Milan

The first thing I did in Milan was take a nap. 
I know it's hard to believe, but doing nothing (but watching movies and reading) for eight hours in the back of a Delta 767 can be very tiring.  I watched 21/2 movies:  The Secret Life of Bees, The Invention of Lying, and some romantic comedy (I know a guy didn't pick this line up).  I also started reading 13 Things That Don't Make Sense (so far pretty interesting).
About 6:30 in the evening I went out to dinner with John Foster and Matt Goldschlager (we will be flying together this month).  If you know anything about eating dinner in Italy, this might seem a little funny, because an early dinner in Italy is about 8:00.  We took a tram downtown, Matt wanted to exchange a shirt be bought earlier that day.  Evidently Milan is the fashion capital of the universe.  It's like walking down a fashion catwalk, but with dog poop.  Everyone looked better than me - it was a real high school flashback (but with a lot more dog poop).  We walked into the store to exchange Matt's shirt; everyone seemed uncomfortable with my red plaid button down.  Fashion all around me and I found the coolest thing in the store - a huge gas powered heater (think Benford 5000).  John and I talked about BTUs and tuning winter into spring until Matt was done.
We then found a side street restaurant and had - you guessed it - pizza.  It is impossible to have a bad pizza in Italy.  I know about all the fantastic food to be found in Italy, but if you want something hot, fast and cheap (especially if there is no english menu to be found) - pizza is the way to go. 

Today I wanted to go to church, so I found a meetinghouse on the internet and took the meto across town.  As I walked up to the church doors, two missionaries walked out, they said that because of heating problems in the church the meeting schedule was changed and church was over - bummer. 

Heavy Haulers

Tuesday we flew 161 members of HMH-462 back to San Diego. They were coming home from Afghanistan.  The flight had been delayed 14 hours because of weather in Bishkek.  I did try to hurry the process in Baltimore (where I picked up the flight), but the plane had a number of maintenance issues that had to be addressed, so I added another hour to their families already long wait.  We did fly the plane as fast as we safely could but with 100 knots off the nose the flight took 5 hours.   

 As we taxied into the ramp we saw about 200 family members waving signs like this one.  It was about 2:30 am but I could still see many little children jumping up and down.  After all the Marines disembarked, Jay Rindler came on board and thanked us for bringing these Marines home.  He also sent us some of the pictures he took that night. 

One of the pictures was of a small girl with her dad.  Mom is proud of her husband, because she has dressed her daughter in a flight jacket.  Dad is so happy to see his daughter.  His daughter is trying to figure out who he is. 

The sacrifice we ask these Marines to make isn't new, but it's new to them and their families and I am so grateful that they make it.  I don't have the words to express how I feel about these men and women in the military.  I'm not one for making speeches over the p.a. to a captive audience; I always feel that it is more about self-aggrandizement than information or thanks.  I don't do many things well, but I can fly an airplane and if my actions can get these men and woman home safe - my actions are my gratitude.

I wonder if I looked at my Dad the same way the first time I saw him.  I was over a year old when we met on his return from Viet Nam. 

This picture is Jay Rindler, me and RK Smithley.  RK was giving a line check.  Once a year the company sends a check airman out to see if I'm doing everything right.  It was nice to fly with RK and he had some good suggestions for me.  Every time I do a line check it seems that I have to perform some maneuver that don't normally fly.  Last year I had to do a raw data DME arc (I hadn't done one in 10 years).  This year I did my very first real PAR approach.

A Marine heavy hauler. 

Old Friends

The first trip of the new year was from Cherry Point, North Carolina to Leipzig, Germany (more Marines headed to Afghanistan). I flew with James Ackerman and Matt Riley. It was a very nice trip with almost no hiccups. The best part about the trip was the flight back home. From Leipzig we "dead-headed" on a World DC-10 to Baltimore. 23 of us had the back of the airplane to ourselves and a great crew up front. Dave Mauldin, assisted by Symon Rankine and Bill Wade flew us to Baltimore. I hadn't seen these guys in years, so it was great to talk to them.

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but Bill Wade could strike fear into any flight engineer. He was one of the check engineers when I went to school to learn the DC-10 engineer's panel. He always had some obscure systems question on the tip of his tongue, and when I wouldn't answer quickly enough, he would berate me about not reading the manuals. If you look closely, you may notice a sly smile beneath that mustache of his. He is a true professional aviator and a great guy to be around (if you've read your manual).

Symon Rankine was in my new hire class back in 2000. From the first time I met Symon I knew I would like him. He always has a funny story to tell and knows the most interesting and odd trivia about all kinds of subjects.

Dave Mauldin is the kind of pilot you want around if anything goes wrong. When we started out at World, Dave and I flew a number of times - and something always went wrong! Our first flight together was my first "real" flight after training (it was one of Dave's first flights after training also). Our captain, Nikki Manes, had her hands full with both a new first officer and never-been-on-the-line flight engineer. After some problems setting up the navigation system, we took off out of Miami. About 5 minutes into the flight we had a severe vibration on the number one engine - ran checklists and returned to Miami. After switching planes we took off again for San Juan. Over the Bahamas we got a cargo fire warning. More checklist and emergency calls to divert into the Bahamas (well if your going to have a problem it might as well involve landing in Nassau). I ran more checklists on that flight than any simulator event.
I was glad that we had no such problems on our flight to Baltimore.

Last Post of theYear!

My last trip of the year took me to Louisville, Kentucky to fly UPS cargo to Dallas, Texas. This was a very unusual trip for me, because we flew six legs all inside the continental US. I could understand the controllers and they almost always gave us "direct" - it was wonderful. We made it out of Dallas right before the snow storm hit on the 24th. Everything worked out and I landed in Boise at about 7:30pm - perfect timing if I do say so myself.
Wilder family Christmas was fantastic.
Monday Jackson, Jordan and Sidney and I drove up to Bogus Basin for some fun in the snow. Sidney skied and the rest of us snowboarded. This was Jordan's first time on a snowboard and I think she may be converted. We went up again today. I love riding, there is just something about carving that must release all the good chemicals in my brain, I would go every day if I could.















Sky above the snow in Dallas.














Sidney, Jordan and Jackson - PBnJ brake.















Jordan with her ride.















Jordan and friend Emily.


Sidney was too fast on the slopes for me to get any pictures!

Random Pictures

Big Airbus A380 at London Heathrow airport.

















A Mosque in downtown Bahrain.


















Same Mosque during the day.


















Bahrain World Trade Center.













Something musical about these buildings.














Construction is on going in the gulf states. In the 80's the during the first gulf boom, most of the buildings were made from concrete mixed with sea water; because of their weakened state they are being replaced bigger and better - sometimes stranger.













I like the symmetry of this couple.

How big is Djibouti?

That’s right, I’m going to Djibouti. I love saying “Djibouti”, and all the 3rd grade humor that it brings to mind. This will be my first time in Djibouti (excuse me). Today I’m making my way to London for a 24-hour layover.
It was a great day for flying to Chicago today; mostly clear skies from Boise to the Bad Lands of South Dakota. The view must have been fantastic from up front. From my economy “plus” seat I saw some of the Frank Church Wilderness, the Grand Tetons, some of Yellowstone and Cody, Wyoming. Some of my favorite flying was done in this part of the country. Back then I flew a lot lower and slower. For almost six years I flew for a company called American Check Transport. We flew mostly bank checks; this flying is obsolete now, but at one point hundreds of planes filled America’s skies (mostly at night) every banking day moving around billions of dollars in canceled bank checks.
I flew a Navajo (PA-31) all over the inter mountain west. The longest flying day at American Check was flying out and back to Cody, Wyoming. As I recall we started from Salt Lake about 5:00am and made stops in Rocksprings, Lander, and Worland before resting in Cody. Resting consisted of trying to sleep in a semi-heated hanger on a couch in an old sleeping bag after shooting 4 approaches to minimums, knowing the weather was forecast to get uglier for the flight home. You may ask yourself why would anyone willingly fly a 30-year-old piston plane through the mountain snow and ice of Wyoming for little more than minimum wage. I can only say that if you ask that question you must not be a pilot (and if you are, you must have gotten your training in the military). It was all about time. Seven plus hours of flying a day! And on top of that, all of it would be in the clouds with 8 approaches! I was told that if I could survive a winter in the mountains, I would make a good pilot. That’s all I ever wanted.
In the summer time I would fly low and run with the wild horses over the plateau between Worland and Cody, fly down mountain passes between Grand Junction and Durango and dodge thunderstorms flying into Salt Lake (later we flew in the Midwest were I learned how to dodge real thunderstorms) without radar. I can’t think of a better job; they gave me an airplane with no supervision! It’s a quirk of not just the aviation industry that hardest jobs pay the least amount of money. Back then I flew alone, at night, with no radar, no gps, no moving map at altitudes right in the worse of the weather. Today I never fly alone and have all the fancy avionics (moving map with weather radar overlay and FMS): I fly above most of the weather and I don't have to load the cargo – the younger me worked much harder.

A video the Benson wanted to do. Jackson is on the camera.

What day is it?

On paper my schedule didn't look that bad; just a quick 5 day trip with one working leg. Scheduling called about 10am and asked if I could be on the 4:30pm USAir flight bound for Atlanta. Easy money- plus I love to fly and who wouldn't want to visit Bishkek for 3 hours and bring Marines home?
I had enough time to pack (I always pack the same stuff, whether the trip is 5 days or 2 months, doesn't matter winter or summer), cut my hair (I cut my hair myself - that's the reason it looks the way it does), and pick the boys up from school so I could say good bye (Benson saw me in my uniform and started to cry - some of my passengers have the same reaction when they see me).
After three days being a passenger I flew a Bishkek rotation out of Leipzig - Marines in and Marines out. But instead of going home - two more days on Lufthansa to Abu Dhabi - I flew a Tianjin, China turn.
Tianjin is pretty close to Beijing, and it was my first time there. The flight into China was during the night, but the way out was all daylight. We were able to see the Great Wall, I didn't take any pictures (yes, sometimes we have to work). Our route took us across northern China, over the Gobi desert (I have never seen sand dunes that big, some of the biggest in the world), across the Karakoram mountains into Pakistan then we clipped the corner of Iran and flew up the north east coast of Oman into the UAE. The weather was very good and we got a great view of K2. Even on a good day K2 still looks like it would kill you. We crossed the Karakoram range at 32 thousand feet, the MSA (minimum safe altitude) for our area was 30 thousand feet. It reminded me of flying a seneca in the Rockies. It would have been cool to fly a DC-3 over the hump!
I woke up this morning and I couldn't remember what day it was - at least I knew what city I was in (sometimes it's a challenge to remember what hotel room I'm in). Too many days with minimum rest (12 or 14 hours depending on what type of flying I'm doing). One more flight tonight and I will start making my way home. I will be home for Thanksgiving!








What is that mountain doing at 32,000 feet?

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K2 and friends.