As I’d mentioned in a previous post, with the new way we are required to bid our schedules, I’ve been getting fewer (okay, no) flying trips. I never used to run out of landing currency. Never. But for the past 6 months or so, all of my trips are coming up as Bunkie IDs–meaning, I baby-sit the controls during the night while the flying guys sleep. Boooring. We call it “Dozing for Dollars.”

On flights over 12 hours, we bring two bunkies (The official term is non-flying pilot.) for a total of four pilots. For flights under 12 hours (namely SFO-NRT (Tokyo) we bring one bunkie for three pilots total). The FAA requires airline pilots to log three landings every 90 days. At the end of the last 90 days, I had only 1 out of 3 and had to get current in the simulator. But at 6 months, you have to have had three AIRPLANE landings (The simulator no longer counts). Having had no luck in May pulling flying trips, even though I’m going to great places like Sydney, I decided I had to get serious about getting my 3 landings before the end of June, when I’d turn into a pumpkin. Seeing that I’d also planned a desperately needed vacation to Tahiti during that same time , an event the Dominatrix of United, aka Jennifer, would surely seek to ruin in order to re-train me, I knew had to do something. But what could I do? Beg? Plead?

Exactly.

So, I started e-mailing the respective captains before each flight, explaining my situation and groveling for a landing. I got nothing but “no’s” and even a few “hell no’s.” (No matter, they-who-refuse-me will expire in humiliating ways in future novels–IOW, never piss off an author). So, I changed tactics. I began to bribe. Along with my usual pleading, I said I’d buy them beers when we got to the layover. Suddenly, the captains starting saying yes (even though they must make nearly twice what I do). In less than a week, I’ve gotten two landings!!! (And they were sweet, too (my landings), I might add, which either disputes the old saying that practice makes perfect or eerily confirms the importance of the simulator as a realistic training tool). I’m raiding my checking account once again (you think beer in Japan is cheap??!!) for the third and final landing that will keep me out of trouble (and Jennifer’s clutches) for another few months.

Epilogue: I did receive my third and final required landing, and went on to (finally) find success bidding with our new system. I’m giddy with delight to report I’ve actually gotten several recent landings without having to buy them, flying as the Flying First Officer and not the Bunkie! What have YOU bartered for lately…and what did you put on the bargaining table? Come on, fess up. Hee hee.

I recently flew a trip to Beijing. I didn’t visit the Forbidden City as I’d planned. Instead I was lured into the dark, secretive, and oh-so satisfying world of shopping for pirated items. Wait, not pirated, sorry, (mumbling): faux items.

The Chinese government is trying to crack down, though. Raids are sporadic, but shop owners pull up stakes and move frequently. Luckily, there are hundreds of restaurants with “back rooms” and anonymous-looking office buildings with dozens of floors of unmarked doors that they can lease. Here’s where you’ll find the best bargains. But only airline crew and regular travelers know of them because the locations are all word of mouth, leaving the typical tourist to be ripped off on the streets–not so much in price, but in the quality of the items. We airline crew are offered “Best Quality” because if you screw with us, we won’t return and word will get around. After a few hours of walking into restaurants, passing through the kitchens, and into a warren of stuffy and hot back rooms, or trips up a scary elevator to floors with numbered doors, through which you enter a paradise of cheap-but-excellent quality purses and watches, I felt a little like a junky in search of “da fix.”

But the night before, I had the most interesting nail experience. See, I’m about to go on vacation…a real, blissful vacation to the South Seas. So I wanted to get a nail fill–that’s acrylic powder painted over your real nails so they can grow long and your polish lasts for weeks. There’s the pedicure place we go to, located inside a shopping market. The night we landed, I went over there for my pedicure–and foot massage, ahhhh–and asked the ladies if they do acrylic fills.

To begin, they did the manicure thing you never get at home: cuticles, etc, then the fill began: it was all done by hand, painstakingly, each nail filed, acrylic-ed, filed and buffed until each was a work of art! They don’t use the filing machines here like at home at the “nail lady” where I’m in and out in under an hour. It went on and on…for hours, over 2 I think (I lost track because I was so tired from flying here that after a while I was drifting in and out of consciousness!) Sometimes several ladies were working on me at once. Then my nails were lovingly and painstakingly polished. Oh. My. God. I have never had such perfect nails in all my life. But…would I do it again? Hmm. Maybe. Probably. It cost only 12 bucks, US, but it took FOREVER! Maybe if I’m not so tired and I bring a book to read…a BIG book.

One of the Chinese flight attendants told me this joke: If Adam and Eve were Chinese, we’d still be in Paradise. Why?

Answer: They’d have ignored the apple and eaten the snake!

Ha!

Well, I can honestly say I will NOT be missing flying while I laze on a tropical island sipping drinks with exotic names and little paper umbrellas in coconuts. Wishing you a lovely few weeks and a fantastic Fourth of July, should you live where it is celebrated!

I’m posting this from Japan. It really is the perfect trip. It’s only two nights away from home, plus I got to FLY. I had the first leg to Japan: Narita International Airport which serves Tokyo although it is strangely 2 hours away from Tokyo. Soon after takeoff from San Francisco International, I glanced over at the captain’s side window…and saw some dark splatters. Did we hit a bird? We all agreed we must have, but we didn’t feel anything. Where’s the blood and feathers…and why’s the stain brown and spreading like cat vomit on my kitchen floor during hairball season? Guts, the captain determines. Makes sense to me. But as we continue to accelerate to 320 knots and we head out over the Pacific, the brown slime continues to spread until it has covered a good deal of the captain’s side window (located just forward of his left shoulder).

With a feeling of dread no doubt shared with characters in cheesy horror flicks, we realize we do not know what it is…and if it will eat through the window, invading our frail human bodies to use us as hosts in order to take…over…the…world!!! (er, sorry. But I am a writer and the scenario did go through my mind.) The captain DID gamely offer to switch seats, however, which I declined. Silent seconds tick by. He touches a tentative fingertip to the glass…and his finger comes away brown and we realize that some of the stuff…IS…INSIDE. (insert bloodcurdling scream and the screen goes black)

Okay, cut to our satellite radio call to maintenance after level off where we learn the brown slime is not a hostile alien life form but lowly window sealant that was not given the proper time to dry before we took off. The window is fine–it’s attached by bolts not the sealant–and the captain with a look of relief, loosens his seatbelt. This horror story, at least, had a happy ending.

Onward to Narita, skirting the Alaska and the Aleutian Islands as we complete the quick (for me, Sydney and China girl) 10.5 hours flight. The captain is an ex-Navy pilot and says he’ll have to buy me a beer IF when I land, the nose wheels straddle the runway centerline, I land in the touchdown zone, AND I receive at least one unsolicited customer compliment. If not all criteria are met, I have to buy HIM a beer. So, of course as we are descending, there is turbulence with warnings of very stronger bumpies in the area. Heh, no problem. As we are on final approach, the airplane ahead of us reports windshear: a 10 knot loss of speed on final. As if that will scare me. But I have to carry extra speed now to compensate. We are landing on runway 34L. There is a cross wind out of the northeast 040 degrees at 17 knots. Piece of cake, that’s just like what the inquisitors give in the simulator at the Chamber of Horrors. I soar over the threshold a little hot and with a slight acceleration trend on the airspeed. With my wing low into the wind and opposite rudder pressed to straighten the nose, I land on centerline and so sweetly soft, too, although a little long due to the extra speed. Ahhhh. I can taste that Asahi now.

You know what, though? I didn’t get one freaking compliment from a passenger. 298 people onboard and not one, NOT ONE, thought to say, “Are we down yet, because I surely couldn’t feel the wheels touch.” So, I lost my beer. Know what? Next time you fly and the landing is really good, and especially when you feel bumps and gusts on the way down, pass on a little compliment to your needy pilot. You will make her or his day. (and possibly earn them a beer!)

Good news was: the captain was such a good guy, he bought me a beer after the flight anyway!

Oh! I’m “plogging” on Amazon, too. It’s what Amazon calls the blogs you can post on your books’ pages. They will be different from what I post here, more book and promo related whereas this blog is dedicated to the flying side of my life. So, come see and leave me a comment if you like! (whereas although I see and love reading every one of your comments–and keep ‘em coming!–I do not normally reply to comments left here due to the sheer lack of time. However, I do plan to respond as time permits over at Amazon) >>>>>
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0373771061

Remember the Aussie seagulls from Disney’s FINDING NEMO and how they shouted: “Mine! Mine! Mine!”? It’s not fiction.

All month I’d looked forward to visiting the fabulous Fisherman’s Market in Sydney for some fresh seafood, namely salmon sashimi, which is so much fresher and cheaper there than at any of the restaurants at home. I dreamed of it, even. (I know, sad and strange…) So, as soon as I arrived, I took a nice, long brisk walk to the pier, purchased a box of sashimi, wasabi, soy sauce, some barbequed octopus and prawns (not to be missed in Sydney), and a bottle of wine (a delicious Hunter Valley Chardonnay with a screw top so I could carry the extra back to the hotel room for later).

Sigh…isn’t it beautiful? The perfect lunch…

(The view of these barefoot Aussie men readying their sailboat for a sail was quite nice, too, I must say):

However, it looked like the rest of my lunch was trying to escape its box one tentative tentacle at a time:

Yet, my biggest concern was with the gulls
who are very aggressive stealing food at the market. They were all over the tables when I walked outside. This one and his friend had already landed when I sat down. Ha. Think again, boys! To my shock, all it took was one look to scatter them. Maybe it was because that one look was so deadly and so cold, an assassin’s stare, that they didn’t dare try a second time to steal a nibble of MY lunch, not if they didn’t want their greedy little beaks squished in a blob of wasabi! So, for this one day, I claimed my spot at the top of the food chain and held on with everything I had. “Mine, mine, mine!”

Twice a year, pilots who fly the 777 and 747 aircraft must return to Denver for a checkride. I’ve posted about it previously here. The mid-year proficiency training, called a PT, is two fun-filled (snort) days. It starts out with a 2-hour review of procedures, followed by about 6 hours of annual emergency procedures training/review, followed by four hours in the torture chamber, um, I mean the simulator the next day. Doesn’t it sound like fun? One thing about the inquisitors, er, the training folks at United, they really know how to show the pilots a great time!

So. Every once in a while, I make a fashion decision that I end up regretting. Call this one of those times. After all these years at United, I thought it was high time I wore a skirt to training, seeing that it’s oh-so girly and something I never get to do on the job.

It’s not like I didn’t think it out, okay? The skirt was long and flowy, so I figured I’d have no problem moving the fabric where I needed to accommodate the steering yoke while flying the sim and still hiding my panties. But little did I know the sim wasn’t the issue–the formerly low-key afternoon spent reviewing emergency procedures was. They’d altered the emergency training portion of the PT to include…personal combat–yes, self defense–which totally caught me off guard.

I mean, we’ve TALKED about self-defense since 9-11, sure, only we’ve never actually done it. But now United feels we pilots must join the flight attendants in the air-born version of Kill Bill. Maybe it’d would have been nice to have some advance notice of the curriculum change, but hey, that’s water under the bridge now–or, more accurately, wind under the skirt, which I so memorably got to experience while playing the game of…terrorists storming-the cockpit door!

Oh! Then we got to do Gilligan’s Island when the instructor made all fifteen of us pile into a life raft. (Always fun watching the boys play with the radios and the survival kits.) All in all, it was great training and a good refresher…just not skirt friendly.

Next time I’m wearing pants. Leather pants…with studs and steel-toed boots.

Before I go, I wanted to step up on a soapbox. Publishers make ARCs (or advance review copies) of novels to give to reviewers and booksellers before a book’s release. They are labeled not for sale. To do so is like stealing from the author because we receive no money from the transaction, and no compensation for all our hard work. I recently learned of several ARCs for sale on E-Bay for my upcoming quirky, sexy anthology MYSTERIA. You can read more about it at PC’s blog. Authors everywhere hope that if you see an ARC for sale, you won’t buy it. Better yet, report it as you would any stolen property.

Okay, so freed temporarily from deadline, I let myself loose on the Internet. Most fascinating to me is the proliferation of blogs since I last peeked out of hibernation. Most depressing to me is seeing what a geek I really am. There are soooo many blogs written by ultra cool folks (who’d never dream of typing multiple “o”s after a word), savvy vegans who live in New York City or Seattle and wear black clothes and listen to ultra-cool bands and music and read ultra-cool books I’ve never heard of, all visited by similarly ultra-cool visitors with anime-photo likenesses of themselves with ultra-cool names I don’t understand whose profiles describe interests hopelessly beyond me, and who post mega-times during said day or week, seemingly online All the Freaking Time. By the time I was done with my blog tour, my eyeballs were streaming down my cheeks–not a good condition for a pilot–and I felt like the blogger version of Napolean Dynamite.

As for you Ultra-cool Bloggers, I so admire you. I can never be One of You. So be it! I will continue to write my nerdy blog about my day job!!!

Oh! I did learn it’s The Thing To Do to sign off your blog post for the day with Music Last Listened to. (or something) So, here we go…

Ashlee Simpson, “La-la” (because it is on my daughter’s i-pod which I use it when I go work out because I don’t have one of my own!)

So, how un-cool are you? (someone make me feel better)

Yeah, finally got this puppy up and posted. Thought it would be good to post before I fly out to Hong Kong in the morning. I’m so excited to spend a layover NOT holed up in the hotel room writing for once! Woo! What to see, what to do… Hmm…I think I need glasses after this last deadline. I’m serious! I can hardly see. I hear getting glasses is really cheap in Hong Kong and the other pilots and flight attendants know of a place. I’ll let ya know what happens. (Can I get a massage with that?) Wow, with bifocals on, I’ll finally look like a real 747 pilot, ya think?!

Lemme tell ya about the red tape tangle I experienced on my last trip to Beijing. Few US airlines have the route authority to fly in and out of mainland China, so I’m one of a small pool of international flyers trained to do so. Yes, I know, I’m special. It’s not the easiest task, flying in and out of China, but it’s always interesting! One thing most pilots take for granted here in the US and much of the world is that all pilots are required to speak English on the radios. Knowing my language ability–or lack thereof–I thank God for this. At one time back early in the last century, French was almost selected to be the language of aviation. Yow. This would not have been pretty. For me. I doubt anyone on the face of this Earth can mangle this lovely tongue in quite the same way I can. I mangle English enough as it is, but it’s a sin to do so with French. Maybe if I had a French boyfriend, I could practeeese, but I don’t and, oh, well. Anyway, it’s easy to see the reason for having a single language being spoken on the radios: for one, you can understand the controller and they can understand you. Um, for the most part.

Example of in-cockpit communication in a foreign land:
Controller to pilot: “United 888, cleared to tohjuk fgeeuer noffird orp.”
Pilot to other pilot: “Say what?”
Other pilot shrugs and keeps flying.
Pilot to controller: “Say again for United 888?”
Controller to pilot: “Cleared to tohjuk turn right fgeeuer noffird now!!!”

The thing with flying in mainland China is that the controller speaks “English” to you, but Chinese to everyone else. So you know what he’s telling you (sort of) but you’ve got no clue what he just told the other guy. It makes it very difficult to maintain your situational awareness, especially in poor weather. I’d like to know if someone had to go missed approach, or was sent to holding, etc, for the heads-up value, but tough luck. Another thing with flying in China is that they use meters instead of feet and meters-per-second instead of knots for wind. It’s not so hard to convert, but it’s just One More Thing. It’s why those ice cold Tsingtaos taste so good when you land!

This particular flight to Beijing was about 12 1/2 hours which somehow didn’t seem so long. I think it was because I had my book filling my brain. Pondering the final scenes kept me alert and the grinding boredom at bay. We had four pilots along. Two of us had first break and spent the first 5.5 hours of the trip sleeping, aka “Dozing for Dollars.” But when I came on duty over the Aleutian Islands, it was to rare and gloriously clear views. The weather in California has been so mud-sucking soggy. Yet, for the trip over much of the Aleutians and northwest Russia, it was spectacularly clear. (something’s really wrong with our global weather when Siberia is having a nicer spring than Sacramento…). During the flight, the Chief Purser (aka the boss flight attendant) came up with the crew documents for us to fill out. Everyone on the crew–there are usually 19 of us total–has to fill out their name, passport number, China visa number and what, if anything, unusual you’re bringing into the country. There are two of these forms filled out in duplicate. Then the purser confiscates everyone’s passports to be surrendered upon arrival to the Chinese officials. This is the ONLY country where you surrender your passport before arrival and step into the country without it in your possession. Kind of creepy. So after landing, we’re waved through booth after booth, officious bean-counter after bean-counter, and get to the desk where the purser is to be given back our passports. As all 19 of us gather around the big booth which is always just high enough to make you feel small, meaningless, and insignificant, and the officious bean-counter, hereafter known in this blog as OBC, actually M.F.OBC which I will not translate because this is a Family Blog, shook his head and declared, “Not right.” Brain-dead from the long flight, we all stand around, me and the other Pilots Who Are Not The Captain leaning against walls and trying to stay awake. (it is about 3 am home time). Time drags on. Fifteen minutes later we learn the problem is that of the two pieces of documentation gathered during the flight, one isn’t filled out right. There is a Meeestake. But there is no other sheet. No blank forms with which to re-do it. But to get into the country, we must have both papers filled out. But there are no blanks. But we can’t enter China unless we have two acceptable ones. You get the picture here? You ever see the movie The Terminal with Tom Hanks? We can’t leave the %&*$ airport.

Luckily, we bring along language-qualified flight attendants. Un-luckily, even fluent Mandarin was not enough to make headway with the MFOBC. This kid had to be like 24 years old, dressed like Napoleon Bonaparte with gold braid and an algae-green uniform. But he had to defend the borders of his homeland and that meant holding the entire crew of a 747 prisoner in the terminal for 45 minutes and counting. Finally, one of the other pilots has a brilliant idea: use his cell phone to call long distance overseas to United Airlines Headquarters–in Chicago–and explain the problem. Normally, no one’s cell would have worked, but he happened to dance salsa as a hobby (I am serious) and had local Chinese salsa-dancing friends (yes, really) and so had a local cell card to use. About 30 minutes later and after much praying and swearing, a higher ranking OBC arrived and with one word whispered in the ear of the MFOBC we were in. In!!!!!! Yes! Hands out like beggars, we got our passports back and pushed through the gates into Beijing and our bus to the hotel. And what’s the very first thing that greeted us? STARBUCKS. Yes, a Starbucks is the VERY FIRST thing you see when exiting the gates at customs in the Beijing airport.

Oh! Oh! I updated my Site of the Month, Week, Whatever with the website of my New Favorite Author: Elizabeth Vaughan. Come join me in laying sacrifices at her feet. If you haven’t read WARPRIZE, do so. Otherwise you are seriously missing out on some amazing reading. This is no plug from any association of authors. This is MY true gush. I LOVED this book. WARSWORN just arrived tonight on my doorstep–at Amazon premium prices I might add. Can’t wait to dig in.

The FAA requires commercial airline pilots to have a minimum of 3 landings every 90 days. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you take into account there are 4 of us fliers on most trips (I’m speaking international here, domestic is a whole other story and getting landings is NEVER a problem), and usually only 2 legs, over and back, someone’s going to get shortchanged–i.e. someone gets to land and somone gets to drool (oh, and talk to the passengers on the PA). Add vacation into the mix or the luck of the draw when bidding for certain days off, and 90 days can go by real fast, and here you are, getting ready to expire. This happened to me last week.

The landings desk as we call it is infamously run by the most brutal and heartless of the United schedulers. She has to be, because think about all the whining she hears when calling to assign a pilot a landings session in the simulator on their day off. So, Jennifer, aka Dominitrix, calls me, as always, choosing the ONE day I can’t be away from home (after all, these ARE days off, but whatever) and after giving me 48 hrs notice to get my butt to Denver, answered my: “But I have no one to watch my kids that day,” with an ever-so-slightly bored, “So?”

So, I beg friends to watch the kids the night before and after school the next day, and at 6 am I am on a flight to Denver, in coach (ugh) after waking up at 4 am. I get to Denver, and the dread increases. I do not like being here. Denver is a fine city, but it is forever linked in my mind with…The Chamber of Horrors, aka the United Airlines Flight Training Center. It’s the largest commercial aviation training facility in the world. All United pilots are trained there, and a bunch of other carriers, too, from China to Russia, and most notably Air Force One. It can be a crowded place–1/3 of United’s flight attendants are trained in emergency procedures at the facility, too. The C of H operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has almost 800 full-time employees.

I am scheduled for the 4 hours simulator with an instructor and 3 other pilots, also running out of landing currency. But do you think we each jump in the seat, grab three hops, and go home? Nah, that’s for sissies. I’m up first. I take off, come around for an instrument approach in low weather, and am told to go missed approach. So, I go around, I come around again, and the instructor fails an engine. I land low visibility with 3 engines running. I take off again, back to 4 engines, and just as I rotate to take off, the inquisitor, er, I mean instructor fails an engine. Again, I bring it around and land. Except this time it’s clear. But JUST clear is for weenies. He throws in a 20 knot crosswind. I land, all engines are given back, and I come around one last time, in a normal landing. This is repeated for each of us. I finally get back to the airport and barely make a 5:30 flight home. Good news, I get first class. Bad news, they only served a cold meal. But good news–liquor! I get back home around 8 pm, pick up kids, and finally fall into bed around midnight. I think I slept. But it may have been a coma imitating sleep!

This is the image United presents to the public of the Flight Training Center:

And this archive photo of a simulator looks innocent enough:

But I feel the traveling public needs to know the truth. I was able to sneak out at great risk a photo of what it really looks like inside one of these simulators (warning: disturbing image):

Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to my Sydney trip this weekend. And, no, I won’t get to land…

Last week I flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Because of extra strong headwinds, the flight was a whopper in length–14 hours and 30 minutes! (that’s long, even for me) But I was rewarded with some VERY rare clear views of Siberia:

And I bet the real estate is cheap in this neighborhood:

Okay, on to the Hotel Diva thing. It’s all United’s fault. When we travel overseas, security and safety are important factors for the crew, and the airline takes this seriously, especially since 9-11. But in order to ensure the best security for the crews, top notch hotels must be selected. So wherever I layover internationally, it’s in a 4 or 5 star hotel. Over the years, I’ve gotten so used to this that when I travel with my family, I find my 3-star budget hampers my 5-star taste in accommodations! When I walk into the room, I expect thick towels, luxury soaps, granite or marble bathrooms, deep feather beds with loads of pillows… Anything less is, well, just mass-market. Now, if only I could figure out how to get my 3-star traveling budget up to match my 5-star tastes… Although these photos don’t do the views justice, I wanted to share:

That’s it for now. I’ll report in from Sydney at the end of the month.

The Sydney trip: With 62 hours away from home, 26 of those spent In The Air–do the math, ouch!–being able to sleep on the airplane is necessary for survival. In the cockpit there is a sound-proof (more or less) bunkroom with bunk beds, pillows, sheets, blankets. Often you’ll see the pilots dressed in jammies as they sneak out to the lavs during their rest break. The 14 hours flight to Sydney was uneventful, a little rough in patches as all flights over the equator’s intertropical convergence zone are bound to be (where the northern hemisphere air collides with the southern and makes thunderstorms and, well, bumpies).

When you’re trying to sleep, those “bumpies” feel like someone grabbing your mattress and shaking it. Level one is your miniature poodle jumping up in bed with you, level 2 your German Shepherd, 3 your spouse, 4, your 400 lb wrestler spouse, and 5…that’s an asteroid that crashes through your bedroom ceiling and hits the mattress. Repeatedly. The worst we got on the trip to Sydney was 2.5.

Sydney was glorious–it was summer time, something this kid sorely needed after all this No Cal rain. I took the ferry over to Manley Beach and ate lunch al fresco in my favorite restaurant The Bower. It’s right on the beach–plastic tables and chairs, delicious food and a nice wine list. I ordered the grilled barramundi with pumpkin gnocchi, and wine. Something about fresh seafood and a chilled Aussie chardonnay…ahhh. Afterward, I picked up chocolate-covered ginger for a good friend (Tim Tams? Nah, THIS is the Aussie treat!) And also several bags of the local soft black licorice from Darrell Lea’s, another can’t-get-nowhere-else specialty, and was asleep by 6 pm. I woke up at 2 to write (that deadline is breathing fire down my neck) then by lunchtime it was time to fly home. And then I met Jim.



Jim, Jim, Jim. He kept me up all night. He was a category 3 cyclone lurking out in the South Pacific and sprawled across our flightpath like a fat dude in a recliner in front of the TV, holding a can of beer in one hand and a remote in the other. United dispatch warned us, but there was no other path we could take home, so we had to fly through the bands of weather associated with…Jim. When we asked for an update during the flight, they wrote back that “Jim is starting to fall apart.” Worried, I typed back: “Maybe he should seek counseling.” I received, of course, no reply.

Our weather radar shows us the individual cells, so we can keep out of the bad stuff, but it’s always bumpy nearby. We were due to swing by Jim during my hour rest break. (of course). Out of that 4.5 hours, I’d say it was level 2 to 4 bumpies for 4.499 hours. Needless to say, by the time I got home, I’d been up 30 hours. I’d like to say I’m recovering peacefully at home, but the way my schedule fell this month, I am off to Hong kong tomorrow. But it’s going to be in the high 60s, low 70s and sunny–a small window during the year when Hong kong is actually gorgeous! Maybe I’ll hike up Victoria Peak. Or…maybe I’ll just sleep alone. (IOW without Jim.)