Oregon Coast Staycation

Clearly you already know that we're on a mini staycation and just returned home from a few days at the Oregon Coast....Lincoln City, to be exact.  It is only 100 miles from our house and the drive was perfect.  we stopped for breakfast on the way out at the McMenamins Oregon Hotel in McMinnville.  McMinnville is also home to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum -- which houses the former Howard Hughes Spruce Goose.  It is quite the place and in the running to get one of the last two Space Shuttles once they are retired.  And the whole area is Oregon's Wine Country -- filled with wineries and tasting rooms.  Oregon has done its best to put it on the map for some of the world's nicest wines....it seems like we have a million local wines available to us. 

We stopped at the Spirit Mountain Casino on the way to the Pacific Ocean.  Lost all of my entire five dollars on the penny slots.  We ended up in Lincoln City long before motel check in so we plied the town's star attractions -- the Tanger Outlet Mall, Cyber Garden and Tea House for a coffee, and a walk along the town's small main street which coincides with Oregon's famed coastal Highway 101.  It was a really nice sunny afternoon before a 100% pouring rain and windy day to follow.  Our nights were spent at the overtly doggy friendly Looking Glass Inn at the south end of Lincoln City....with perfect access to the beach for walking, enjoying, reflecting and walking the pooch.  Mason loved the beach...it was his first time to see the ocean.  There were other dogs everywhere on this quiet stretch of Oregon sand.  The sea lions played in the water right outside of our motel window....diving for a snack and then popping back up to look around and take a gander at us.  The tides were low around 8am and then high around 2pm.  It was amazing to watch how much water went out and then returned a few hours later.  The tides are around 6 feet in this particular location.  We watched two movies in our room, something we rarely do at home.  The Social Network and Up in the Air.

Monday started out rainy and ended up rainy.  100%.  Blowing Pacific wind and rainy against our windows.   After a precious experience at breakfast (wait for it....wait for it....) we spend the remainder of the day snuggled in our room watching the wind and waves until we snuck out to the giant Chinook Winds Casino for their dinner buffet.  And the experience is precisely what you're thinking right now -- morbidly obese people with scooters eating more mediocre food than you can possibly imagine.  "These quesadillas sure are chintzy....." being the words right out of the mouth of the giant young girl at the table next to us playing Keno with numerous used dinner plates sitting in front of her. 

Breakfast earlier that day....I told you to wait for it.  We stopped in at a place I couldn't even believe was actually there.  Lil Sambos.  Yes sir, Lil Sambos in Lincoln City.  We had them growing up back in Idaho too.  Except that they were called Lil Black Sambos at that point in our nation's history....With little black stick figures running across the walls.  This place was filled with a nice gift shop -- complete with Christian gifts, books and craft items quoting scripture and such.  Oh, and we enjoyed a large television of Fox News above our heads while we dined.  And, yes, it did have an ancient copy of the book Little Black Sambo for perusing purposes only.  I guess I thought that most of our world was actually in the year 2011.  Apparently not.

Yesterday dawned clear and perfect.  No wind...which is really something on the Oregon Coast.  We trenched back out to the crashing waves with Mason and watched the sea lions playing again.  It was a very nice way to end the trip.  We ventured back home on a few back roads in the Willamette Valley and stopped briefly at the Woodburn Company Stores Outlet Mall before ending up back at home at a respectable 2pm.  

Nice.  Relaxing.  Perfect.  Simple.  Easy.  Not fancy.  Repeatable.

Winter Whee!

Holy smokes, Batman! An entire week without posting. Umm yeah, that's not good. At. All. My apologies. I mean, not that there are any die hard readers anyway but nonetheless --

MIL has chosen again to go down the "Piss Us Off Trail." She's good at that. You'll remember that she fell in October and has taken a very long time to heal. But over the last few weeks it's been a mess with her losing keys, medications, address books, etc. My honey fills up her medication box weekly so all she has to do it take out the AM and PM pills at the right time. But in a recent scan of her apartment, there were Vicodin pills laying helter skelter all over the place. There has been a stove burner left on high with nothing on it. She has broken a glass and was unable to get to the floor to clean it up. She can't take out her dog to crap any longer so he goes upwards of 12 hours without going out. It's not pretty. So, another cry for attention because she loves it so well, she calls 9-1-1 in the middle of the night for a trip to the ER. She is there around an hour before she screams that "she's going home and not staying any longer." Huh? Why did you come here in the first place? She treats the nurses and doctors like crap. She tells people off. She is rude and inappropriate. Until someone outside the family comes to visit....then she is all peaches and cream, smiling, happy, talks about her Bible studies and such. We can't figure out if this is Doctor Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. To his giant credit, my lover boy has done his best to be diplomatic and still point out that her behavior cannot continue. Whee! Around we go again! She's supposedly headed home today. To live alone. To not be able to take care of herself. I think I'm going to steal one of those aforementioned Vicodin ASAP. And one of my new favorite cocktails.....crushed ice, Canadian Club, a squeeze of fresh OJ right from the fruit, and Diet Spring/7up. Delicious. It goes well with Vicodin, doesn't it? I have this sinking feeling that my upcoming bachelor weekend is in jeopardy.

January 31 will mark the 10th anniversary since our company's airline disaster off the southern California coast. I remember the day quite well. We knew several folks on board. We had worked that particular aircraft numerous times including only a week or so before it buried its head into the Pacific Ocean. I am thankful for my life today and will do my best to continue to strive for better things in life.

We discovered dried blood inside Mason's left ear. A trip to the vet (because the hospital with MIL wasn't quite enough in one day) confirmed a giant yeast infection in his ear. Cleaned it out and sent us home with antibiotic gel twice a day. He is much better but, for some reason, doesn't like to have clear liquids squirted into his ear. I discovered a few spring bulbs trying to poke their heads out of the ground while I was on a walk with Mason the other day -- a very good sign indeed.

I'm on day two of six in this stretch of flying. Appears to be 10,824 miles this week. It looks like this: PDX-SAN-SJD-SAN-PDX-SAN-PDX-SAN-SJD-SAN-PDX-PHX-PDX.

Pride, Arrogance and High Powered Attitudes

Woops....that's about the only way I can describe this picture. You can't see it overly well...but you can see that the route went to the right (east) of MSP before it made a few turns and headed back. It's the flight plan for Northwest/Delta flight 188 last Wednesday, October 21, when it was supposed to have landed at Minneapolis but, instead, decided to burn up a little more fuel before it made its way back to MSP. The pilots were, apparently, in a heated discussion about their company's pilot scheduling component. And, having heard such discussions many times in my 15 years in the airline business, I can only imagine that it was, as they said, "heated." Airline employees in general, and especially pilots and flight attendants, are quite passionate about their jobs, their schedules, their seniority, and what they believe they "should have" and what they "shouldn't have." It's nearly always a constant battle between union and company -- employee and management.

I love my job, don't get me wrong. And I've got a long list of very valuable friends in every single position in the industry from management to front-line customer service personnel. They are people typically given to good times, laughter, and enjoy their jobs. But not always. The recent turbulent history of the airline industry has lent itself to a growing dissatisfaction of pilots and other with their jobs. They don't like their salaries, their management, their hours, their meals, their hotels, their schedules.....oh yes, their schedules! And that's where this particular story takes us. Apparently they were discussing their schedules. Remember that Delta and Northwest Airlines have merged. Northwest, as we've always known it, will go away. It will become Delta. And these were two Northwest pilots -- they are going to be merged into the Delta airlines pilot seniority list somehow -- no guarantees, they may actually lose seniority, may have to start over at a place that they aren't today....it may not be pretty. The first part of next year, there will actually be combination crews of former Northwest and former Delta pilots and flight attendants on board. And their schedules may definitely be affected. Remember, these are folks who have typically devoted a giant chunk of their time to having been educated and trained to be in charge of a multi-million dollar airliner with the lives of passengers at stake every day. It's tough -- very much so.

You must understand that the pilot in command (PIC) has complete authority of any given flight. If he doesn't feel right about any particular portion of the fight (unruly passengers, freight, weight and balance, safety issues, fuel, cabin customer service components such as lights, etc.), he has the total authority to say "No, I'm not going." He or she can, single handedly, do essentially what they want. They may have to answer for it but rarely so; but in this industry, anything blamed on "safety" will rarely be questioned. And, anything can be blamed on safety, believe me. Anything. Pilots have no direct report....no direct supervision or person to whom they report. Pilots, and flight attendants for that matter, can get a little crazy sometimes with the freedom that they have. They can come across as police enforcers. They can make decisions, or statements, that will not always be questioned. They have giant latitude in making decisions on their own. And that freedom of authority can, occasionally, get out of hand. And, believe me, I'm not pointing fingers -- I've been there and done that myself, sadly.

I've seen some of the best pilots in the world. And I've seen some of the worst. I've questioned pilots when I genuinely believe that I've needed to. But when that happens, I'd better be prepared with a damned good excuse for asking. In fact, I recently questioned a pilot about why in the world he failed to notify the flight attendants about an inflight mechanical failure of a nonessential component that resulted in an eight-hour delay for us. He wasn't happy and we got into a bit of a tiff about it. The delay isn't the issue. The failure to communicate is. His response? He claims that I was acting unprofessionally by questioning his authority and judgment. And he claims that since it was nothing that concerned me, that he chose not to say anything. I call those sorts of judgments errors. Big errors. It's the sort of thinking that got Northwest/Delta 188 in trouble. Thinking they know it all. In fact, just this morning, I overheard three pilots chatting about this little issue on the employee bus as we made our way from the employee parking lot to the airport terminal. Guess what? They justified the pilot's actions! If there hadn't been three of them on the bus this morning, I'd have spoken up -- I'm not known for being a wallflower or overly demure.

There are pilots that are pleasant, friendly and always speak to me. And there are those who will never say a word. (And, to be fair, there are flight attendants who do the same.) It's much like a doctor -- they are GOD. They hate to be questioned or asked to explain their decisions. They have the ability to make your flight, your day, your life, as easy as pie. Or like total hell. It's like any other job in the world.....we get so used to doing what we do that we lose touch with the harsh reality that today is a new day, new faces, new opportunities -- and that we still have to be diligent to pay attention, double check all that we need to, and make it the safest flight possible. Pride, arrogance, and high powered attitudes don't count. Especially in this industry, that remains essential. This isn't a "bash the pilot" post. It is, however, a reminder to all of us to remain engaged and active in our jobs, our lives, our families and responsibilities.

So, when I hear about pilots who accidentally go 150 miles beyond where they are supposed to because they were having a heated discussion about their management and their scheduling, I am concerned. I don't care what they were doing in the flight deck. It matters not whether they were eating, sleeping, on their laptops, giving head to each other, or reading a newspaper. I don't care if they like their jobs, were happy, or hated their management. What does matter, unequivocally so, is that they failed at being the pilots in command of a flight. They failed at receiving and responding to radio and text calls. They were not coherent or in control. A coherent person would have not only heard the radio call, but actually responded to it as required. They failed at being in charge of their flight. And it took a flight attendant's interphone call to remedy that. And for that, my friends, they should be fired.

Puttin' The Miles Behind Me -- My Life This Week

Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday will find me navigating the skies above the West Coast. You can sort of see it here although it's not a great map. You can also see more detail here. I will see approximately 650 bright and shiny faces over seven flights over three days -- all locked inside of a metal tube. Who knows how many drinks they will consume. I will spend Tuesday night in San Francisco and Wednesday night in Vancouver BC. The air mileage appears to be 4,724 miles. This is what I will look like:



And this is what my office will look like:

I hope your week is just as exciting!

Aircraft Fetish

I can't tell you about the exact day that it happened, but it did. Something about the roar....the speed....the up, up, and away....that made me go crazy. I think it started early when my parents used to load us all in the 1967 blue Chevy station wagon and go out to the Boise Airport. We'd park at the west end of the runway, put down the tailgate on the station wagon, and get all settled for the United Airline's DC6's that used to be a staple in Boise. And then, United (did you know that United began in Boise in 1926??) pulled out the big guns....started flying jet aircraft into Boise...the 727s. "Here it comes!" we'd all yell as the 727 began it's final turn out over the dry fields west of Boise...black smoke pouring out of it's engines. From that time on, I was hooked. After I was in junior high, I'd ask my mom to take me out to the airport and leave me for the day -- or I'd ride my bicycle out. I'd grab a printed timetable of United Airlines or Hughes Airwest and sit in the cafeteria pretending that I was important and going someplace like the other travelers there. I'd even say things out loud to my friend like "What time do we arrive in Honolulu?" We were crazy. We'd go from gate to gate and tell the airline personnel that "We've never been on an airplane before.....can we have a tour?" And, many times, the Captain would take us down and show us around. I remember the "Stewardesses" in their skirts and blouses with high necks -- complete with tall hats and gloves that rode up nearly to the elbow. Beautiful. Pretty. Smiling. They'd talk to us. From that time on, I wanted to be a Stewardess....and Air Hostess! And, of course, you'll remember the show with Jimmi and Dan on their VarietyCast earlier this year -- maybe I should go as Karen Black (Airport 1975) next Halloween.





I'm still an avid aircraft buff. You'll see the beginnings of my collection of photographs here. In case you have never heard, there is a quite a large number of people around the globe that are avidly interested in aircraft, airlines, new airplanes, routes, new cities, etc. It's an illness and needs meetings to get over it! At this point in my life, I've visited 30 or more states and close to the same number of countries. I'm so glad I started early.

My sister's time in jail begins on Monday morning. I've continued to process it in my head and heart. I still can't believe it's finally starting....right here before the holidays. It can get the best of me if I'm not careful. And it's funny, some of those near me haven't said a word of condolence or sent good thoughts or prayers. Most of my care has come from my awesome partner, from a few select friends at home, and from you....my faithful blogging friends. You mean the world to me.