Airline pilots are overpaid–or maybe not.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

None of my passengers yesterday had any idea that on landing, they were speeding down the flooded runway with no brakes, which is fine with me.

I mean the part about “nobody had any idea.” I’m a big fan of braking, especially when it comes to a sixty-ton jet on a rain-slicked runway.

They all deplaned a few moments later, none the wiser, which is also fine with me. I wanted to make a phone call and grab a bite between flights and I only had a few minutes to do it.

If you prefer to have “no idea” what goes on in the cockpit, click here.  If you you want to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, here we go.

Twenty-some miles out of Raleigh-Durham Airport at 5,000 feet and about 200mph. The wind is a direct tailwind at 69 knots. The ceiling at the airport is between 300 and 500 feet. That means we won’t break out of the clouds until we get below 300 feet. But the minimum we can descend to without a determination that the landing is safe is 200 feet. That means we’ll have about 5 seconds from when we see the runway to decide if we can land–and make the necessary control inputs to position the jet for a safe landing and oh by the way, the approach lights aren’t working today. With me so far?

The tower reports the surface wind to be a direct crosswind. So we know the wind will shift 90 degrees somewhere between 5,000 and touchdown, plus decrease in velocity by nearly half. Also, the temperature at our altitude is about 50 degrees, but it’s 33 on the ground with freezing drizzle. Besides the fact that the jet, like a galloping horse, wants to point it’s own head and go where it’s pointed–into the crosswind, which isn’t unfortunately the way the runway’s pointed–the shifting airmass we’re riding in is bumpy as a logging trail. I call back and warn the cabin  crew,

“Hang on–she’s gonna buck.” They’re Dallas-based as well. They get it. Lightens the mood–okay my mood–a little to joke around.

My F/O is one of the best. She’s an Air Force Academy grad, and like me, a former Air Force pilot. “Takes 4,000 pounds of fuel to get to Norfolk,” she offers, thinking of our alternate. We have 12,000 pounds at the moment.”If we don’t land, you put clearance on request to Norfolk and we’ll be there in twenty minutes. The winds are lighter there.”

This ain’t my first rodeo, I know how this goes: I’ll have a couple seconds tops between when we break out of the clouds and she calls “minimums,” which means if we’re not in the slot–on airspeed, fully configured, power stable–we’re going to Norfolk. Also, I know that when the jet’s done bucking around, her nose better be pointing down the runway (that’s what rudder’s for, but there’s not always enough throw) and I’ll need to delicately put the upwind wingtip lower, touching down right main gear first, then left, then the nose. Then stop the beast on what I know is a slick runway.

We break out of the clouds but into heavy rain at 300 feet. I take a “one-Mississippi” breath to size up the picture, kick in the correct rudder, lower the wing, and see if my correction will hold. It does–we can land, if nothing else changes.

This is actually my watch. No nerdy-pilot clunker here.

“Minimums,” Nora calls. “Landing,” I announce. I keep a hair-trigger on the go-around throttle toggles, ready till the last few feet to rocket us back into the air if the bronco starts to get the better of me in this wild ride. One deliberate bump from the heel of my throttle hand and the fuel controls 140 feet behind me will dump a torrent of jet fuel into both burner cans, then we’ll stand it on it’s tail riding 50,000 pounds of thrust, getting the hell out of Dodge.

I wrestle the controls; I win. We touch down softer than I meant to, but with the blustery winds, my main goal is to make it a controlled gear-by-gear touchdown without dragging a wingtip.It’s a smart jet. On touchdown, when a computer senses that the main wheels are turning, the spoilers on top of the wing automatically pop up to kill the wing’s lift and thereby put more weight on the wheels and make our braking more effective.

The spoilers didn’t deploy. That’s because the wheels weren’t spinning: we were hydroplaning at about 145 miles per hour.

As I said, this ain’t my first rodeo. I know that hydroplaning occurs most readily at nine times the square root of the tire pressure. Our main tires are at over 200 psi, so the square root is around 15; multiplied by 9 equals 135 or so. After which, we’ll get traction and braking. Lesson of the day: if your car’s tires are at 36 psi, your hydroplane vulnerability is around 50 mph. Don’t panic! Stay with it, decelerate carefully and you WILL regain traction.

My excellent First Officer called out, “No spoilers” and manually deployed them. I kept the nose straight with aerodynamic controls until the brakes became effective, slowing our sixty-ton sled to taxi speed, skidding nonetheless four or five times more over pooled water from the heavy rain.

We warned the Southwest jet on final ten miles behind us. Then taxiied to the gate.

The jet emptied, the passengers went safely on their way, and I stopped at my favorite barbeque place before turning the jet around and launching back into the rainy gloom.

Just another day at the office. I couldn’t do anything without the teamwork of the fantastic first officers we have.  And you couldn’t get where you’re going in one piece without all of us on both sides of the cockpit door.

Nonetheless, we still hear all too often that airline pilots are overpaid. Click on the video below, and think that over.

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Meet your congress!

Well, at least one famous member. Here’s the “Larry Craig Toilet” in the Minneapolis Airport:

Passenger Bill of Rights: Be careful what you wish for.

It’s time to let the sun go down on this very bad idea.

Barbara Boxer in the Senate and Mike Thomspon in the House introduced separate bills intended to require air carriers to provide where “the departure of a flight is delayed or disembarkation of passengers on an arriving flight that has landed is substantially delayed,” the provision of (i) “adequate food and potable water,” (ii) “adequate restroom facilities,” (iii) “cabin ventilation and comfortable cabin temperatures,” and (iv) “access to necessary medical treatment.”

Congress to the rescue!

That doesn’t seem unreasonable, does it? It’s basically The Geneva Convention for prisoners, which you might feel like when your plane is number 45 for take-off at Laguardia, a not-so-rare occurrence.

But here’s the part that as a  passenger, will ruin your life:

The airlines would also be required to “provide passengers with the option of deplaning and returning to the terminal, or deplaning at the terminal” if “3 hours have elapsed after passengers have boarded the aircraft, the aircraft doors are closed, and the aircraft has not departed,” or “3 hours have elapsed after the aircraft has landed and the passengers on the aircraft have been unable to deplane.”

That means your fate as well as your travel plans and those of a couple hundred others rest in this man’s hands:

Why? Because back in seat 27-F, he looked at his watch and demanded, after three hours of waiting, his “right to deplane.” But what about your right, and everyone else’s, to make it to their destination, albeit three hours and one minute late? And if you have bought a downline connection on a restricted, non-refundable ticket

you’re really out of luck: no refund, no further travel–and no redress from the airline you’re vegging on the tarmac with for the past three hours. You’d better have trip insurance, because whatever you’ve spent on tickets and accommodations is now swirling around here:

And if you’re in the terminal, ready to board your flight, don’t act smug–he’s also in charge of your fate, too. Because if his plane is required to return to the terminal, guess whose gate it’s going to take? And guess whose outbound flight will be cancelled as a result, flushing hundreds more people’s travel plans? You will get to thank him when you’re both standing in the long, snaky line at the ticket counter waiting to get rebooked and ultimately, travel stand-by, competing with a couple hundred others for the dozen seats available that day.

That’s right, you are screwed too, and you haven’t even had a chance to sit on the tarmac for your three hours. But each airport and each airline has scheduled their gates as tight as possible to minimize costs. There likely is no gate for you to return to–unless some other aircraft is booted off to make room. Meanwhile, your downline connection is leaving for your destination without you.

Bub-BYE, downline connection!

That’s a shame. Being as completely self-centered as I am, I wonder what this means for me, the captain on your flight? What am I supposed to do, take a vote of passengers, asking who wants to join Mr. Snappy Dresser and return to the gate? Who, like this guy,

might have different priorities and travel standards than you? And who’s taking the vote–my over worked and underpaid cabin crew? Who counts the vote? Or can you even take a vote–the bill says “passengers” have the right to deplane. Not a majority, not any specific number, really. Nice.

What's a captain to do?

Actually, my part’s the easy part. Forget about a “vote,” because democracy ends at the jetbridge. I’ll do what I always do: apply common sense to the situation. Congress gave me an out anyway, proposing that passengers would not have the option to deplane if the pilot “reasonably determines that the aircraft will depart or be unloaded at the terminal not later than 30 minutes after the 3 hour delay” or “that permitting a passenger to deplane would jeopardize passenger safety or security.”

Typical: they give you a firm policy, then offer you a way out. Because the bottom line is, well, the bottom line: the airlines don’t want to spend a dime more than is absolutely required, and congress is reluctant to force any well-funded and lobbied businesses to spend anything. Besides, most airlines are bleeding red ink: there is no money for extra gates.

More gates and more staffing both on the ramp and in the terminal costs dollars the airlines won’t spend or simply don’t have, and congress isn’t willing to fund it through appropriations.

Doesn’t really matter, though, because there really is no silver-bullet, one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of delays or deplaning during delays. If you support the congressional efforts to impose a simplistic solution to a complex problem such as this, you better be ready for the consequences.

The anecdotal stories of eight hours on the tarmac with overflowing toilets and women giving birth standing up and claustrophobic insanity are appalling. But if you realistically consider side effects of  the “Passenger Bill of Rights” as a one size-fits-all solution, you may find your travel situation to be even more tenuous than it was before congress “fixed” the problem.

Passenger Bill of Rights? Be careful what you wish for.

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Dept. of Shameless Self Promotion:

(well, it would be if anyone read this blog)

Free track from my solo CD. It’s called Firefly

Raggedy 1970s-style rock, released on iTunes, Amazon.com and in China, distributed by

Crank it up and enjoy.

Airliner Lavatories: No Blue Sky and NO DEUCE. Ever.

I couldn’t wait to stick my head in that toilet. I was nine, we were flying from Buffalo to Chicago and when the seatbelt sign finally went off, I flew up to the lav, just certain that when I flushed the toilet–once I figured out how–the bottom of the bowl would open up and I’d see blue sky below. I’d planned to drop stuff out of there across the country, pencils, tissue, pictures, maybe even a deuce if I could work one up.

What a buzzkill when I realized the truth: it’s just a chemical toilet. No open skies, thousands of feet of open sky below. Just a chemical toilet.

Well, it’s worse than that. The way your modern airliner is designed, it’s basically a chemical toilet with no water–just degerm solution swirling around below an aluminum “splash pan.” Yes, “ewwwwww,” but stay with me–it gets even worse: the chemical toilet is barely an arm’s reach from the galley.

This is you, standing in the galley, looking into the can. Nice, huh?

Are you getting this? Here, let’s paint the picture: the aircraft designers put an outhouse right next to the kitchen. But it’s worse than that, too. Let’s strip out the walls

Okay, see where that bowl is? And see where my seat in the cockpit up front on the left is? And how close? Well, the ventilation is designed so that whatever you do in the lav is brought forward almost instantly.

An old Air Force buddy of mine flies for Southwest Airlines and reports this as a major problem on early morning flights. Since Southwest doesn’t have reserved seating, a line forms at the gate well before boarding.And no one will leave the line to go to the bathroom lest they lose their boarding priority. He reports that as soon as they’re airborne, everyone suddenly needs their morning constitutional. The end result could only be described as similar to my high school memories on Saturdays when my Dad would roam the house picking up newspapers and magazines. You knew what was coming next: an hourlong sit down during which you hoped none of your friends came over; the whole house smelled like, well, an airplane lav.

No, we’re not defenseless in the cockpit:

But that does make it hard to drink my morning coffee (believe me: you want me to have my morning coffee) and does nothing for your fellow passengers gagging up front.

Yes I always fly with a drawing pad. Why do you ask? Anyway, take pity on the other hundred-plus people on the plane. Here are some reasonable yet crucial guidelines:

1. No Deuce in the forward lav. That’s the one by the cockpit near me. “Number One” only in the forward lav–NO DEUCE (that’s a “Number Two,” okay?) EVER up front. Except, of course, for me:

It’s good to be captain. You? Go to the aft lav in the rear of the airplane. Everyone back there’s traveling on some kind of discount anyway, they can live with it.

2. Mile High Club? Seriously?

What, in an outhouse? The last guy’s skid marks (remember: no water) stinking the place up? Now THAT’S amore. And you’d have to be an idiot. Your buddy who claims he did it in the lav (yeah, right) is an idiot for even thinking about it.

3. In and out, quickly. No newspapers, you’re not my Dad and this isn’t Saturday; you’re in a Porta-Potty five miles up at 500 miles an hour. Make it quick.

4. Wear shoes! It’s not that we mind you mopping up the sticky spillage on the lav floor with your socks (or less–ewwwwww); we don’t. It’s just the thought of it makes me gag when I type this, and especially when I see you doing it.

5. Mercy Flush: every thirty seconds, at least. Remember: no water. Lots of air. People trying hard to breathe and your atomized particulate matter is wafting around the cabin.

Look, your best bet is to just hold it, because the lav’s a filthy Petri dish; between flights the unlucky low man on the ramp totem pole holds his nose, flaps a rag around the lav, sprays some junk to mask the stench then slams the door. You can hold it and remember, it’s not like the bottom’s going to open up and let you throw stuff out into the blue sky. Seriously, I checked.

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World’s most dangerous sandwich, from the deli in Hangar 3 in LaGuardia Airport:

My in-flight hogfest from LaGarbage to DFW February 2.

Hot pastrami with provolone, onions  and mustard on a hero. Definitely will get you to the other coast, and someone’s going on oxygen a couple hours into the trip. Okay, there’s the connection with the “Deuce” post above.

When I was a First Officer–back when the earth was still cooling and dinosaurs roamed the planet–on the DC-10, I’d get one of these babies to go from the LaGuardia deli and eat it in flight enroute to O’Hare. During the next leg, about midway to Seattle, you could count on a burnt-onions-like gas cloud in the cockpit that had the captain ranting. What was he all whipped up about? Here, just Pull My Finger.

He’d fingerpoint, eventually at me, but on a three-man crew he couldn’t be certain if it was me or the flight engineer (that’s the beauty of today’s two-man crews: you always know who farted) who was responsible for gagging him. I swore up and down it wasn’t me.

Then one trip, the usual engineer called in sick. Over Wyoming–same stench. Busted; he wouldn’t give me any landings the rest of the trip.

Now, “My Darling Bride & Favorite Flight Attendant of All Time,” like most women, would be horrified and grossed out by this story,

but seriously–nobody’s reading this blog, much less this far down in it, plus she doesn’t even know I have a  blog. So shhhhhhh, mum’s the word, okay? Besides, whenever she asks me what I could possibly know about the general topic I call “Man Stuff,” I tell her honestly, “I used to be a guy.” Guys–particularly husbands–reading this are nodding and grunting. Women? Whatever. As I said, nobody’s reading this anyway.

The eagle, the courageous and the blind.

How’s your vision?

You can see clearly if you know what you’re looking for. And you’d have to know what you’re looking for to see the most significant thing in this picture.

It’s a light post, right? Just a big old light stanchion, in this case, on the ramp in the gate area at Orlando International Airport. Is that it?

Look again. Hard to see, but on top of that light post, patiently, quietly and with silent dedication to his task: a bald eagle.

He’s pretty well known among the ground staff and many of the flight crews who pass through the airport. I look for him when we taxi in; he’s usually perched there between flights, something I can relate to, but most folks at the airport don’t know he’s there.

Probably they don’t know because they’re too busy attending to their own travel, their own vacation or business or whatever reason they’ve come to the airport. Not surprising, really.

Unlike the solitary eagle, this is hard to miss and in fact this is mostly what you see in the Orlando airport. But more important than the overweight sunburned vacationers is what makes the magnificent eagle  so difficult to spot: quiet pride, dedication, deadly strength, deliberate discretion, maybe even a camoflauged exterior that blends in with the surroundings. Qualities that like the perch on top of a light stanchion are difficult to see unless you know they’re there and are willing to look hard to see them.

But I do. Maybe because I look with different eyes, because I care about what the solitary dedication and quiet pride in an obscure picture can show you if your eyes are open and focused.

Maybe since unlike most travelers, I’m not there for my own purposes, and as with the Orlando airport, I’m there a lot and so I see things, I take time to look for things others passing through don’t consider. Like the eagle.

A light stanchion, a pay phone, saying goodbye to families–you just have to look, and care. But I have to say, it’s more than just seeing what’s in front of your face. What you don’t see, but which if you care, you know is even more important.

I see this too. On our airline ramp, as one of our fallen eagles makes his way home. Not from vacation, or business, or whatever reason most people fly these days. But from sacrificing everything in the world for you, me and the unseeing regardless. Whether or not we care, or see, or know. The price is paid daily, by our best, brightest, youngest, most courageous and dedicated.

I don’t have a picture of this, but I can’t forget the image of our ground crews as reverently as humanly possible, removing a soldier’s coffin from my jet’s cargo hold, then solemnly placing it on a special, curtained cart to proceed to a waiting, devastated family downline. I don’t have a picture, because I’m usually standing in reverent silence near the cargo hold.

I stand on the ramp, escorting the military escort who stays faithfully with the remains in transit. Then, after paying my respects, I go upstairs into the terminal once again. And that’s the part I hate.

Because there in the terminal, no one knows what’s going on below, on the ramp. No one sees the eagle, no one looks; everyone’s about their own vacation or business or trip. If it were up to me, the flag draped caskets would be raised into the terminal and solemnly carried through while every unseeing self-absorbed passenger in the lounge put down their cell phone or iPod or laptop and stood in quiet respect for the best and strongest among us sacrificing all so that we might go about our travel, our lives, our future. But that’s just me.

I guess it all comes down to what you see, and what you look for. Anyone can see the eagle, and everyone should. Thank God, it’s there regardless.

Donate time or money to the U.S.O., the organization that cares for our military men and women: click here.

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Just don’t ask . . . and I won’t have to lie to you.

God almighty, the brain cells I extinguished in the Hofbrau Haus.

After I graduated from college, I had almost a year to cool my heels before going to Air Force flight school. So, I ended up in a job as a desk clerk in a hotel near Munich. I’d had six years of German in school, could read and write German pretty well, but there were two major problems:

1. I didn’t really know squat about German history in general or Munich history in particular.

2. I realized that even though I knew the language, everything out of my mouth sounded to the Germans like what I hear from the guy in my yard with the leafblower who I can hardly understand.

This was a problem because as part of my job, I was supposed to lead city tours for guests who requested a guide. My boss “Frau Doris” gave me a cheap info book and shoved me out the door with camera laden guests. I came back six hours later and told her I couldn’t lead any more tours because I really didn’t know jack about half the stuff we were seeing–and that the guests were asking about.

“No problem,” she said,  glugging down her daily liter of vodka–really, she never would have hired me had she been sober. “You just make something up.”

“What?”

“Yes, just make something up. They won’t know.” She fired up another cigarette. “And by the time they figure it out, they’ll be 6,000 miles away. So what do we care?”

I’ve stored that away in my Important Realization File.  And many tourists now show their pals pictures of the distinctive architecture in Munich:

Those twin minarets are a result, they tell their friends smugly, of the Turkish invasion of 1200 b.c..  Well, at least that’s the first thing that came to my mind when they asked. But sooner or later–and 6,000 miles away–some knowledgeable person gutting it out over their boring vacation pictures would finally say, “What?! There was never a Turkish invasion of Germany.” What did I care? It shut them up at the time.

I bring this up to illustrate a point: most of the time, if I don’t know, it’s probably because I really don’t care. So, it’s better if you don’t ask me in the first place. Yes, this extends to in flight.

I don’t want to spoil anyone’s childhood or anything, but here’s the truth: my P.A. in flight–you know, the “this is your captain speaking” cliche they use on TV but is kind of useless since I actually have a name–is canned because it’s easier for me to do over and over ad nauseum. So, I make up a few cities we’ll be flying over, add our flight time for an ETA, and the weather is always “partly cloudy” and whatever temperature I guess it should be. Then when we land, if the weather’s garbage, you will have to accept that this is the part that’s cloudy in my “partly cloudy” report.

Don’t even start with the “what are we over” crap either. Here, you tell me:

Okay, what street are you on? Can’t tell? Either can I–and this is what I’m looking at to navigate your jet five miles above your city or state or whatever. No wait–there it is!

Right? Are we good now? And yes, it’s partly cloudy–this is the part that isn’t cloudy. Plus whatever temperature I make up because it’s kind of a pain to convert degrees Centigrade to Fahrenheit.

The actual weather at our destination? Here you go:

Isn’t “partly cloudy” a lot easier to deal with? We’re going anyway and I’ll handle this when we get there.

Now, I could go on all day about Munich fables, plus don’t even get me started on the translations! Once, after drinking with a guest, he–okay we–decided that it would be funny if I wrote his wife the note she needed for a hairdresser in town and in German, made it say “bitte mein kopf rasieren.” Which means “please shave my head.” Seemed pretty funny till she returned with a crewcut. Thank God it was a weekend so Frau Doris was drinking at home and couldn’t fire me.

Maybe you want to stash all this in your “Important Realization File” and reflect on it briefly before you reach for the call button to ask for information.

Any other questions? If I don’t know the answer, I’ll sure find out for you. Or more likely, just make something up. Still want to ask about our arrival time? Didn’t think so. Now you’re catching on.

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Sent in by an alert traveler, this begs the question, “Anyone feel a draft in here?” plus, of course, “what were you thinking?”

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Today was a good day for recording and mixing. Do you want comatose, or Spinal Tap? Both, you say? Here’s the former

Tempest (Think ocean, storm, rocks, waves . . .)

And here’s the latter

Monstrous (Fire up that bong)

The Bachelor, the diaper, Sully, and the tarnished pilot image.

Okay, Jake, this is me and you talking pilot to pilot down in Flight Ops, with no cameras, microphones, ABC producers refilling cocktails or shrieking hot near-pornish “bachelorettes” slobbering over you.  Here’s the deal. You’re doing more to trash the airline pilot image than Lisa Nowak the astro-nut did to the NASA image by driving ten hours in a diaper to commit a felony.

Used to see the video of the astronauts suited up and each one clomping to the launch pad like the Michelin man, legs akimbo like modern-day gunslingers because, we all assumed, they had such enormous cajones that they had to walk that way.

Lisa Nowak’s arrest revealed the truth: they’re all wearing diapers. The walk is more like toddlers with a load in their pants than steely-eyed spacemen.

You, after blubbering on national TV because Canuck Jillian Harris dumped you for the hillbilly-poonhound-two-note Wes

Wes giving everyone the finger. Kind of like him for that.

even though he was an unfaithful lying wretch, enact a neurotic, girlish negation of 75 years of airline pilot mystique by collapsing into tears on national television. Some girls like that, apparently. So what? Even if the producers scripted your remake of Jason Messner sobbing over the deck rail of a fabulous villa Down Under, you needed to be a man, think of the other jet crew reputations in the balance, and NOT blubber over the rail of the Holiday Inn in Austin.

Think of  your poor first officer: he has to worry that if your aircraft suffers a birdstrike and loses both engines, he’ll have to contend with both a deadstick landing AND you blubbering like a baby at the same time.

So get real, for the love of God, pilothood, manhood and all that’s sacred to our already beleagured profession. Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Man Up. No more “weeping” on national TV. If you must weep–like when you look at your measly paycheck as a commuter pilot–do so privately. In public, maintain your facade, discretely spend those food stamps you’re eligible for by virtue of the pay scale that puts your W-2 income somewhere between that of my lawn guy

and the second assistant manager at Lowe’s. Have any of the bachelorettes caught on to that yet? (Editor’s Note: Those unfamiliar with the airline world may not grasp the subtle distinction between the terms “airline pilot” and “commuter pilot.” It’s analogous to a physician and a chiropractor: sure, they’re both called “doctor,” but they’re nowhere near the same thing. –JB, Blog Mgr & Editor)

2. Shave. The promo pictures of you in uniform with a wino’s-growth of beard is exactly what some bored TSA schlub is dreaming about discovering at a security checkpoint so he can be the hero, summon the police and give you a breathalizer test.  Shave, put on your tie and even though it will muss your up-do, wear your hat. Your pilot hat.

3. Don’t be a hypocrite. When ABC producers found out one of your harem was two-timing you with a production staff member (pun possible, take it as you like), you vented outrage over your unwitting sloppy-seconds, but that’s unjustifiable considering that you are eight-timing the entire harem yourself, swapping spit sequentially with each. (Side note: is Gia a porn star? Seriously.)

Attention TMZ: find the porn pix or videos in her past. I don't have time.

He got fired, she got sent home in a cab–no limo–and you, Mr. Righteous, went on to the tonsil hockey finals with the rest of the concubines. Hygiene note: you really should use mouthwash in between girls, for their sake. I’m just saying.

4. Ease up on the “love” crap. Everything you do isn’t for love, you don’t fly for love or ride your show-sponsored hog for love or bungee jump, and you were about to cry then too, right?  The video below is a normal woman–normal as in not pimped and contracted by a network to kiss your ass or dry hump you–telling you to grow a pair.

Never mind “love”–you live your life as best and as hard as you can, period. Don’t mush all this stuff together. We fly jets because we get paid to, because it’s fun, because we don’t want the Dunder-Mifflin cubicle, because we’re ruined for the forty-hour-workweek in an office after years in the air,

because we thought (in my case, and I’m being honest) that you had to be really smart to go to dental school.

This is what we do, and we’re damn lucky to do it. I’m not kidding: I’m nothing special, just a lucky guy who was at the right place at the right time and got the job that thousands of others can and do perform daily. With our shirts on, shaven. And no crying.

You’ve got half the season to go to redeem yourself. Pick a flight plan: you could be the airline version of George Clooney dry-motoring a weekly variety of babe-age, or the Sully Sullenberger quiet, self-effacing proven studly pilot, or the Lisa Nowak ruin-the-legacy freakshow in a diaper.

Sadly, right now, you’re mostly the latter. I’d envy you the first option, but myself–and most of your colleagues in the cockpit–strive mostly for the middle ground, for the high standard of Captain Sullivan. Join us if you will, don’t if you can’t, wear a diaper if you need to but whatever you do, no more nationally televised blubbering, okay?

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Anyone really out there in the blogosphere? I doubt it. So, here’s a bonus: just finished mixing this; recorded the bass line a dozen times so now I have no fingertips. But still, here it is: Big Dog Whaddya think? Anyone? Anyone? Leave a comment. Or not.

Horses in my beer, plus the Roadkill Report.

Okay, a day off, finally home in Cowtown.  At this time of the year, in this berg, that means The Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Here’s the whole thing in just 45 seconds:

You get the idea? An integral part of the experience is related to cold beer. Giddyup.

Part of my job as an airline pilot is to eat everything in sight, coast to coast. Reporting on that, then is the following recurring feature:

Now, I promise that in my travels, I’ll only post the good stuff, cool finds in obscure places that you have to try if you’re anywhere nearby. My first is one of my favorites, from Portland’s PDX International.

“Good Dog-Bad Dog” in PDX’s terminal brings you hot brats of all varieties, and you pick the toppings from a self-service bar. I always get the “Sweet Italian,” then top it with mustard and kraut. Always fast, hot and super-tasty. It’s a gut bomb that’ll get you another thousand miles down the road.

It’s great to find a place that’s beyond the usual chain fare. More info?  Check it out.

Reality, childhood, and Orion waves.

The intersection of my laziness as a person and my seniority as a pilot is this: I seldom fly early mornings, which means I often fly at night. Since our flight schedules are based on seniority and I’m not a morning person, that’s usually my preference.

In all my years of flying, staring at a night sky like black velvet strewn with jewels of varying sizes and colors, I’ve come to find what seem like old friends in the simpler constellations (remember, I’m lazy) like The Dippers, the “W” of Cassiopea, and on most nights Orion. No matter what’s going on in the cockpit, no matter what’s transpired that day, there they are every night, brighter than ever once you’re at cruising altitude and above most of the atmosphere tainted with smoke and smog and the detritus of civilization as well as nature’s continuous slop of fires and volcanoes and disastrous what not.

It’s a touchstone of distance, too, the way they lay out in the sky depending on how far and wide you’ve flown. Down in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and below the equator, the stars are all up there but at impossible angles and positions, not because they’ve moved, but because you have, having flown so many thousands of miles past your usual perspective on Earth.

I was telling this to my sweet third grader last year, describing how no matter what, when I’m flying in the northern hemisphere, I can eventually find my old friend Orion, “The Hunter,” usually over my left shoulder in the eyebrow window of the cockpit, steady as a faithful old friend. Then I know where I am in the world, in the sky, in reference to my celestial compadre.

Without a heartbeat’s pause, she asked in wide-eyed wonder, “does he ever wave to you?”

And I hated myself as a parent the very instant my mouth spoke the words, “Uh, no, honey; it’s just a group of stars in a pattern.” Because without meaning to, I’d done the adult thing, contributing unwittingly to the piece by piece dismantling of the childhood wonder I’d just been blessed to wander into. Like any imaginative child, she knew nothing of impossibility, rather, only what she could dream based on what she could see.

Me, on the other hand, after a thousand views of that night sky could only see what is, or at least what I know after childhood dominated by dreams gives way to reality dictated by fact over years and years of making a living in flight. I couldn’t see anything anymore with a perspective given over to knowledge of the impossible rather than the childhood belief in all possibility.

Maybe that shift in belief versus reality is inevitable, so maybe what I’d said was merely a part of the necessary exit from childhood, softened perhaps because it came from a parent who cherished her and her precious grade school years.

But more likely, I’m afraid, this whole incident highlights the coldness of adult-based reality: you give up your sense of wonder and with it, claim a heartless confidence in what you know, period. Then rather than living life as a dream of wide-open possibilities, time becomes a painless yet numb sleep walk from work to days off to work; lather, rinse, repeat.

I don’t really have an answer for this conundrum, and maybe there isn’t one. Clearly, the whole notion of constellations was born of some ancient but adult imagination and endures in modern times despite a millennium of science that proves all of it to be groundless in fact. Maybe that’s the whole point: it’s not that facts don’t matter because really, they do. But perhaps they coexist because there’s value in dreams, maybe even more so for the soul, than in reality.

That’s the lesson I’ve learned: my parenthood can be a bridge between the two for my precious child. I’ll strive to listen carefully and answer more slowly, with careful regard for what’s possible rather than the adult eye for what isn’t. I’ll try that perspective, too, at night at high altitude, stargazing during cruise. Not so much looking for Orion to wave at me, but grateful for the knowledge that in a child’s mind, he just might. Anything beyond that is really not important.

The fourteen–and forty-something–wannabes.

A middle-aged guy comes up to me as I’m talking to my first officer at the gate while we wait for the inbound jet. He’s forty-something, a bit raggedy around the edges, needs a haircut and a shave. I think to myself, here we go.

“You the left seat guy for the Palm Springs flight?” he asks. The lame attempt at lingo—yeah, I guess as the captain, I’m “the left seat guy”—foreshadows one of those talks where equal doses of “I know the airline slang” and “tell me the inside scoop” become a tiresome game of cat-and-mouse: no, I won’t tell you what hotel we stay in, or how much I get paid, or any “scary” stories about flying. “Uh, yes, I am,” I answer, hoping to avoid an interrogation, but knowing that’s not possible.

“Well, I’m a pilot too. I fly Cessna-182s for fun.” And he’s off to the races. My first officer steps in where he knows I’ll probably fail: he smiles, nods at the guy’s flying stories, asks courteous questions, but looks for an escape.

The guy turns back to me. “Do guys like you who fly for a living ever fly small airplanes for fun?” “No,” I tell him, “I don’t. I pretty much get my fill of flying at work and when I get home, I don’t even want to think about it.”

But his question did make me think. Because I was that guy, many years ago actually to the day: as a 14-year-old, on this very day I flew coast to coast on a Delta jet by myself. It was about the biggest event of my life to fly without parents and family from our home in Orlando to my Aunt and Uncle’s in San Francisco. The rest of the family—there were seven of us—was driving, which I’d always hated. But more importantly, my whole life since age three was dedicated to the goal of becoming a pilot. Any opportunity to fly—and at that point, I hadn’t flown on a plane since age nine—was for me the best uber-Disney fantastic miracle ever. My Dad was happy to have a volunteer, which meant only six (yikes!) in the fam-wag trundling across country.

So as a fourteen-year-old pilot wannabe, I envied “the left seat guy,” the right seat guy or anyone allowed into the inner sanctum of the flight deck. Just the thought of doing that for a living, as the Cessna guy had said, was my life’s dream.

All of my close high school buddies at the time were the same way: we were all going to graduate from college, get commissioned in the Air Force, and win our pilot wings in flight school. Then we’d fly as Air Force pilots for a number of years until a big airline recruited us. We’d be hired, work our way up the ranks, fly coast-to-coast every week on cool jets with gorgeous stewardesses.

That was the plan. After high school, I chose The Virginia Military Institute for college. Knowing myself as I did—and I really haven’t changed all that much—I realized that if I went to a regular college, I’d party too much, likely founder academically and never achieve my flying dream. VMI, however, was a direct track to an Air Force commission, and if I could surmount several hundred other candidates, an assignment to pilot training. True, VMI also came with classes six days a week, no cars, no civilian clothes, no TVs, and no girls. Yes, that was a pain in the ass, but in the end, I got exactly what I went there for: a degree, a commission, and an assignment to USAF pilot training.

Finally: USAF Flight School, and "The White Rocket."

I was one of four out of a couple hundred from VMI to get into pilot training: one washed out, one was killed in a plane crash and the other guy now flies for Delta. We did our Air Force time—

that’s another story, a great adventure—then ultimately, married “stewardesses” (she’d smack me for using that term) and now, as the wannabe guy said, “make our living” flying.

There’s not a day that goes by at work, no matter how much drudgery is included with delays, bad weather, air traffic control hassles, airline management squabbles, that I don’t at some point realize that nonetheless, I’m pretty damn lucky to be “the left seat guy.”

None of my high school buddies, despite our shared plan, made it all the way through. Every one of them fell off the path at one point or another and are now like the wannabe guy, perhaps still a “pilot” on weekends, hopefully not killing themselves in a light aircraft.

When my favorite stewardess and I were disembarking from a Caribbean cruise last week, I told her honestly that I appreciate the fact that going back to “the old grind,” like most everyone on that ship was going to do, for me meant another year of flying jets, rather than a cubicle at Dunder-Mifflin, or worse. I guess I could have explained all that to the middle-aged wannabe guy still nattering on to my first officer. But I’m not sure that’s what he wanted to hear. Still, I smile just knowing that the fourteen year old wannabe sure would.

Yet another jet pilot posting a blog.

Sure, everyone’s got a blog, and there’s a blog for everyone, right?  Everyone has something to share, from work or otherwise.

So here’s my workspace: a corner office with a window. The view is pretty good, and ever changing, thank God:

Some days it’s the “Emerald City,” jewel of the Pacific Northwest, some days it’s a sunset over the Gulf of Mexico.

Usually it’s some cool view, or sometimes, I capture the scene in a cartoon:

Or sometimes a video:

I’m surrounded by happy coworkers:

I visit new places

And meet lots of interesting people along the way.

Okay, what's the connection between pies and size?

That’s what this blog’s about: life in the air, and between flights, on the ground and the adventures along the way. Does that work for you? If so, tune in regularly.

Keep your seatbelt fastened–it’s going to get bumpy.