DISCLAIMER: Do not make direct eye contact with a Folly if confronted. Do not puncture. Do not read if you are taking nitrates for angina. Not proven to re-grow hair. Keep out of reach of children.
Phone rings on Thursday. Charter department. Could I help them cover a flight tomorrow?
‘I would but I’m already working tomorrow.’
“We could pay protect you. You’d overnight at home tomorrow, and then we’ll link you to your LA turn on day 2?”
‘That sounds pretty good.’
“There’s a catch. It’s a 0415 check in.”
I go through a brief “of course I can lift that” reasoning process. Twist. Jerk. Legs straight. Lift with the back. The popping sound means it’s working.
‘O.k. I’ll do it.” (It’s 30 hours at home when I would normally be spread-eagle on the bed in the hotel trying to remember if I’ve seen this episode before. – Yes. Of course I have. But maybe the A-Team will actually shoot somebody this time.
Hang up and do a few reps in the calculus gymnasium of my wake up time. 0415 show…..When’s the bus? 0335?!? That means I have to leave at 0245. Means wake up at 0200. No. That can’t be right. Do it again. 0200. Whatever. How hard could it be?
Plan ahead. Have the kids in bed by 2000. Must sleep. Have my dainty self I’m bed by 2100. But since I normally turn in around midnight, sleep is wily and elusive. Tell myself not to tell myself that if I fall asleep now, I’ll have x hours of sleep. Repeat this process for an hour and a half.
My son wakes up at about 2300 because he’s at that stage where he wakes up if he has to pee (which is good), but then doesn’t have the first clue what to do next. I make reassuring “Shhhhh. Stop crying. You’ll wake up your sister” noises and aim him at the toilet. Corrected for windage, most of it goes in the bowl. Steer him back to bed and he’s asleep before he hits the pillow.
But now, the scampering kittens of conscious thought are loose in my head. I find the most efficient time to panic about the unraveling javelin arc of my life is when I have nothing to distract me but the ever misplaced checklist for how to sleep. (A really finite time to do it also helps.) The wife calls at 0100. She’s done with work and wants me to turn off the alarm. I let her in. She’ll just keep calling if I don’t.
Day 1:
Dry heave back to consciousness at 0200. I feel terrible. Feels like a bad hangover without the shame and confusion. As usual, the actual falling off the log is much more brutal than brochure led me to believe. Neuron A chats with neuron B in the “Please call back during regular business hours” of my brain. Coffee. I should make coffee. (Oh. I did in fact quit drinking coffee for about a week. But it was so much fun I went back to drinking it so I could quit again later.)
Switched to the French Press about 8 months ago. Not quite as gay as it sounds. This frilly technique yields more caffeine if you grind the beans Turkish fine. A little chewy, but it’s a small price to pay. Boil water in a pan. Pour coffee grinds into a beaker. Pour boiling water on coffee. Stir. Use screen plunger to press the grounds out of your beverage after about 4 minutes. Did I mention it’s still roughly as hot as the surface of the sun?
Pour the coffee into a travel mug. Too full. Can’t get the lid on. Neurons A and B are pretty much spent after coming up with the “make coffee” plan. Take a big swig of molten stupid to wash down most of my now incinerated taste buds. Stupid tastes brown.
In the car at 0245. I’m ignoring my car’s inexorable backslide into suck. This time, it will be different. Things will be better. It’s still hemorrhaging coolant so I have to refill the reservoir every few days. The seat warmers sort of work but not really. The back window fogs up in spots and never really defrosts. It’s ok. The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care.
Pass the Waffle House around 0300. Pack of kids outside washing down their Thursday night with some Smothered and Covered. I feel the ripped-off band aid of adulthood. How did I end up being the guy driving to work at 0300? I want to be annoying the staff in the Waffle House. Then sleep in till 3 in the afternoon and eat cereal until it’s time to go out again.
It occurs to me that I totally could (and did). But like dreaming about being able to eat all the candy you want when you grow up, by the time you get there, it’s not as much fun as you thought it would be.
Charter flights are the wild west. We get an airport to go pick up some folks. An airport to drop them off and some basic routing and weather. The rest unfolds as we go. Two dead legs. One live leg. Great deal for the FAs. They can sleep on our way to the pick-up and on the way home from the drop off.
The Capt. is a good egg, and does a lot of charters. It’s a good thing too. I’m so assholes and elbows I look like an episode of the Deadliest Catch where 1200 lbs. of joints and claws avalanche out of the crab pot. I’m not used to all this ambiguity. Line flying is pretty well scripted. Two of the FAs are old battlewagons and this too helps.
Anthony is brand new. He asks if he can sit up front for the take off. It’s fun for us too. We never get to show off the experience to anyone because you have to be a Part 121 airline pilot to ride up here when we have passengers. But we’re empty and don’t even close the cockpit door for the dead legs. It’s a beautiful view of the city, all lights and empty streets when we launch at 0500. He takes pictures with his phone (which have no chance of coming out.) Says “wow” a lot.
The sun comes up as we check on with New York Center. We are picking up some army rangers in Vermont and taking them to Louisiana. Call ahead. Tell Atlantic Aviation we’re coming. Girl on the radio says “Roger.” like we do this every day and have a clue where to go, or what to do when we do get there.
‘Are you on the south side? On taxiway Charlie?’
“Yes.”
‘Between the runways or on the west side?’
“We are going to park you on the 890 ramp.”
‘Where is that?’
“On Charlie.”
‘Between the runways?’
“On the 890 ramp.”
I guess we’ll figure it out.
The FOLLOW ME truck is waiting for us when we land. This is an everyday occurrence for private jets but I haven’t seen one since flight school. Always liked the FOLLOW ME truck. Like a rodeo clown or one of those Caution Wet Floor signs where it looks like the handicapped symbol got up and started break-dancing. Something funny about a truck with a huge sign bolted to the back that says FOLLOW ME. So obvious it becomes comedy.
I take some quick photos which don’t come out. We park on the General Aviation ramp. Some of the ground crew take pictures of the plane as we pull up. Guess it’s a novelty for them too.
Everything with the military is best guess. We get one total weight for everything – people, bags, weapons, ominous black cases, rucksacks, ominous grey cases. We just assume the bins are maxed out. Once we subtract our maximum cargo weight, everything that’s left is passengers.
Everyone is young, fit and exceedingly polite. In one of those “all it would take is a quick yank of the wheel across the double yellow into the on-coming truck” horror fantasies, I wonder how far I’d get if I stood in the door and yelled “Rangers are pussies!!” and ran for my life. And like the semi head-on, I really don’t want to find out.
Nothing at all happens on the way to Louisiana. Freezing cold in Vermont. 70 degrees down south. Another FOLLOW ME truck leads us to the military ramp. Vast open Tarmac. One large squat processing facility, ornate in its “spend-it-or-lose-it” military financing.
MillionAir turns the plane. We are “fuel on board.” (Don’t need gas to make it home.) Capt. signs the credit voucher for air-stairs, a belt loader and 5 guys to throw bags for 30 minutes: $4,200. I’d hump that gear naked for half that.
No ceremony for departure. They wave at us and leave in a pickup. We assume that means we are cleared to start, cleared to taxi, and clear of obstructions.
The best thing about charter (and the Capt. explains this is exceedingly rare. The first time it’s ever happened to him, in fact,) is we are over an hour ahead of schedule. Since we are not a “scheduled” flight, we can push for home whenever we’ve completed the mission – deliver guys and stuff to point B. I’m in my car by 1430.
By the time I get home, I’m pathologically grouchy and am having trouble blinking in unison. I’ve been up for over 36 hours. No wonder no one else volunteered for this trip. I stare at the kids for a while and lob suspicious insults at the wife until she orders me to take a nap. I mumble up to bed.
Wake up 20 minutes later and feel surprisingly better. I mouth breathe apologies at the family and grind my gearing into “home.”
The wicked will get no rest. (And like it.) My daughter has her last soccer game tomorrow. My wife has volunteered our house for the team celebration BBQ. I clean for 4 hours. Try to get with the program. Be a team player. But my caustic sense of martyrdom seeps out now and again. I apologize at 5 to 10 minute intervals.
Day 2:
The soccer game is like watching kittens play with yarn. My daughter is not into it. Casually drawn to the ball’s loose magnetic field, she twirls her hair and tries to get the other players to stop and talk to her. She’s binary in this way. Scored so many goals for a few games, the coaches told her to pass. So she would stop, all alone, in front of the goal and shrug. Wait for the other team to come get the ball.
The coach gives them all trophies. Hers is the “Float Like a Butterfly. Sting Like a Bee” because she reminds the coach of Ali’s effortless style. An association strangely lost on her and the rest of the 6-year-olds, but she likes the gold soccer player.
The party goes well. I excuse myself to play Modern Warfare 2 with someone’s 16-year-old when the conversation sags into the effect of childbirth on the female physique. I can’t think of a single contribution that won’t end with me sleeping in my car.
I hate going to work at night. Nighttime is for unwinding with beer and TV, not going to work. Feel sorry for myself all the way back to the airport. I’ve flown with the Capt. before. Calm. Happy. Nice. No ego. Which is good because mine barely fits as it is. I like flying with guys who are still married to the original baby mama. Gives me hope that it is possible to be a pilot AND married to the same woman for your career.
Which makes it that much more shocking and horrible when he spontaneously regurgitates the tale of his 18 year marriage imploding in 3 days. He hasn’t spoken to his wife or daughter in 7 weeks. I sympathetically ask, ‘What the fuck did you do?’
He has a 14 year old daughter who had fallen into the habit of not saying “Hi dad” or “bye dad” as she came and went. Nipping this in the bud involved him grabbing her by the collar and putting her in a chair for a “come to Jesus.” 3 days later his wife and daughter left on a pre-planned trip to visit his wife’s mom. The day after that, the Sheriff’s Department stopped by to watch him pack a single bag and leave his house for good. The restraining order forbids any contact with his wife, daughter, neighbors, or stuff.
They had it made. He was paying off the house next month. College completely covered. They have water property in Florida and North Carolina. Dissolution of a family business left him with mad money in the bank, and a fully vested retirement. He doesn’t drink. He and his wife never fought and he ruled his house with an iron “I don’t really care one way or another sweetheart,” attitude. Now he’s careening into a complete fuckstorm of a divorce at 47 and living at his cousin’s house.
Take this guy off the “happily married” bell curve, and my chances suddenly fall into the “D- please see me” spectrum. I was barely hanging on to that C as it was.
Fuck.
His misery keeps me completely occupied for the 4 1/2 hour redeye to LAX. I can’t make it go. How did this happen? He swears he did not hurt his daughter, and in his court-ordered weekly anger counseling sessions, he recounts that his actions were appropriate and restrained. He must not be telling me the whole story. I ask him point blank if he ever hit her, cheated, got drunk and lost his temper. Anything. Again and again he says no. Like gravity, I’m forced to accept that it just is, and I will never really understand the how of it.
Spend the day in LA watching race 8 in the Chase. Jiggle in the gym. Try to nap for the redeye home and fail. Grill the Capt. some more on the flight home. Still nothing. Scary shit. At some point over Colorado, the Capt. goes to the head. One of the FAs comes up front per regs. We’ve got the lights and screens turned way down (more romantic that way.) Her skin is literally black. Not tan or dark, but black. She sits down on the jumpseat and completely vanishes. It’s creeping me out. I ask her if she comes here often just so I can see her teeth in the moonlight when she smiles.
– end of line.