Post Flight

I already lost interest. I was going to keep track of a daily journal complete with photos and stories but after about a week production mysteriously stopped. Y2K, solar flare, global warming, can’t choose one for sure.
October-
I started flying officially, first trip was to the east coast on an early morning airline to Newark. First flight on my jet was from Teterboro to Bedford Mass. My first flight in control of the jet was from Brunswick Georgia to little Rock Arkansas. My first funny story began in white plains new York and ended in Newark new jersey when I accidentally gave away the captains lap top to our passengers. I saw the uss Yorktown in charleston, the air and space museum and snipers on the Capitol, a true nor’easter in jersey, occupy wall st., ground zero, discovered chipotle, started running, stopped running a week later, bought a fishing pole, started playing guitar, stopped golfing, learned about hilton honors status, not to take conditioner from the hotel in my bag in the unpressurized baggage compartment, flew to; new jersey, massachusetts, georgia, Arkansas, north Carolina, Maryland, Illinois, and stopped for a fuel stop in lincoln Nebraska on the flight back from teterboro to Monterey CA. to end my east coast adventure. My first trip was 16 days. Oct 15 to Haloween.
November-
Started with a trip to Los Angeles Ca. Setting up for a 3:30 am departure the next day to green bay wisconsin via rocky mountain airport Colorado, to get on an airline and ride to Chicago and connect to Fayetteville Arkansas where our airplane was waiting. We stumbled into the hotel at 7:30 like zombies. That night a 5.9 earthquake rattled the ground across the border in Oklahoma, I didn’t feel it but the captain did. Back to SLO via Van Nuys where I had fun with the Canoga nine departure… Then back to Arkansas two days later. Spent some time next in Tukwila Washington, visited the museum of flight. Next day we pull into Waukesha Wisconsin for a night. I lucked out and ended up in SLO for thanksgiving at Camerons, then flew to chatanooga tennesee the next day and visited kathy, kirk, chance, and sadie. They were awesome enough to put me up for two nights, home cooked meals, and a tour of Chattanooga, a very cool town. Kathy also let me borrow “between a rock and a hard place” about Aron ralston, who apparently felt that two hands were one to many.
In November I traveled to these states; Colorado, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Nevada, Washington, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma.
Pretty cool to be reading about Aron trapped in Blue John Canyon, and then look out the window and see blue John canyon draining into lake Powell in some of the coolest topography I have seen so far, in any of my travels…

Pretty soon I’ll figure out how to nail some photos to this dang internet, and you can see what I’m talking about.

This will be my attempt at a “blog”, or a “web log”. Basically it will be a short journal of the places I am going to and a recount of the things I do while there. The purpose for me doing this is to include my family on my adventures through the United States and close neighbors while on the job. The job is as a first officer for a San Luis Obispo based jet charter, in the Citation Excel.

The job began on September 17th with a phone call from the chief pilot, while sifting through bruised tomatoes at Von’s. They needed a pilot quickly and I was on a plane the next day headed to Wichita Kansas for 2-1/2 weeks of Citation XLS initial Flight Training. (actually flight simulator training)

To this point all my flying had been in piston singles and light twin engine airplanes, relatively slow moving and noisy. The jet on the other hand is relatively fast moving and quiet (on the inside), which for me, who relied heavily on the sound the engines made to determine how things were going, was the first major difference. The next was the other pilot. The citation requires a two pilot crew to handle the more complex procedures and systems. Learning to take what I was used to and split it in half then give half away, was the second.

Flying can be very fun, very boring, and very scary, within the space of a few minutes. In the jet it can be a few seconds. Having a second pilot in the cockpit helps to put time between the second and third.

This blog will be hopefully about interesting events during the flying and subsequent traveling. Unfortunately many interesting events have already occurred that we’re never documented. My habit, ask Lukie, is to begin something and then get tired of it and start doing something else. Hopefully I can manage to keep this going for a while not just to share, but for my own memory, which sometimes tends to be misplaced.

So anyway here it is.