excitement dies down. The Pygmalion cast included Diana Rigg, most famous as Emma Peel from the Avengers, although I remember her from The Great Muppet Caper and The Worst Witch.

We got pretty good seats for a pretty good deal. The ticket manager offered us Orchestra seats for about £30, which was £15 less than the list price. After buying our tickets, we went to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant before seeing the show.

The next day they were heading home since they just had the regular layover, but I had made plans to head south to Redhill to meet up with my friend Amanda and do a road trip to Dover to see the White Cliffs. I have wanted to visit this area of Britain ever since my friend Kathy made me listen to "White Cliffs of Dover", a song made popular during WWII, by Vera Lynn. It was written and recorded during a time when British and German planes would have aerial battles over the area near Dover. The song's lyrics talk about a time when there will be peace and tranquility and no war. The only problem is that Bluebirds (mentioned in the first line of the song) are not native to England, and are only found in captivity. Anyway, it's still a great song and you can hear it here.

Unfortunately, Aaron, Amanda's husband, was already back in the states for work, so it would just be me, Amanda and Samantha. It would be the first time they visited the area as well. They are members of the National Trust (the British version of the National Park Service) so we got free admission and parking onto the site). The ride southeast to Dover only took about an hour or so.

The city of Dover is home to the port of the same name that serves as the launching point to continental Europe. Ferries full of cars and trucks cross back and forth, to the tune of about 60 crossings per day. It's also one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. As I stood out overlooking the port, I started thinking about how cool it would be to take the Chunnel train under the channel and go to the continent for the day. That idea must have taken root quickly, but I will save that for another blog entry.

After a nice lunch at the visitor center (I had something called a rarebit, kind if like a melted cheese sandwich, which was delightful) we began our trek down the 2 mile trail along the cliffs.

As a bit of background, the cliffs spread both east and west from Dover, but we tackled the eastern part. At it's tallest point, they are over 350 feet high, which might explain the advisory to stay at least 5 meters from the edge. The striking white color comes from the fact that they are made of pure calcium carbonate, or chalk. The cliffs also serve as a symbolic form of protection for Britain as they are the closest point to the continent, and the height of the cliffs also served as a natural fortress for centuries from foreign invaders. With Calais only 9 miles across the channel in France, the cliffs can be seen from the continent on a clear day. The harsh weather continues to erode the cliffs at a rate of several centimeters per year.

Here we are as we set off for our two mile trek. This was before we realized that the trails were not as stroller friendly as we thought they would be. I remember making a comment that it might be best to come back here after Samantha has finished high school!

This will give you an idea of just how darned difficult the trails were to maneuver around, and you can also see how quickly the chalk built up on the stroller wheels as well as the bottoms of our shoes.

Our little journey involved lots of pauses for pictures and general resting after stroller drama.

The area is filled with wild Exmoor ponies that graze along the cliffs. They did not seem to be too bothered by the tourists, as one didn't even mind going potty right in front of us.

They were a great distraction though for Samantha. As soon as she would get fussy, we would point to a pony to try to make her forget she was about to have a tantrum.

We met a little terrier named Harry along the way. Lots of people brought their dogs. I wish we had brought their dachshund, Wolfie.

It was at about the half way point that we realized we were not going to make the lighthouse. All the difficult terrain we had encountered up until now we were going to re-encounter on the way back. Not to mention that Samantha was starting to get fussy, so I left mommy and baby behind and ran ahead to get some more pictures.

Of course I had to stop and do the obligatory foot shot for my "Around the World with My Feet" album.

At the farthest point in our journey, the lighthouse was still quite a distance away, so this was about a close as I got to it.

I opted for a different route for us on the way back to the visitor center. There was a lower trail that didn't see to have a many steep areas, so I thought that would be an easier route for us. It was indeed flat until the end when we realized we had not only overshot the visitor's center, but also the car park, and also the National Trust entrance! In the end, Amanda carried Samantha, and I collapsed the stroller and carried it up some pretty steep hills. We finally made it back to civilization and didn't even have to resort to cannibalism or eating roots.

With all the obstacles, it was still a wonderful day. The weather was great. Very cloudy, which kept us from getting too warm (we still worked up quite a sweat). Back in London that day, it had rained buckets, so we were fortunate to have dodged that.

The drive back wasn't too bad, even with a bit of traffic as we got closer to the city. After getting back to the flat, I said my farewells to Wolfie and the girls and hustled back into town to catch a 6:45 train back to London Victoria.

When I got back to the hotel, I went down to the crew room, only to find several of my co-workers gathered around a computer screen. Our flight the next day was cancelled, so we were now laying over one more day and then flying home on Saturday. Normally an extra day in London would be awesome, but I had backed trips up and was supposed to fly to Honolulu on Saturday, and of course had made plans for the layover. That all fell apart.

My friend Mary Beth was worried because now our flight on Saturday would be full, and she had her mother and daughter with us. There was no way they would get on the plane on Saturday. She ended up sending them on a nonstop to Raleigh on Friday, but weather cancelled their Dallas flight and they ended up getting stuck in Washington DC before making it home on Saturday. The joys of non-revenue travel!

On Friday, I met up with Mary Beth after she got her mom and daughter off to Raleigh. We went downtown for a 2pm London Walk about Sherlock Holmes. Our guide was a rather prim and proper older lady and actress named Corinna. She will actually next be seen in the 2011 movie Hysteria, coming out later this year, about the invention of the female vibrator. She has a bit part as Lady Perrigott.

She was a very knowledgeable guide and new anything and everything about Sherlock Holmes and the writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The walk included places where Sir Conan Doyle lived, as well as places that were included in his novels, or inspired his stories.

I enjoy the London Walks tours because they take you to parts of the city you would not normally visit.

When our tour was over, we made our way over the Thames to the Southbank. It was brimming with people, street performers, and musicians.

We made our way down river towards the Tate Modern and into a little alcove with lots of restaurants and pubs. I had visited this one particular pub on numerous occasions, so we went there for an afternoon of drinking pints of the Früli, a Belgium wheat beer with fruit flavoring (perfect for a warm summer day) and an early dinner.

I finally made it home on Saturday, a day later than planned, tired, broke, and out of clean underwear.

Manchester

2011-08-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

So at about 5:45 am, Ladyfriend and I are sitting in the Window Exit waiting for boarding to finish on our 6am departure from Colorado Springs. I was low on time, so I had my name on the Make Up List. I noticed there was a Manchester trip in open time for that afternoon and made a call to scheduling to see if it was going to come to my seniority. Miracle of miracles, it did, but I realize that the reason it did is because it is a 757 trip and no one likes to fly a 757 over the Atlantic.

So after landing back in the Big D around 8:30, I dropped Kirsten at home and then went home to unpack and then repack before heading back for my 2:15pm deadhead to Chicago. I was blessed to get to sit in a seat surrounded by a large family of talkative and messy French people. They were spilling drinks left and right and passing food around, dropping stuff everywhere. When we got to Chicago, their zone looked like a disaster area.

The flight to Manchester was different. I had not worked one of the 757 Transatlantic services before as our Europe trips are too far to use that equipment. The crew was all on reserve. Apparently it is the least popular trip on the bidsheet, so everyone trades off it. The flight was full, but I was pleasantly surprised because the "Mancunians" (people from Manchester) are simply delightful. Very low key and laid back.

We arrived in the morning right on time. I was a bit worried about the nightly riots and looting, but apparently the night before was the night the police finally got a hold of the situation so it wasn't "supposed" to be a problem. The hotel staff still suggested we return to the premises by 6:00pm or so in case there are problems. Several of the shops around the hotel were boarded up because of broken windows from the nightly riots.

Most of the crew were just going to sleep and stay in their rooms, but one of my co-workers, Geoff, said he would show me around the city.

Downtown Manchester is pretty small compared to London with it's ever expanding boroughs, but like the British capital, it is heavy on the Victorian architecture. City Hall looked like a church cathedral.

Downtown's main shopping center was the site of the new "Shop a Looter" campaign. CCTV cameras are everywhere in the city and lots of looters were caught on camera at the stores where they were "shopping". Now there is an effort to have the public help bring these people to justice.

It was starting to rain, so we decided to visit the Old Wellington, which is the oldest tavern in Manchester. It was built in 1552 in a part of the city that at the time was called the Shambles. The building has actually been dismantled and reassembled at least 3 times over the past 30 years to maximize space for downtown development.

When the rain let up, we started back towards the hotel, but then it started up again, so we made our way towards another pub and enjoyed a pint of Stella and watched the rain.

It finally let up and we made our way across the main square toward the hotel. I came upon a Boots/Waitrose combination store (Boots is my favorite drug store and Waitrose my favoroite grocer in the UK). Two great things rolled into one! After purchasing my provisions for the night and for the way home, it was time to get back to the hotel. We rolled in right around 6pm, the suggested time.

There was no problem with looting that night though. The next day, our flight home was about 8 hours and 25 minutes, or about 5 hours too long for that type of plane. Of course right after landing in Chicago, a freak hailstorm hit the airport and it rained like crazy, so I was delayed heading home on my deadhead, but finally made it about an hour later than scheduled.

Rocky Mountain High

2011-08-21T15:33:00.001-05:00

Just when I thought that I couldn't stand another day in the oppressive and unhealthy Texas heat, my friend Bruce comes to the rescue with an offer to join him in Colorado Springs for a day of sightseeing at Pikes Peak. He secured a "Yes" from me when he told me that temperatures usually hover in the 40's at the very top. After checking the loads and seeing how open the flights were, I decided to bring Lady friend along too, so she could have a last hurrah before heading back to the little angels of hers in the classroom.

I came in from Honolulu on the morning of the 9th and headed home for a few hours of heavy napping before heading back to the airport that evening with Kirsten. Our flight out to the Springs was heavy, but First Class was open and she and I found ourselves in seats 3E and 3F for the quick flight west, and had to time to enjoy a few Gin and Tonics.

We landed in Colorado Springs a bit late, but my friend Bruce was standing by and he picked us up at the airport and we headed downtown to a local brew pub that Bruce found on the internet, called Phantom Canyon Brewing Company. We decided if we were going to head to the Rockies, we should try some local microbrews.

We all started with "Flight" of beers. Bruce had the 10 sampler, Kirsten and I did the 6. Some where good and some were not so good. Bruce and Kirsten ended up with a pitcher of Hefeweizen. Dinner wasn't the healthiest. I actually ordered their macaroni and cheese with pretzel crumbles. The heartburn would not hit me until later.

While the food was good, the service was only so-so. We decided to forgo giving them our dessert business and instead walked over to Josh and John's, the local ice cream parlor. Bruce and I chose the milkshakes. I opted for the Yellow Cake flavored one. Kirsten just had a boring old cone with Mint Chocolate Chip (she has never been one for the exotic flavors).

That night I woke up at about 2am with heartburn that was pretty bad. So bad I had to sit up in bed for about half an hour while the Pepcid worked it's magic.

We had to get an early start the next day because we had already reserved our train tickets on the Cog Railway for our trip up to peak departing at 10:40 a.m. Bruce took us back to the airport where we picked up our rental car. The compact econo size was not available so we were given a complimentary upgrade to this orange monstrosity.

We reunited with Bruce out in Manitou Springs, at the base camp for our train ride up Pikes Peak. The ride takes about an hour and half each way and you spend about 30 minutes at the top of the peak, which doesn't sound like a lot, but with the lack of oxygen, any longer and you's probably faint.

We purchased liters of water for the ride as the guides informed us that we would lose that much water during the journey.... might be true, but might also be a ploy to get us to spend $4 on each bottle.

We were on the smaller of two trains, the Aspen. Cue the John Denver music.

We were pretty packed into the train. We all had assigned seats of course. We were aft facing so the whole trip was spent leaning forward.

We sat across from a nice lady named Vera. She had brought her two granddaughters along for a little trip. They lived outside Denver, but Vera was originally from the Czech Republic. Bruce and Kirsten got to talk with her about their travels to Prague, but I had to sit their quietly and feel left out.

We started our train ride right on time and made our way up the steep train tracks towards the top of the peak. Our conductor was very informative and pointed out lots of interesting facts along the way, none of which I can remember two weeks after the fact.

It was actually a rather gloomy day in Colorado, but after we made our way above the clouds a few thousand feet, we had nothing but sunshine and cool air!

About two thirds of the way to the top we passed the timberline, where trees stop growing. Just under the ground there is a layer of permafrost all year long, which makes it impossible for trees and large plants to grow. At this point, the views really became spectacular! We also started to experience the "Rocky Mountain High" as we began to experience oxygen deprivation. My ears started to tingle and Bruce turned bright red on his face.

We finally made it 14,110 feet to the top of the peak. The weather was chilly and I loved every minute of it.

Now since this was a trip with Bruce and we were dubbing it a "mini man-cation" we needed to make sure one important ingredient was included.... Single Malt Scotch. I secured a three bottle set of travel size miniature bottles of good Balvenie Scotch for our "tasting" at the top. The trio consisted of 12, 15, and 21 year old malts (naturally Bruce took the 21 year old). We celebrated our exhausting and challenging climb to the top with a wee nip or two.

We had some time to walk around the top and explore the vistas. It was very dry and dusty.

In 1893, Katherine Lee Bates visited the top of the peak and was so inspired she wrote a song, "America the Beautiful". A plaque with the words commemorating the song is at the top.

Just when I thought I would pass out from lack of oxygen, it was time to board the train and begin our journey back to the bottom. At this point we were all a little tired, but the ride down was still pleasant.

We spent a little time walking around Manitou Springs, a little hippy town at the base of the mountain. We ate at a place called Hell's Kitchen. After the dietary disaster the night before you think I would have learned my lesson, but no no no, I opted for the Macaroni and Cheese Pizza for lunch.

Medical Marijuana is also a popular product in the town. We saw lots of signs with the distinctive left around town.

At this point we said our goodbyes to Bruce as he had to make his way back to Denver for the rest of his business trip. Kirsten and I went back to the hotel and freshened up and then went out to my cousin Leslie's house for dinner with her family. I had not seen her in years, so it was nice to spend time visiting and getting to meet her three kids for the first time. The highlight of the evening of course was her husband Bryce's "Media Room to end all Media Rooms". Puts any theatre to shame!

Westminster by Gaslight

2011-08-14T23:50:00.000-05:00

I picked up a London trip for the end of July. It's so unbelievably hot in Texas that it makes going to work enjoyable because you get a break from the heat. I finally conquered my fear of Position #4 on the 777 and am now an "experienced galley". For some reason I have been afraid to fly this position for years and always traded out of it, but I guess some new found confidence made me ready to give it a try and of course I was exceptional at it. I guess now that I am in year 14 of my flying career, nothing scares me anymore (except germs).

My friends Maureen (Mo) and Nancy were on the trip with me. Nancy and I had been saying for a while that we wanted to do one of the London Walks the next time we flew together. I brought the brochure along and on the flight over we decided to give the "Westminster by Gaslight" tour a try. Mo decided it was interesting and came along as well.

Westminster is one of the oldest parts of London and sits on the north bank of the Thames. Westminster got it's name for being the minster, or monastery church, west of the city, since the first big structure to be built was the Abbey, where the monks lived. The area has been the seat of English government for over 1,000 years.

With the London Walks tours, you just show up and the appointed time and pay your 8 pounds to the guide and you get to join the group. We had a pretty well sized group for our tour.

Our guide's name was Fedra and she had a real dry sense of humor which added a unique twist to everything. She started off giving us a bit of background about Westminster and Parliament. She was very knowledgeable and even pointed out real unique details about the intricacies of the buildings. I loved her sarcastic comments. At one point, some folks had to leave the tour and apologized for departing early and her response was "Don't worry, I am sure it is nothing that 20 years of therapy can't fix"..... I love the sharp and witty English folks!

The neighborhoods making up Westminster are unique because they still use gaslights for street lighting in the evening. Now they are turned on automatically versus the olden days when a man had to walk around and manually light each one.

The flats in the area go back to the early Victorian era. Several of the houses are marked for their famous inhabitants. T.E. Lawrence AKA "Lawrence of Arabia" wrote his book here, but lost the manuscript and had to start all over. We learned that when he had writer's block he liked to be "entertained" by discreet gentlemen (escorts).... those Victorians were so so seedy.

I really enjoyed walking around the neighborhood. If I could live in London (my favorite city in the whole wide world), this is how I would want to do it.... I can only imagine the prices!

What I found interesting was that we were just off the Abbey and a bustling part of the city, and yet the neighborhood was so quiet.

A lot of the buildings now are home to MP's (Member's of Parliament) as well as their various political parties. We passed the offices of the Liberal Democrats (which is a strange title seeing that they really aren't all that liberal in our sense of the word.... the real liberal party here is the Labour Party).

During WWII, when London was facing bombardment from the German air raids, underground shelters were opened up. Most people went to the Tube Stations, but anyone with an external basement was legally required to make it available so that if anyone was caught out in the open last minute, they could run to a safe place. Some of the shelter signs are still here, over 65 years later.

We finished the tour back where we started, near Big Ben (the name of the bell, not the clock). It was a pleasant evening for tour and we learned quite a bit about the area. It's always nice to visit a new part of city.

We finished the night up with Indian food and good beer and conversation! I was on the late trip, which doesn't pick up until 1pm so I had the whole next morning to go out and run some errands. I discovered the summer flavor for my Original Source shower gel, Golden Pineapple and also managed to grab up the last few bottles of the Winter flavor, Black Pepper and Cardamon. I also found book #3 in the Corduroy Mansion series by Alexander McCall Smith. Ladyfriend and I are hooked and book #3 is out in the UK, but not back home.

I am looking forward to my trip later in August when I have another 2 day layover. I plan to see a play with some co-workers and then spend the second day with my college friend Amanda and her little girl. We are hoping to go see the White Cliffs of Dover!

Konichiwa

2011-07-27T12:11:00.000-05:00

After an absence of several month (I think it was November of 2010) I finally was brave enough to venture back to Japan. I have been avoiding it since the earthquake and tsunami in March (who am I kidding, I am not senior enough to even smell the trip on a regular basis).

I managed to grab one out of open time when bids finalized for July. I was a bit worried the weather would not cooperate because a typhoon was supposed to skirt around Tokyo right before our arrival. The last two times I was in Tokyo it rained and rained, so I was really hoping to have a nice day to go into Narita.

Fortunately the storm turned to the south and when we arrived in Tokyo the weather was great! Since I was on the early trip, I got to the hotel in the early afternoon. I quickly changed clothes and caught the next bus into town. I forgot to bring socks and all I had were my knee high compression socks for work, so I wore my sneakers without socks and by the end of the day had a blister on my toe.

I spent an hour walking around the grounds of the Narita-san Temple. It was nice and quiet and just what I needed to decompress after 13 hours on a plane with 250 other people. I managed a new foot shot for my Facebook Album. I am up to 52 pictures on it so I perhaps one day I can publish a Coffee Table book and make my fortune.

I know it is customary for people of Buddhist tradition to leave material things at shrines honoring Buddha or ancestors. I guess this one must have been a fan of Evian and Thomas the Tank.

I made my way from the temple down Green Street to the Jet Lag Club. It's a bar that caters to the airline crowd. It's run by a guy named Vincent, who was Cabin Crew for Sabena Airlines, in Belgium until they folded after 9/11. He moved to Japan and opened this bar. It's a neat layout, with lots of airline memorabilia. The highlight for me was Peanut, the Italian Greyhound, who serves as "Assistant Manager".

During my stay there were no earthquakes, or if there were, they were small enough that I did not feel them. There were several major aftershocks a few days before our arrival, so I was a bit on edge about that.

Little Venice and Camden

2011-07-27T11:04:00.001-05:00

Time to catch up on the blogging.... I had hope to do a London Walks tour of Little Venice and Camden Loch last week but we had the whole "Fuel Dump" and diversion back to Dallas. So for the next trip, since we were actually on time, I was able to make a visit to this part of the city. My friend Kathy, who is a Raleigh based, was laying over on the same day so she came along.

Little Venice is part of the Maida Vale section of London, part of the district of Westminster. The poet Robert Browning lived in the area in the 18060's and coined the name Little Venice for the area. Now the canals are populated with houseboats and floating restaurants and shops.

There was a strange green pond scum around some parts of the canal.... must be a summer thing. We stopped at a place called the Waterway for some beers.... being a Friday afternoon, it really started to fill up with people.

Next we made our way over to Camden, which can be accessed via the canals of Little Venice. After spending too much time at the little waterside bar, we missed the last ferry and ended up on an extended tour of the London Underground thanks to a deceptive Tube worker. A nice Australian finally pointed us in the right direction.

Camden, an inner city district in London, is one of the last holdouts of the alternative punk scene that swept the city in the 70's and early 80's and was home to punk rock music. Until her death last week, Amy Winehouse lived in the area.

We had dinner at a place called Lockside Bar & Kitchen. It had a nice outdoor seating area with a view of the Camden Lock. According to the bartender, the burgers were "brilliant" and I have to say they were pretty good. The french fries were also the best I have had in the U.K.

The next day, as we were leaving, the weather turned crappy, so we were lucky we had nice and mild weather for our excursion.

Fuel Dump

2011-07-13T11:53:00.002-05:00

I was able to trade my second trip of the month with open time for London. I was happy to be there over a Sunday, because I like to go to a little Presbyterian Church (Church of Scotland) in Covent Garden for the Sunday evening service, called Crown Court Church. It was going to be a great layover. Even though it was a Sunday, I had found a 2pm London Walks tour of Little Venice and my friends Mary Jo and Lorelei, who were working the later departure, were going to join me for an afternoon of touring and pub visiting. I would then make my way to Covent Garden for evening services and from there go to dinner with a friend I made from the church.

But of course it all fell apart because I made plans to do something on the layover. I was the #2 on this trip, the Coach Galley. I sent the girls out with the beverage carts after takeoff and just as they were finishing, and I was loading the meal carts for dinner, the Purser calls back to say we are diverting because of a Navigational malfunction.

We ended up going back to base since they had the part that needed to be replace, but we were very heavy with fuel as we were supposed to be on a Trans-Atlantic crossing. We couldn't just turn around and land. So we had to dump fuel, which in over 13 years of flying, I had never experienced before. It came out of the back of the wing thru a little nozzle. So over Memphis we turned around and flew back low and slow to have enough time to jettison our Jet-A.

Two and a half hours after take off, we landed at base like normal. We taxied to the gate and then sat for an hour and half why they fixed the problem. They closed the door about 10 minutes before we would have gone "illegal". I guess I should be glad we didn't lose the trip completely.

We ended up arriving in London about noon instead of at 8am. I thought I might still make the walking tour, but we did not get our rooms at the hotel until just before 2pm so it wasn't possible to get to the starting point in time. I ended up running some errands and then napped for a few hours before heading to Covent Garden for church and dinner with my friend John.

Again I was fortunate to be flying with some great ladies in coach this trip. It always makes even the most painful delay more tolerable when you work with nice people. This picture was taken after almost 15 hours on duty all night.... and they can still manage a smile!

4th of July Surprise

2011-07-13T11:34:00.001-05:00

Anytime there is a major holiday, you can pretty much guarantee that I will be in the air somewhere. This 4th of July was no different. I left the night of the 3rd for Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am not generally a fan of this trip. It's a long flight for the equipment that my company puts on that run, the drive downtown takes forever, and it's a short layover during the day and then back to the airport the same night. But it's worth almost 22 hours and you're not even gone two full days.

I had a nice group of coworkers though. My friend Melissa was onboard, and I always enjoy working with her (she is the one I play the green liquor seal game with... see the last part of the entry for December Recap).

When we arrived at the hotel, we had a little invite attached to the back of our room keys. Our pick up was at 7:30 so we were excited about coming down for some light snacks.

Imagine our surprise when we found out it was a full buffet! I had a nice cut of steak, a jacket potato, some corn, salad and a slice of New York Cheesecake! They had wine as well, but we all had to pass on it as were flying that night.

For the record, the captain just has water in his glass.

So stuffed and happy, we made our way back to Ezeiza Airport for the flight home. The place is crazy and crowded at the late hour as all the departures to North America leave at roughly the same time.

We were full and had a group of college aged girls who were down in South America on a Choir tour. They were so incredibly high maintenance! I had one "Diva in Training" who started to cry when I asked her if she wanted "Chicken or Beef?" because she was so uncomfortable with the dry air in the cabin and she was upset about the potential damage this was going to have on her wonderful voice. Give me a break! One of the chaperone's was hitting the wine pretty hard, but after spending a few weeks with this group of gals, I understand why! The climax of the night was when one of the chaperone's, suffering from food poisoning and dehydration decided to come back and faint in the galley, banging her head on a cart latch on the way down. Thankfully we had a Doctor onboard. These girls wore me out!!!!

Latvian Escort

2011-07-07T23:56:00.000-05:00

So the whole reason I got to even go to Riga was to bring 15 orphans to the United States for a month with host families during summer vacation. The agency is a new partner for Airline Ambassadors. It's called New Horizons. You can check out their website at http://newhorizonsforchildren.org

I started my morning at 3:45 with a Lady Taxi to the Riga Airport. At first glance, you think this might be some seedy call girl service, but it really is what is says. A taxi company with female drivers. It was strange to be checking out of the hotel at 3:45am and see the sun had already risen. That's summer in the Baltic's for you. I can only imagine how dark it is in winter time.

We would be traveling to New York via Warsaw, Poland on LOT Polish Airlines. Once we arrived in New York, most of the kids were then supposed to connect to other flights to various cities in the United States. There would be other flight attendants waiting for us in New York to escort them on the last legs of there journey.

I had two Latvian chaperones making the trip with me. Arnis was the leader of the group. He is a Social Worker and runs one of the state run orphanages. Vitta, my other chaperone, is a school teacher who works with a local organization that supports orphaned kids. They both proved invaluable to me. They spoke good English and served as my translators, although most of the kids had some basic understanding.

Here is the group posing before we headed thru security. In addition to our group, there would be another large group flying direct to New York on a later flight, as well as the group that Ingrid was taking to Atlanta. The young man on the right of this picture is Viesturs. He was real standoffish with me at first, but by the end of our journey, he had opened up a little and was more talkative. He was 16 and the oldest orphan and was actually going to spend a year in the states on a student visa. The youngest was little Roberts, down on the first row. He was 5 and was traveling with his sister Zibela. All in all, there were several sets of siblings. Kind of heartbreaking when you realize that all they really have in the world is each other. The blond girl next to Viesturs was Agnija. She was 13 and spoke English very well. She had learned all of her English from Facebook and MTV.

One last picture on Latvian soil as we boarded our LOT jet for Warsaw. This was a quick flight at just over an hour. For most of the kids, this was their first trip on an airplane.

Little Roberts was feisty, but with a face like this, how can you get tired of him?

We were scheduled for a 6 hour layover in Warsaw, which is kind of long. The kids handled it well. However, things started to go downhill pretty quickly when at 12:30, the scheduled departure time for our flight to New York, they announced the flight was delayed until 5:30pm. This was bad news. All but two of the children were scheduled to make connecting flights that evening in New York and with our new arrival time 5 hours later, they would all misconnect. To make things even more complicated, they were all booked on separate domestic tickets, so LOT could not assist me in any of the rebooking. And to further complicate matters, we were mixing with the other group that was flying direct upon our arrival so that some of the kids from my group and some of the kids from their group were making domestic connections together. Arnis was to take two of my kids to Chicago along with 5 kids from the other group. An American Airlines Flight Attendant was taking one of my kids to Denver along with 4 from the other group. The logistics of how this was going to play out now with our delay was all messed up.

I could not find a pay phone in the airport so I had to bite the bullet and use the iPhone. I called Margaret, my contact at Airline Ambassadors, at what would have been 5:30am her time, in Atlanta. In retrospect, I had the easy part of this fiasco because all I had to do was sit in Warsaw and wait. Margaret had to spend her entire day on the phone with New Horizons and work to make new arrangements for everyone.

By mid afternoon everyone was getting exhausted. Some of these kids had traveled for 3 to 4 hours by car to Riga to make the flight and they finally passed out. LOT was not the best at keeping us informed (I'll remember that the next time someone tells me my airline is short on information... I'll tell them to fly to Poland!).

Finally about 3pm they brought hot meals for everyone. Most of the kids were very well behaved with the exception of Andris. He was a little monster. He figured out if he kept going back to the counter, and showing his boarding card he could keep getting food. I think by the end of it he had taken three meals and 5 cans of soda.

The flight load must have dropped off with the delay because we were not full. I was seated in the forward part of the cabin and the kids were more in the middle of the plane. I had the seat next to me open which was nice for a 9 hour flight. I slept most of the way to New York. I did wake up to find the little monster Andris trying to go thru my bag. Good thing I woke up when I did or I might have lost my wallet. I think I had it pretty good overall though. Ingrid, the other escort, had two kids screaming all over the plane, hitting the cabin crew and mocking a disabled person. I was lucky if all I had to deal with was this little grifter.

Our arrival into JFK was a bit chaotic as everyone's itineraries had been changed around. New Horizons had contacted a church they are affiliated with on Long Island and they came to the airport and would be providing the kids and chaperones with a place to stay overnight. The two kids who were staying in the New York area, Djimistris and Kati posed for a photo with their host family. They look kind of shell shocked.

I was also lucky enough to have a young man named Christian meet our group at the airport. He is an American Eagle Flight Attendant and new to the Airline Ambassadors group. He was very helpful in making sure everyone got to where they needed to be.

When it was all said and done, I hopped in a cab and made my way over to a hotel near LaGuardia Airport. I was able to catch the jumpseat out of LGA for DFW the following morning.

Margaret and I always joke that my Airline Ambassador trips have all the drama and this one certainly was full of it. But in the end, everyone got to where they needed to be, albeit a day or two behind schedule.

Latvia

2011-07-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

I had the unique opportunity to participate in an Airline Ambassadors trip at the end of June to Riga, Latvia. A small country located on the Baltic Sea, formerly part of the Soviet Union, Latvia is now part of the European Union.

Getting over there was quite a challenge (although it paled in comparison to getting home). I flew on my own airline to Chicago and Helsinki, Finland. From there I was supposed to connect to an Air Baltic flight to Riga. My flight to Helsinki was delayed by over 4 hours so I missed my connection. The agency for whom I was doing the trip had paid for my ticket from Helsinki to Riga, but it was a non-refunable fare, so I ended up having to buy a last minute walk up fare on Finnair for about $300.

The flight over to Riga only took about an hour from Finland. It was a clear day and I had a wonderful view of the Baltic Coast during the flight.

The population of the town is about 700,000 people out of total population of 2.2 million. The city center and "Old Town" are part of UNESCO and has been listed as a World Heritage Site.

My hotel, the Maritm, was an old Soviet tourist lodge in it's former life and was located near Ķīpsala, a small island on the Daugava River, opposite downtown. It was in a quiet little neighborhood and sat across from Usvaras Park. The park still has a monument to Soviet rule that is affectionately or not so affectionately known as "Stalin's Finger". There was an electric tram line that ran in front of the hotel that would take you downtown in about 5 minutes, all for the price of .70 Lats (about $1.40). Even though Latvia is one of the developing EU countries, the prices are very high for everything. I can only imagine what life is like for the everyday Latvian who makes an average of $14,000 a year.

Another volunteer from Airline Ambassadors, Ingrid, had arrived the day before me. She was a retired agent for Lufthansa in Atlanta. She would be bringing a group of orphans out of Riga to Atlanta the same day I was traveling home. She was waiting for me when I arrived at the hotel. She had spent the day at Jurmala, a seaside town on the Baltic coast.

After getting unpacked and changed into some comfy clothes we took the tram into town and headed for a Russian restaurant that had been suggested by a girl at the Front Desk. The weather was pleasant, probably in the low 70's, and we sat outside and enjoyed caviar with chilled vodka, and pelmeni (Russian dumplings served with sour cream). Of course I washed it all down with a local beer.

Because the city is so far north, the sun is up from about 3am to about midnight. It was nice to be able to walk around into the evening and not worry about it getting dark. On the way back, we met a Canadian woman named Eva, who was staying at our hotel. Both of her parents were Latvian and she was over here for a month to visit with relatives and do some sightseeing.

The next day we met up and made our way back downtown. It was actually kind of warm once the clouds cleared away. I purchased a ticket for a ride on a double decker bus. It was one of those hop off, hop on, deals. It provided a great way to see most of the main sights of the city.

St. Peter's Church is one of the most famous landmarks of the town. The oldest parts of the building go back to 1209, although very little of that part remains today. Over the centuries, new additions were built. The church burned down in 1941, but in 1955, renovations began and the church for the most part is restored. The unique clock tower only has an hour hand.

The Powder, or Sand Tower, is the only surviving tower from the original city walls. It was used to store gun powder.

The House of Blackheads was a German guild hall. It was constructed in the 14 century, although largely destroyed when the Germans bombed the city in 1941. The newer structure was build in the late 90's.

The Museum of the Occupation highlights the rule and occupation of the Soviets in 1940, the Nazi regime in 1941, and again the Soviets from 1944 to 1991. I was surprised to learn that the Latvians initially greeted the Nazis arrival because it meant an end to Soviet occupation. Those sentiments quickly changed and by the end of the war, the Nazis had killed 70,000 Latvian Jews. Also highlighted where the Latvians shipped off to Russian gulags, or work camps. These gulags were a popular place to send dissidents who were critical of communist rule.

The Riga Circus is the only permanently situated circus in the Baltics. It has been at this site for over 150 years.

The most famous monument in the city is the Freedom Tower. It honors the soldiers who died in the Latvian War of Independence of 1918-1920. It was constructed in 1935 and is 138 feet tall. The monument sits on a Rotary thru the main street in town, Brīvības iela (Freedom Street). Fortunately, the monument was left standing during Soviet occupation. Russians tried to change it's meaning to better fit communist ideals, but the symbol of Latvian independence prevailed.

We made a stop at a Russian Orthodox Church, the most popular place for Russian worship in the city. No photography was allowed inside, but like most Orthodox traditions, there were lots of icons and portraits of the saints, incense, and relics.

There are numerous public parks and gardens in Riga. They are very popular with the locals and there are always people hanging out enjoying the good weather on a beautiful day. The canal that runs thru the city even provides an opportunity for paddle boating and canoeing.

One of the most notorious buildings in town is the "Cat House". It's actually not a brothel, which is what first came to my mind. It is called the Cat House because of the feline statues that sit atop the turrets. Legend has it that a wealthy tradesman was denied access to the local merchant guild, so to get his revenge, he constructed this building across the street from the guild hall. He had cat sculptures put on the top of the building, with their butts pointed at the guild hall.

After spending most of the day walking around, Ingrid and I went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. I had a Philadelphia Pizza, which was a white pizza with salmon, cream cheese, and sesame seeds. It was outstanding. We made our way back to the hotel and met up with our new Canadian comrade Eve for drinks. I turned in early since I was leaving on a 6am flight and needed to be at the airport by 4am the next morning.

Freedom Flight

2011-05-27T06:30:00.000-05:00

On May 24th, I had the opportunity to volunteer with the 2011 WWII Freedom Flight. The inaugural program paired Grapevine-Colleyville ISD students with WWII Veterans living in the DFW area. Sixty students were selected and paired up with Veterans who fought in World War II. The idea behind the program was to provide students with an opportunity to interact with someone who experienced the war first hand, asking questions outside the realm of a textbook.

Hundreds of students entered the art and essay contest for a chance to participate. The winning sixty, along with the Veterans, would fly to Washington, D.C. for a day long visit to war memorial sites including the World War II Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The event was sponsored by my airline, as well as the Ft. Worth Air Power Association. Former news anchor Mike Snyder was the Master of Ceremonies for the day.

I was part of the return crew, working the leg from D.C back to Dallas/Ft. Worth. Because of length of time between the departure to DC and the arrival back to DFW, we were not legal to work both segments, so some people worked out and others worked back. Several of my friends were also working either the outbound or inbound flight with me.

We all got to the airport early that morning to help get everyone checked in. Between the 43 Veterans (42 men, 1 woman who served as a W.A.S.P.) and the 60 students, guardians and media folks, the 757 would be full. Additionally, parents and students were given a pass to come thru security and be part of the send off festivities. My airline has a special plane that has been designated Flagship Freedom, to honor those who have served in the nation's armed forces, and that would be the tail we used that day.

After some speeches by various folks, they began boarding the flight to Washington. Four of us working back were deadheading on a scheduled flight that left about 20 minutes after the charter, so we made our way over to the lounge for that flight.

One of the flight attendants working back with us, deadheaded on the earlier flight and she was there as the plane arrived in Washington, and snapped a picture of the water cannon salute they received from the DCA Fire Department.

We arrived in D.C. a little behind schedule and apparently when they loaded the busses, they thought they had everyone so when we got outside, we found out we had been left behind! Everyone was assigned to one of four busses (Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog) and somehow our names were checked off as present and accounted for. The Flight Service Manager in charge of the event got us in touch with the GM for DCA and we got a voucher and took a cab to the first stop, the WWII Memorial. We arrived about a half hour after the group did but we missed out on a visit with Bob Dole, who met the Veterans as they arrived at the site. Mary Kay, one of the flight attendants who was there for it snapped a picture, which I will borrow.

Being a fairly new site, I had never visited this particular memorial before. It opened to the public in 2004 and sits across from the Washington Monument on the Mall. Behind it is the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial consists of a large pool and fountain with a North and South Arch, one commemorating the Pacific theater, and the other the Atlantic. There are 56 granite pillars representing the 48 states at the end of the war in 1945, as well as the eight territories (including Alaska and Hawaii).

The Freedom Wall on the west side of the memorial has 4,048 gold stars, each representing 100 Americans who lost their lives during the war.

The Veterans laid a memorial wreath at each arch as we paused for a moment of silence to remember those who lost their lives.

It was a rather warm day in Washington and for some of the Veterans the heat was too much. We had a large supply of water and food though and the airline sent along our Medical Director and several nurses from headquarters who kept an eye on everyone.

After a sack lunch, we made our way to the Iwo Jima Memorial, or Marine Corp. Memorial. It sits along Arlington National Cemetery and the monument honors members of the U.S.M.C who have given their lives in defense of the USA since 1775. The sculpture is based on the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal showing troops raising the flag during the battle of Iwo Jima. Of the six men in the photograph, three died during the battle. It is probably the most famous photograph taken during the war. Rosenthal won the Pulitzer Prize for it.

The Memorial was dedicated by President Eisenhower in 1954 (His granddaughter Mary Eisenhower was one of the dignitaries who traveled with us from Dallas for the festivities), on the 179th anniversary of the Marine Corp and in 1961 President Kennedy issued a proclamation that a flag should fly at the site 24 hours a day. It's one of the few official memorial sites where this is required.

When we arrived at the site, the Marine Corp Honor Guard was there to do some exercises for our benefit. They played their theme song and marched around the memorial, and afterwards come and spoke with the Veterans, and we all had time to walk around the memorial.

The next stop was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. We arrived there in time for the 4:30 scheduled changing of the guard. The memorial site was constructed in 1920 to be the resting place for the remains of an unknown soldier who died in World War I. The United Kingdom and France also have something similar (recall that it is tradition for Royal Weddings at Westminster Abbey for the bride to leave her bouquet at the tomb). In 1956, remains from a soldier from WWII and from the Korean War were interred, and in 1984, the remains from a soldier killed in Vietnam were interred (however in 1998 his remains were exhumed and DNA identified him as Lt. Michael Blassie. His remains were handed over to his family for burial and now at the site of his interment the tomb reads "Honoring and Keeping Faith with America's Missing Servicemen").

As we arrived at the memorial, tourists all stopped and clapped as our Veterans made their way to the site. Some came up and hugged them or shook their hands. One lady was crying. It was very emotional.

One thing we learned about the soldiers at this site is that when WWII veterans are present at the Tomb, the guarding soldier will drag his foot as he walks, so that the tap on his heel will make a scuffing sound.

During the summer months, the guard is changed every half hour, and during the winter it is changed every hour, while the cemetery is open. At night when the cemetery is closed, it is changed every two hours. There is a guard assigned to the tomb 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has been guarded continuously since 1937, regardless of inclement weather. To be chosen as a guard is one of the highest honors, and of those selected for training, only a fraction successfully pass.

After leaving Arlington Cemetery, we made our way past the Pentagon and the Air Force Memorial before arriving back at DCA. At the gate, the Veterans were presented with a medal by their student ambassadors and everyone was given a challenge coin designed to commemorate the trip.

Shortly before we left DCA, we noticed some weather moving into North Texas and Oklahoma but it was forecast to be gone by the time we arrived at 9pm (or so we thought).

We served a dinner on the flight home. Everyone received what we consider a domestic first class meal. After dinner, Mike Synder did a "Mail Drop" where the Veterans were presented with letters from their families and friends telling them how important and how proud they were of them. Mike also asked each of us to announce over the P.A. why we had volunteered for this trip. All of us had some tie to the war thru our families. I explained that my paternal grandfather, Leonard Harris, was a Staff Sargent in WWII stationed in New Guinea. Although he died before I was born, his military service was something I was proud of and by working this flight I felt it was a way to honor his memory.

Here we are in the back galley after the meal service. Greg is wearing the dog tags of both his dad, who fought in World War II, as well as his Grandfather who fought in World War I. Beth and Mary Kay both had pictures of their fathers.

I also enjoyed talking with Mary Eisenhower, the granddaughter of President Eisenhower. She heads up an organization called People to People, started by her grandfather, that allows students to travel and spend time with their contemporaries in other countries.

About 8pm we got word that Dallas was closed for weather. So we were slowed down and put in a holding pattern. We finally reach critical fuel levels around 10pm and were diverted to Houston. When we landed, we learned just how bad the storms had been. When I turned on my phone, my next door neighbor and co-worker Tonya had sent me this picture taken from her backyard, in a text message.

She estimated that the tornado was about 1/4 mile away. I spoke with my family and they confirmed that some really bad weather had come thru the metroplex. We finally took off for Dallas shortly before midnight, but since we had to fly around the weather, we did not land into DFW until just after 1:30am. There were supposed to be homecoming festivities but due to our late arrival it was very muted. There had been a major hail storm at the airport. Hail the size of baseballs fell over the southern part of the airport, smashing windows and denting cars parked in the south lot. Folks on airplanes still at the gate had to be evacuated into the terminal and the designated tornado shelters (bathrooms and stairwells). Sixty airplanes were taken out of service for hail damage. All in all a total mess!

However, the Freedom Flight was still a memorable experience for all of us involved, and even with the delays, I was glad to be a part of it.

Ireland

2011-05-11T21:18:00.000-05:00

May is another reserve month for me, when I am at the beck and call of the airline. They called me on Friday morning for an afternoon deadhead to Chicago to work a trip to Dublin, Ireland. Longtime readers of the blog may recall my 2008 layover in Dublin (you can refresh your memory at http://ronno1976.blogspot.com/2008/07/when-irish-eyes-are-smiling.html). It was still exciting to get to go back and I was lucky I was assigned that trip considering all the garbage everyone else was getting assigned.

From Chicago, flights to Europe are so much shorter than what we are used to... especially to Ireland. The flying time was just under 7 hours going over. We arrived at the hotel and enjoyed a nice breakfast while we waited for our rooms. I set my alarm for 2:30 or so and then woke up and headed downtown to do a little exploring. I wanted to go to Temple Bar, the area with pubs and restaurants. On my way there, it was misting and cloudy, but I had brought my umbrella and was prepared for the worst.

When I got down to the main drag, I encountered three separate protests for three separate causes. The first was a large group of young people urging the legalization of marijuana. I had to hold my breath as they marched by, if you know what I mean.

The next group was protesting persecution of Falon Gong in China. The People's Republic of China has classified it as an evil religion so they are subject to persecution by the government.

And finally I came upon a group raising awareness for the civil unrest in Libya. They were chanting for the departure of Gaddafi.

After making my way thru all the evil unrest, I crossed the River Liffey and made my way to Temple Bar. I found a quaint little pub called Fitzgerald's and had a couple of Red O'Hara's (beer) and some Shepherd's Pie with mushy peas. Yum!

I had to hightail it back to the hotel by 6pm though because the free wine comes out at that time and you have to be there right at 6 or the Continental Airlines crews will drink the wine designated for our airline!

After a class of mediocre red, I bid my farewell to the crew (I did not quite mesh with them. It was hard enough having to be on a plane with them, so I opted to skip the group dinner) and went back to my room and began to wind down. Our pick up was at 7:50 the next morning (12:50am body clock time).

One cool thing about Dublin is that it is a Pre-Clearance city. Customs and Immigration officers from the United States are stationed over in Dublin and you do all your formalities before you get on the plane (similar to Canada) so when you land in Chicago, you walk right into the terminal without having to mess with passports or forms). We arrived early and I was able to catch an earlier deadhead back to base!

The Royal Wedding (more like the tail end of it)

2011-05-02T08:58:00.000-05:00

My final London trip of the month had us arriving shortly after the Royal Wedding started. Luckily we landed a bit early and the traffic into the city was almost non-existant. I've never made it downtown so fast. We got to our rooms about 1:15pm and 10 minutes later I saw the happy couple on television as they came out to have the first kiss and wave at the spectators.

My room on the 18th floor faced the Thames and Central London so I also got great pictures of the planes as they did their celebratory flyover. Talk about luck.... Nine times out of ten we are facing Earl's Court.... the ghetto side.

After the fly over, I quickly changed clothes and joined up with some of my crew as we made our way down to Hyde Park to catch some of the festivities. We did not want to deal with public transport, so we just hoofed it, which took about a half hour. We arrived first at Kensington Park and stopped for pictures at the Prince Albert Memorial.

One of our stews, Scott, decided to bring his son Jake along for the layover. What a "once in a lifetime" experience for him. Scott's wife was scheduled to work over on a flight the next day so Jake would actually be handed over to her and get a 48 hour layover out of the deal.

Hello! Magazine had placed little commemorative flags all over the city so I grabbed one to have on hand to aid me in my celebration.

Once we crossed over into Hyde Park and made our way over to the big screens, we were right in the thick of it. We saw so many happy people celebrating. Lots of people had brought blankets and made a picnic out of it. Jumbo screens were erected at the side of the park so everyone could watch the festivities live. Vendors were selling Pims (a gin liqueur), Champagne and Gin and Tonics as well as a wide selection of food items. We all spent two pounds and bought an official copy of the wedding program as a souvenir.

One of the funniest parts of the day was seeing all the ladies (and a few of the men) dressed up in wedding dresses! Talk about getting into the spirit!

One nice lass let me pose for a picture with her. I imagine she was drawn to my very cool English derby hat! And to think I was criticized by so many for making this hat purchase.

When we arrived at the park, they were rebroadcasting clips of the wedding, but then went live and we got to watch the happy couple leave the palace in their Astin Martin convertible. The crowd cheered!

One of the drawbacks of going out in public in London is the lack of toilets.... there might be a pay toilet every few blocks if you are lucky. I was happy to see hundreds of port-a-potties had been set aside for those people who had to visit the loo.

As we left the park and stopped by the lake for a photo, you might be able to see all the people in little blue paddle boats behind us. That would have been a fun thing to do if we had more time.

As we walked back thru Kensington Park we stopped at the Princess Diana Memorial, where a lot of people were relaxing and enjoying the fountain. The day remained overcast but we managed to avoid the rain and the temperatures remained cool.

The final stretch of the walk took us thru the public gardens at Kensington. With the warmer than average temperatures they have been having, the flowers were all in bloom and looking good!

The girls wanted to go shopping and look for "Fascinators", the funky hats all the women were wearing for the big day. Speaking of which, everyone in London was saying that Princess Beatrice's hat looked like it was sponsored by McDonalds.... just sayin'. Lee and I broke away and did some last minute souvenir shopping before heading back to the hotel. I did a little internet time in the crew room and then met up with Purser Scott for some beers and then great Lebanese food. I love hummus!

The next day as we were waiting for our plane to be cleaned, Aisle Scott (not to be confused with Purser Scott) and Cokie had to show off their royal head gear. Nice look, but personally I think Scott looked more like the Burger King.

Pre-Wedding Fever in London

2011-04-25T09:55:00.000-05:00

Always happy to fly London, I lucked out this month and held a vacation replacement line with three London trips. I even snagged position 5 on the 777, which once I got the hang of it, I have come to realize is the sweetest position on the plane (First Class Galley).

I'm on the late late trip this month which means we don't land until 12:15 in the afternoon. In order to maximize your layover time, you have to hit the ground running and try to hang on until bedtime.

I was flying with a pretty fun group of gals on my last trip and we decided to head down to Buckingham Palace to check out the preparations for the Royal Wedding on Friday.

I quick ran over to Boots and Waitrose for my layover provisions. I always hit up Boots for my friend Dr. Terry who is addicted to their antacid, Remegel. There used to be a gal named Eunice who worked there and she thought it was strange that I would by so many boxes of the stuff so I had to tell her all about Dr. Terry and his heartburn. It got to the point that every time I would step in to make my purchase she wanted an update on Terry's condition. She's since transferred to another store.

It started out as a beautiful day for walking around outside. It was kind of warm, but still very pleasant.

London is all a buzz with wedding excitement. A couple of the girls on the crew needed Oyster cards (it's a tube pass) and they even have a special commemorative card to honor the engagement and wedding.

There is also no shortage of cheesy gifts. We saw everything from aprons to tea towels, tea cups to playing cards, stickers to magnets. You name it, they made it. Susan is modeling one of the more fashionable aprons we saw.

I guess the increase in tourists and sightseers has led to an increase in petty theft because we saw the following sign. I sure could have used that advice for our crew when we were in Madrid last month!

The Union Jack is everywhere. The Mall, the road leading up to the Palace, had every light post covered with a Union Jack flag. This will be the final leg of the carriage ride from Westminster.

My great crew (from Left to Right, Mary Jo, Becky, Susan (small world, I went to the same high school as her parents), Barri Lynn, and Truely) posing for a shot outside the palace gates.

Standing in front of the palace on this photo, you can see the Green observation platform that was constructed for the press and selected visitors. They will have a front row seat for "the waves" that the Royal couple will offer from the balcony of the palace. My friend John, who I met at the Presbyterian church I attend here, told me they had a lottery for the civil service employees working at Parliament (of which he is one) for 100 seats. Those lucky folks chosen will have the best view in the house. But he explained there are a lot of civil service folks so the odds are not that good you will be selected.

We next made our way thru St. James' Park because we wanted to head over to Westminster to see what preparations were being made for that venue. You can always tell when it is a beautiful day because the public parks are packed with people and today was no exception!

As we approached Parliament and the Abbey, the area became very crowded. Obviously, everyone else had the same idea we did.

A viewing platform was also erected here at Westminster for the media to catch a glimpse of the couple as they come and go from the church.

The girls decided they wanted to do a bit more shopping (women!) so it was here that I decided to take my leave. I wanted to head over to St. Paul's for their Easter Eve service and of course pay a visit to Yo! Sushi for some dinner (the waitresses consider me a regular apparently!). I figured I could walk up the Thames and it would take me about a half hour. About five minutes into the walk I hear a huge clap of thunder and shortly after that it started raining! Luckily, I walked next to the buildings avoiding a lot of the rain but I was still moist by the time I got to the restaurant.

The service at St. Paul's was really great. I love "High Church", especially on important holidays in the church calendar. The service also marked the occasion of the first Baptisms, Communions and Confirmations of new members of the Church of England, so I got to witness all those events. At over 2 hours, it was a long service, but well worth it.

I headed back with a stop at Picadilly. I wanted to see if any of the area around that landmark was decorated for the wedding.

It was about 10pm or so by the time I got back to the hotel. The tube stop by the hotel was closed so I had to get off at the stop before and walk about 20 minutes. By this time I was exhausted. I guess it tends to happen when you go on very little sleep.

I slept great, obviously. The flight home was a breeze. We have been real light in First all month and we only had five people. Our trip home took us way north over the 66th North parallel so we got to see a lot of Greenland. Normally we just hit the southern tip. I snapped a few photos of the rugged terrain and some of the glacier beds. We have to carry extra oxygen canisters for flying over 66N because the terrain is so high you can only descend to 17,000 feet in a decompression .

We go back to London on Thursday night so we will be there for the Wedding, although we land at noon and the festivities get started at 11am. I hope are able to be a part of at least a bit of the madness next week!

Bajan Style!

2011-04-21T16:24:00.000-05:00

I picked up a quick two day trip from a friend this month. One leg to Barbados, one leg home. I love the layover in Barbados. There is just something about the laid back Bajan lifestyle. A couple of summers ago we had 30 hour layovers, but now it's just a short overnight.

When we checked in, we were all given suites. Probably because we would only be occupying the rooms for a short overnight. I had a big comfortable bed and a jacuzzi in the bathroom!

By the time we got the hotel it was about 8:30pm. I changed clothes and headed across the street to "Just Grillin'", an outdoor restaurant I used to eat at when we had the long layovers. I ordered a Jerk Chicken salad and then went back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the crew. We all sat out by the swimming pool. There was a wedding adjacent to the pool area, so we enjoyed listening to the music. We all got free drink coupons, but it's still Lent, so I am not drinking. I gave mine to my friend Moa, so he could enjoy an extra rum punch.

In the morning, I snatched a few photos from my balcony of the pool area and the ocean.

Holy Spit!

2011-03-29T15:11:00.000-05:00

Well, my recent Madrid trip goes down as one of the most interesting I have ever had. We got a late start because our plane we were taking had diverted into Oklahoma City on the way to Dallas with a medical emergency. In the end, we were about 3 hours late getting into Madrid the next day. I had planned to try to cover a lot of ground but we arrived so late, it was almost 1pm when we got to the hotel. So plans changed, and after a quick trip to the MaxCoop (Grocery Store) for provisions, the whole crew decided to meet at 6 for dinner. Roxanna, one of my co-workers knew of a Beer Hall called La Fabrica, a few bus stops down from the hotel that served good food and drink (which I would skip because I was not drinking).

The restaurant is off Plaza Castellana, an area along the main road to the Prado populated with many government buildings. It's an easy trip with the frequent busses going past the hotel. We paused for a group shot. I had my finger on my lip because I was trying to cover up a cold sore I had, so everyone else gave me a sympathy finger.

The restaurant serves a great selection of "comida castellana" or Spanish cuisine. I had the fried "setas" or mushrooms followed up "mejillones" or steamed muscles in olive oil and garlic. The food was amazing and they even had non-alcoholic beer!

The fun evening all came to a grinding halt when a young gypsy woman came into the restaurant with a paper that stated she was poor and needed money. She took advantage of the large size of our party and the fact that we were getting ready to settle our bills. The gypsy set her paper down on the table on top of Roxanna's wallet and then quickly took back the paper with the wallet underneath.

Roxanna realized it about 30 seconds later. I knew right away she had been pickpocketed, so I jumped up and ran outside and down the street after the "gitana". When I caught up with her I told her in Spanish to give me back my friend's wallet. She said she didn't have it and I screamed at her to give it to me and grabbed her. She then proceeded to spit on my face. I was so stunned (no one has ever spit on me before) that I just stopped, at which point she and her co-conspirator took off.

I made my way back to the restaurant, without the wallet. I went into the bathroom to clean up and we waited for the police to come. When they arrived we gave them our statements. Luckily, it was just Roxy's layover wallet so there was no passport or I.D. in it. But she did have two credit cards, about 80 Euros and her iPhone.

We went back to the hotel and worked on canceling everything. Luckily, Linda, our purser had the same bank and I had the same VISA card, so we were able to use the phone numbers we had to call and cancel everything. The Chase Bank card was the hardest to cancel because they would not accept the charges on the International Collect number they post. We did everything using the Skype on my phone, but we had a poor connection and the calls kept dropping. It only added to the frustration level. It took about two hours, but we finally got everything taken care of.

Next we made our way to the local police precinct to get a copy of the police report so Roxanna would have something on paper in case she had issues with the banks or her cell phone company.

We gave our statements to the intake officer and then he put together a report for us. We walked back to the hotel mentally and physically exhausted. I think it was after midnight when I finally made it to bed.

Lessons learned: be mindful of our wallet, don't take more than you need (i.e. take a debit card, small amount of local currency, and a photocopy of our I.D), and when the gypsies come to your table, make sure you have secured your personal belongings.

Redeye Flight from Honolulu

2011-03-22T14:08:00.001-05:00

I decided to practice using my Flip camera on the way home to capture what a "Day in the LIfe of Ron" is like. It's pretty amateurish but it was fun. Kudos to Bobby for his impressive monologues.

Honolulu

2011-03-22T13:59:00.001-05:00

For the month of March I have been flying mostly Honolulu. I held turns to Cozumel but realized after the fact that the only reason I held them was because it was spring break and no one wants to haul the vacationers down to Mexico. I was successful in trading them all for other things with the exception of one which I did last week. It was mostly drama free except for a passenger who got argumentative with me when I told her that she could not sit in a row of three with two other people plus her two infant twins since there is only 4 oxygen masks in case of a decompression. She seemed more concerned about the inconvenience of moving than the well being of her children.

But I digress.... anyway, I traded for several Hawaii trips. Not really anything out of the ordinary. We did have some of the "simplest" people on the first trip, including a woman who complained that her cell phone did not work at 35K feet over the Pacific Ocean, another who wanted to know what the currency exchange rate was for Hawaiian money (seriously?!?!) and yet another who wanted us to call the police on a teenager sitting behind her who kept kicking her seat.

My most recent trip was fun because my friend Bobby was on it with me. He's been on leave for most of the last year so I had not had a chance to fly with him recently. He was on my Tampa trip a few years back where we spent the day in Sarasota.

(http://ronno1976.blogspot.com/2009/03/strolling-down-memory-lane.html)

I had a pretty decent room this last trip with a view of the atrium area and an ocean view. Normally I do not see this much water!

Almost the entire crew went to Top of Waikiki. Given my dry spell, the bartender Jeff took pity on me and created a special "mocktail" just for me. It was a combination of guava and cranberry juice with fresh mint and lime. It was pretty refreshing.

Afterwards I switched to non-alcoholic German beer, which was actually pretty good!

My appetizer consisted of Kalbi, which are little sliders made of braised beef with bock choy.

Of course everyone else was drinking adult beverages. Jeff the bartender even made a drink in honor of our FO J.J. We appropriately dubbed it the "Flying J.J."!

Kevin enjoyed a dirty martini. When asked how dirty he wanted it, he replied "Cristina Aquillera dirty" so you can see how much more cloudy it was compared to Karla's.

We had great views from the rotating restaurant. The pink building is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, which was the first resort on the island, and a favorite spot with Teddy Roosevelt.

Bobby and I broke with the group at the end of happy hour and went to Siam Square for Thai food. On the way back we stopped at a Ukelele store. They were pretty pricey. The "tenor" that Bobby is holding priced out at about $380! (But it came with a free carrying case).

The next morning we went to Eggs n'Things. It' a pretty famous breakfast spot, but I had never eaten there before. We only had to wait about 20 minutes, which is pretty good, as the lines can get pretty long.

I ordered the pancakes, eggs, and corned beef hash. Nothing like a big breakfast to start the day.

Bobby's inner tourist kept coming out during our morning walk.

I was dragged into a Baptist church for Sunday morning services. I figured I owed it to Bobby since I have dragged him to my traditional church services. This was a contemporary service with a Praise team and rock music. Songs consisted of three verses sung five times. Lots of hands in the air and lots of "Amens" during the sermon.