DISCLAIMER: Warning! No user-serviceable parts inside. Warranty void if syntax seals are broken. Not responsible for any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to amuse. Processed in a facility that also handles jet fuel. Pilot does not carry cash.
I have been off for a really long time. Almost 2 weeks. I was super Mr. Mom. Had the kids by myself for 2 weeks. Had thanksgiving at the house of Nadius a.k.a. Gonad the Barbarian. Brought 3 pies and a bean salad originally designed by Doofy’s mom. Wife gave me shit for being such a chick. My breasts do feel a little tender…
Wife’s mom had high-risk, massively invasive surgery in SFO to remove a pesky perforated 6 foot section of lower intestine. Wife spent two glorious weeks at her side in what she described as a “1940′s mental institution from hell.”
Endless mélange of scuzzy inch square industrial green tile a la Jacob’s Ladder. Cramped guest cells (also green) under sallow institutional lighting and shellacked in the miserable gestalt of miles of removed intestine. (This hospital specializes in and performs endless repetitions of this one specific Sewer pipe sectioning.)
Mom-in-law’s 4 hour procedure takes 9 hours. She is unconscious for 4 days waking only to vomit scream and pass out. The pain medication makes her nauseous. The nausea makes her puke, which tears the sutures in her abdominal muscles and intestinal tract -thus the screaming. (Apparently that’s supposed to hurt. I think she was probably just faking.)
My wife begs the staff to cut the dosage of her pain meds and put her on auto drip. The vomiting and screaming encourage her to press her self-medicate button which fires up the nausea, screaming and passing out and the carousel goes round again.
The doctors refuse. Their reasoning is auto-drip patients are seemingly better at “Overdose and Die” than the waking/vomiting/screaming patients and they don’t want to give either team an unfair advantage. 2 recipients of this procedure die while my wife is in the hospital, but it’s unclear if they were on the screaming or sleeping team, so I guess the score is tied.
My wife cuts the dosage by fixing the frequency at 23 minutes between doses (exactly). She stays in the haunted green cube imbedded in the only chair. One of those vinyl visiting convertibles that is equally bad at being chair or bed. Comfort designed to encourage you to leave. She presses that little button every 23 minutes for 27 hours.
On thanksgiving she’s texts me she’s enjoying a bag of chips and a coke from the vending machine. The cafeteria is closed and dark for the holiday and 23 minutes is barely enough time to make it to the bathroom and back, much less to the nearest restaurant 4 blocks away.
This continues our recently invented tradition of being apart and mostly miserable for personal events and holidays. Every family needs traditions. I was pushing for reindeer sweaters and olive loaf, but this is fun.
After 27 hours, the doctors grudgingly acknowledge that her mom sucks at “Overdose and Die” and an auto drip isn’t really going to make or break her game. They relent.
Ever insecure and jealous of the attention the bowels are getting, Mom-in-law’s brain stages an allergic jello match against the painkillers. She hallucinates badly for the next 3 days. Fun stuff: The walls are on fire. Souls are coming out of the only painting in the room and are trying to drag her off.
My wife returns after a break to find her mom having a lengthy chat with a man who is not there. Introductions are made. The nurses say the nonexistent man has been reported by a lot of patients in that room. Her bed goes up and down by itself.
My wife has her mother moved to a different room.
I finally talk to mom-in-law after a flirty 10 day stay in the asylum of awful. She is under house arrest for 6-8 weeks. She can go outside and sit on the deck. But that’s it. Catching a cold in public would probably kill her. “Don’t do it <>. That’s my advice if you ever get the chance.”
Bet your ass.
Day 1:
Cute little button-nosed 3 day of a trip. Go to work at 1700 on Tuesday. Deadhead to the overnight. 2 legs on Wednesday. 3 on Thursday. Home by noon.
I don’t like the look of this. Evil rides a cute little pony. 12 years of having my hand slapped every time I reach for the cookie has taught me to approach with caution. What’s the catch? It can’t be that easy. I skulk off to work with the halting trepidation of a man lost in a dark room full of sharp things.
On the bus I realize I left my iPod and F.M. transmitter plugged into the cigarette lighter. Guaranteed dead battery. Poop!
(Just making a point about the intrinsic and succulent flavor of swear words.)
My deadhead plane is an hour late when I check in. Poop more! Wait. This is good. Now I can take the 40 minute round trip bus ride to retrieve my pod and save my battery. Guess I won’t have to perform my crab claw jumper cable mating dance after all. Was already practicing my “come hither” clamp movements. Probably try it out on the wife instead.
I head back into the long cream colored hall and see the bus waiting. Steve Austin to catch it. Forgot my keys. Poop alamode! Run back. Get keys. Run back to the bus. (Don’t really need to run at all, I’ve got oodles of time. Just find waiting abhorrent on a cellular level.) The bus leaves as I run up. Poop sandwich! Wait 20 minutes for the next one.
Back in the crew lounge I run into Spike. He’s chatting up a Captain I’ve flown with before. Spike hauls off and describes the Follies (favorably, but still) in the clear to our mutual Capt. He’s a good guy. Might actually put him on the list, but being outed like this leaves me with an awkward “Mommy said you’re not supposed to touch me there” feeling.
The first rule of 4 Day Follies is: You do not talk about 4 Day Follies.
I go to the Secretary’s office and buy tickets to the company Children’s Christmas party. Pretty cool. Santa arrives in a Jet Ranger. Airport fire trucks, lots of rides and games and food. Only after I buy the tickets do I check my schedule. I will be in SFO that day. Poop with a side order of poop (no tomatoes)!!
Amble off to the gate. Get a window seat. My hope for an open middle seat starts to dissolve as the plane fills up and there he is. SFU football player. Defensive back by the look of him. Sits in the middle seat. We both laugh about how much it sucks to be him right now. Fall asleep at the gate and wake up at wheels up. SOP.
Day 2:
Met the Capt. last night on the shuttle ride to the hotel. Old guy. I like flying with old guys. By and large they have seen enough and done enough to have found some sort of peace with the job. The flip-side narrow percentage that are still bitter about their station, rewards and accomplishments are world class pains in the ass, but they are fairly rare.
All old guys though, invariably have quirks. Strange rituals from other aircraft, airlines or the Service. Odd protocols and procedures gleaned from hard earned experience or a virulent and chronic case of not giving a poop. They are always “non-standard” to some degree. Maybe 10% of the stuff they do is unexpected or strange. The micro-managing sad sack old guys usually make it a point of personal pride and redemption to have their own way of doing e v e r y t h i n g and any resemblance to standard procedure living or dead is purely coincidental. Technique is law.
For the benign old guys, the trick is to learn this alien language without generating any friction between their way and the book way. This is the primary job of every First Officer. Figure out how the Capt. does things as quickly as possible so you can predict his actions and decisions. (And don’t get yelled at.)
That minor miserable faction of jilted old guys don’t generally bother with accommodation. They are usually so far off the “standard” path that they now believe every First Officer is either retarded or insubordinate because no one ever does things the way they expect. So you are generally in for a deluge of tips and tricks disguised as helpful banter and implied as so obviously better you’d have to be an asshole to do it any other way. Any examination or questioning of these methods is met with veiled resentment and passive/aggressive silence.
For the dickish old guys, the only thing for it is to breathe deep and let it happen. It will be over soon.
This is one of the good ones. Former Navy P-3 pilot. Still married. 3 sons. All 3 were boy scouts. #1 and #3 were National Merit Scholars. #’s 1 and 2 went to the Naval Academy. #3 accepted a full ride to Florida State. Full Tuition. Room and board, and a research stipend. #1 joined the Marines. Graduated 1st in his pilot class and is now flying F-18′s. #2 joined the Navy. Graduated 2nd in his pilot class and ended up with helos. He’s now a Seahawk instructor. #3 went on to a paid internship with the Heritage foundation. Now works for a congressman and runs the Republican Study Group. He shows me pictures. They all have hot girlfriends.
In the searing light of success, I realize that I am not smart. If I hadn’t made it through flight school, I would probably be cleaning pools. Or mowing. I like mowing.
He says he rides a lot. I assume he has a Harley. He laughs. Shows me pictures of his hog. It’s a bright yellow scooter. He has a bright yellow helmet to match. Here is a man secure in his manliness. I am not that secure. I would feel gay just running him over with my car.
We blast off for MCO. Bumpy the whole way. Finally clear the clouds at 390. 2 hour sit in MCO. Go to the Disney store to look for Christmas presents. Find some Lightning McQueen jammies. (Which I hide and completely forget about. Give them to him in April.)
Move on to a place that sells the best creams and lotions. My hands are splitting from the constant flu-season washing. I buy a tube if something that smells like baby powder and old people. Disgusting, but it seems to do the trick.
There’s no crew room. Dozens of poilota and flight attendants languish in the terminal. On computers, phones. Sleeping sitting up. Professional waiting in action.
Load up and head for Indianapolis. Brand new terminal opened about a year ago. Has one of my favorite features in any airport. Between the terminal and the ground transportation section, there is an elevated tunnel. Little slice of Logan’s Run. On the ceiling are maybe 100 opaque smooth lozenges about the size of trashcan lids. Evenly spaced in a grid. As you walk under one, a synthy ice organ tone sounds and the disc turns red. Fires off the rest of that column red, in the direction you’re headed.
Each disc bongs and turns from blue to red as you walk under it or ride the people mover. Occasionally, a red sequence will fire off diagonally between the disc position of people headed in opposite directions. Serves absolutely no purpose aside from being futuristicly cool in the glossy way I hoped the future would be when I was a kid.
In the gym at the hotel, I run into Slim Cessna. He is one of the 6 pilots at the company privy to my Folly frivolity. We chat about how funny I am while I sweat profusely and be furry. A glorious combination which makes men jealous and women uncomfortable.
We have a 0440 van in the morning. I deploy the same useless counter- measures that have never worked on any other uber early show – in bed by 2100. Wake up at 2230. Log roll over and over into the same positions I know I can’t fall asleep in. Do some quick panicking about all the things I have and haven’t done with my life. Fall asleep around 0300.
Works like a charm.
Day 3:
Capt. is chatty on the way to <>. He ought to be, he’s done when we get there. I pick up a new Capt. for the next turn. As the sun comes up over Tennessee, he tells me of the catastrophic engine failure he had on takeoff once in a DC-9 in1989. Turbine blades exploded and shredded the hydraulic and fuel lines. Fire burned uncontrolled. Landed and evacuated on the runway.
Everyone got out. Couple of pax got hurt falling off the leading edge of the wing. Aft FA was burned pretty bad running through the gouts of fire pluming through the floor. Local news crew happened to catch the whole thing.
‘That was you?!?’ They show the video to every Indoc class.
We talk of Christmas. I’m depressed because every Capt. who upgraded when I was a new-hire is still on reserve.
‘Tell me you at least for Christmas off.’
He laughs. “I can’t complain about the schedule. I’ve got a great line.”
‘What number do you bid?’
“2″
‘What?’
“2″
‘You’re number 2 on the airplane?!? I guess bidding must be pretty easy then.’
“Yeah. I just call #1 and ask him what line he’s taking.”
I’ve been in the presence of royalty this whole time and never knew it. I haven’t done the math, but if I am still flying at 65, I’ll probably be bidding in the low 100′s. This is like meeting someone who won the lottery. Maybe I shouldn’t have jizzed in his flight kit.
When we call ops on the ground they tell me there’s a van waiting to take me to my next flight. This level of foresight is unheard of. I only have 40 minutes to get from D9 to C1 and get everything done to leave on time. The walk alone is 15 minutes. The flight I’m headed for is my 2nd, but the first flight of the day for that aircraft.
This airline is absolutely fanatical about EMOs (Early Morning Originators). If the first flight of the day on that airplane leaves late, the entire day of flights on that plane could be affected. Captains routinely get calls from the Chief Pilot to explain their irresponsible dereliction of duty if the EMO is one minute late.
The royal treatment has nothing to do with me. The EMO is really the passenger here. But I am a rockstar by proxy. The driver doesn’t say much. Her front teeth are rimmed with gold and she turns the radio preacher down to a dull roar as I heave open the rusted door. Her safety vest rides up when she grabs the wheel like she just accidentally inflated her life vest. She smiles at me and her gold teeth flash in the dirty-windshield muted glow of the morning sun.
I still can’t believe it. The perfect 3 day. Went to work late. Got off early. Bypassed shit weather in <> on day 2 purely by scheduled providence. Limo ride to my last turn. Some terrible cost will be owed to balance this karmic equation. The devil doesn’t share. But I’ll take it. Good cookie. Got any milk?
– end of line.