Just getting warmed up.

Life can sure be as unpredictable as the weather.

I had a last minute trip to Denver last week. It was mostly unplanned, but went well. There were two of us flying out there, and only myself on the return red-eye back to Boston, to the betterment of all involved. I'll let you figure that one out.

The week since has been quite the learning experience. I'd like to say its been typical summer weather, except for the "worst night ever" part. Wednesday and Thursday night were long and hard with lots of weather and holding. Aircraft remained ground stopped till TMU went home around 11:30 on both nights. I stayed till 2am the first night, watching BDL and EWR arrivals spin around in circles, in bumpy IMC, I might add. I was just glad I was getting paid overtime to sit at Albany sector, instead in one of those planes. A few of them eventually got in, but most of them ran low on fuel and diverted.

At one point, we were holding 7 HPNs over ART since the stack at RKA was full of them already. JFK's didn't fare much better, and EWR was still holding when I left. For the first time this year, the line of storms hardly had any holes, and with the storms sitting right on top of the NY Metro, airports were down for the count most of the night. My buddy Sam had a 5pm flight out of JFK, and when he called me on my last break around 11pm, he was still on the plane, on the ground at JFK. I guess the left seat on that 8pm flight out of MSP had to find another captain.

Thursday went a little better, since the storms moved off the coast of Maine a little after dinner. I was able to escape without overtime the rest of the week, which was good, since I've been under the weather since I've been back from my trip. By Friday, I was scraping by without my A-game.

I'll be busy the next week or two moving across town, but I try to find a few minutes to keep ya'll updated.

DM

Installment Number 1

These come from Capt. Chris while flying a King Air around central Texas on June 29th.





DM