O-town

No... not the short lived boy band from days of yore... My slang for Orlando. I am a native Floridian so I am allowed to call it that. I ended up with a reserve trip that had a decent layover in the land of Disney.

It was actually a trip out of the MIA/FLL domicile, so I had to deadhead into Fort. Lauderdale to start the trip. I was a little miffed because I put myself on the standby list for a seat in First, and when you are traveling on company business you are supposed to get priority over Non-Rev passengers, but in the end, the agents put a Non-Rev in the last seat in First. I did get to sit in an aisle seat but I was next to these two 16 year old kids.

This was strange.... they were a couple and their parents were letting them vacation together in Puerto Rico together. What kind of parents would do that? They were all over each other the whole flight. I was thinking they should have fashioned a cover out of the the blankets for a little privacy. People want to join the Mile High Club anyway they can I guess. I think with a little more privacy, they would have.

I ended up meeting up with my friend Janet when I got to Orlando. We used to work together at The Disney Store when she lived back in Texas. She and her husband moved to Florida a couple of years ago. She drove in and we had lunch together at Bennigan's. It was fun to sit and catch up about the "old days".


This reserve month is wrapping up. It wasn't too exciting, hence the shortage of posts. I have to serve another reserve rotation next month, but I will start flying International on July 2, so hopefully I will get some more exotic locales.

Taking Christian Home (part of the way)

I just returned from an Airline Ambassadors trip. I took a little boy named Christian DeCenas from St. Louis to Miami. Originally I was to take him to Miami and bring two little girls (Kelin and Raquel - read about them in prior blog entries) along, and take them home to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Sadly, a TACA airliner crashed in TGU and the airport was permanently closed, so their trip has been delayed. But I was still needed to take Christian to Miami. From there, an Eagle F/A named Derek would take him to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

I flew up to STL the night before and then met Christian and his wonderful host family at the airport at 4:45am (nice and early). Our flight to Miami was fine. The crew was great and real helpful. We got to Miami a bit early and I handed him over to Derek and as luck would have it, got on a flight bound for home that was delayed from earlier so I did not even have to sit around Miami and wait at all.

I am a bit sad that I won't be able to take Kelin and Raqeul home. They will be going now into San Pedro Sula at the end of the month, but their travel dates conflict with some international training I have scheduled. The good news is Kelin's scoliosis has been corrected and Raquel has had some preliminary work on her bilateral hip dislocation so both girls are on the mend.

Westward to Alaska

I am a bit delayed in posting the pictures from my Alaska trip. I picked it up last week. We flew out on Memorial Day. The flight was full with the usual cruise ship crowd. And of course we sold out of food before we were even half way thru the cabin, but once we landed in beautiful Anchorage, it did not matter.

The high temperature while I was there was 65 degrees. A nice change from the oppressive heat of home. I hung out on the layover with Susan, one of my co-workers. We started at 7am on Tuesday (mind you ANC is three hours behind home so it isn't THAT early) and went to this place called the White Spot for breakfast. It was very local (but I will say the name sounds kind of racist) but the food was great. I had HUGE pancakes and some reindeer sausage.

We then headed down to Pete's to rent our bikes. He takes care of all the flight crews. We ran into Bonnie, another co-worker, when we got there.

Susan and I decided to do the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail (http://www.trailsofanchorage.com/kincaid_park.htm). It is about 8 miles one way, so the round trip is 16 miles. It hugs the coast out past the airport, then goes up a rather steep mountain. We ended up walking our bikes up the mountain, but riding down was fun. We saw a mother moose and her babies, but we were mindful to keep our distance. At one point you are at the end of the runway and it looks like the planes are going to land right on top of you.

We detoured on the way back to the Sugaya Asian Grocery Store. We had lunch there and got some snacks for the red-eye home. We also ran into Bonnie again. Susan and I were exhausted....

We got back to the hotel around 3pm. I was tired and my nads were sore from the bike ride and I just wanted to sleep for a few hours, but the hotel is getting renovations so the constant jack hammering made it hard to sleep. I think they stopped around 5pm so I might have got an hours worth of sleep.

The flight home had about 40 open seats in the back which was nice. We had the last row to ourselves. There was this one gentleman we had to cut off because he was being rather liberal with the "toddies".

Some more LA fun

I've been flying the same trip all month, but we really had a great time this week. The second day of our trip, we fly a transcon flight from LA to Orlando and all month we have had the same #5 FA, Jacquie, who is LA based. For our layover this week, she came to the hotel to take us out and show us around Manhattan Beach.

We all met up at the Rain Bar, our hotel's lobby bar and grill. After some wine (I had beer) Marty, Marguerite, and I hopped into Jacquie's car and she drove us around and down to a part of town she likes to visit called Manhattan Beach. I had never been there before, but it was awesome. It kind of reminded me of San Francisco or Seattle. It was very hilly and had a great view of the Pacific Ocean. It totally changed our opinion of Los Angeles.



We ended up going to this place called Sloopy's. It was just normal American cuisine, but it was a very funky atmosphere and very unique. The restaurant is actually a covered atrium and there is a fire pit in the center of the building. The weather was rather chilly and it had rained earlier in the day so the fire pit was quite welcome.



I ordered the pastrami on a poppy seed bun and some onion rings and finished it off with what has to be the best peanut butter milkshake I have ever had.

After dinner, Jacquie drove us around the area before heading back to the hotel.

Marty and Marguerite and I went back the lobby. They have free Wi-Fi in the lobby and they needed to borrow my laptop to get online and work on their schedules for June (our bids had just come out for the next month).

The next day we met up with Jacquie again for our scheduled flight from LAX to Orlando, which was pretty uneventful. We were full because of the holiday weekend. After Orlando we said our goodbyes to Jacquie and then flew back to base and up to Tulsa for night two of our layover.


This morning we had a full flight back to base. A lovely older woman gave me a nice smelling Amish candle. Our turn-around to Reno was long, but we were not full so it wasn't too bad and the folks were nice.

Our Captain, Paul was gifted in calligraphy so he made us a thank you sign out of ACARS paper.

They're Baaaaack!

Well, my arch-nemesis (or is the plural nemesi) the Armadillo, the state animal, the Texas turkey has returned. I was checking on my sprinklers last night and I'll be d@mned if there wasn't the biggest armadillo I have ever seen just digging away in my backyard.

I chased him around my yard screaming until he finally took off.

They don't normally show up until July or August, so this is going to be a long, difficult summer.
:(

Irving and Ana

Did a quick escort trip today, but it actually didn't involve leaving town. I went to the airport and helped a young man named Irving Adolio Juarez and his mother Ana make their connection to St. Louis. Normally the child is traveling alone, hence the need for an Airline Ambassador as an escort, but Irving was able to have his mother come along.

He has a condition called Tetrology of Fallot, which is a heart defect resulting in low oxygen levels in the blood.

This was their first time on an airplane, their first time out of El Salvador, so they were a little shell shocked. I was asked to come to the airport and help them maneuver thru the airport to make their connecting flight. They were both super nice and I enjoyed spending some time with them. Irving is one of ten children with Ana and her husband. Now that Ana is in the states, her hubby is holding the fort with the nine other children. They must be good Catholics.

They were a little late on the arrival but luckily their flight to St. Louis was delayed for a mechanical so they made it in plenty of time.

Little Irving will be in St. Louis thru the summer and will have a series of operations to try to fix his heart defect.

The Perfect End of a Long Day

I picked up a 14 hour two day trip to make a little extra money. It also got back early enough that I could still take my mama to dinner for Mother's Day. The first day involved a Fresno turn and then down to Austin for a short layover. Storms in Austin delayed us a bit and then to make matters worse, two other crews (with longer layovers I might add) kind of shanghai'd the crew van to the hotel and we had to wait an additional 20 minutes in the sweltering and humid heat of Austin for the next van (I felt like I was in Florida again).

I was in for a nice surprise when we arrived at the hotel and the front desk clerk had complimentary beers for all of us. Nothing closes out a long and stressful day like an ice cold beer, in this case, Shiner Bock.

Sunday we got off to LAX on time, but then had a little mechanical that slowed us up for our flight home. To make matters worse, the latch on the forward trash can in First Class was broken (I was not aware of this). When we rotated off at takeoff, the trash can flew out of the container. Normally not a big deal except that the liquid drain in First goes into that trash can so literally gallons and gallons of old coffee, water, soda, etc can gushing out and into the cabin.

It was all pretty much contained in the galley cart housing , but then when we started to descend, it all came gushing forward. Fifteen blankets later, I managed to keep it from rushing into the galley and cockpit. It was nasty.

Lesson learned.... double check the latches.