My Interesting Trip Home

or

These Things Just Don't Happen To Other People

I made it! After six weeks of working my tail off, spending the day moving across the country in a pressurized aluminum cylinder, and seeing even more snow, I am home with Miss Kitty and Ally. I am going to take it easy this morning, recap the events of the day, and just relax for a couple of hours. I want to tell you about the events of my day yesterday. This kind of stuff just doesn't happen to other people!

My day began normal. Got up, ran around doing all of my last second stuff, checking the helicopter one last time even though nothing had changed from the night before, and otherwise stressing over my bird. One of the guys at the hangar gave me a ride to the airport over in Lubbock, Texas. It was a good ride, we talked all the way and I'm now set up to go to an auction when I get back. This will be right up our alley.

Anyway, we made the turn to the airport road, only to find out the airport road was closed halfway through. No stress, we could see the tower and just started our own detour with me directing. Rodney was getting a bit flustered but we made it just fine! Now for the fun part of this trip. We pulled up to the curb after our little side trip, I get my stuff, we say our goodbye's, Rodney verifies that I got all my stuff, and he pulls off. As I watch his tail lights disappear in the distance, I reach for my phone to get my ticket information and realize it is sitting on the center console of the truck that just left.

What are you going to do? Couldn't call him to get him back. Couldn't just stand there. I decided to not even worry about it and be unplugged for the day. That was a nice experience, not looking at my miniature artificial brain every 15 minutes all day long! The wait was nice, had a sandwich, then boarded the plane bound for Phoenix. I slept through most of that leg until just before landing. I guess I was beat. This had been a long hitch.

I'll speed up through this part. The plane landed, I got out, yadda, yadda, yadda...in the plane for the next leg on American Airlines between Phoenix and Seattle-Tacoma. I had a young lady next to me with a younger guy on her other side. They kept entertained during the flight with a lot of conversation. It was enjoyable. Nice people.

Well, I guess I was still tired as I didn't even feel the plane taxi or take off. Remember, I had been going for about six weeks. Getting helicopters ready to go, climbing up and down ladders, and generally doing my part to try and make this a really nice fleet. I was completely whooped at this point. The next thing I know, I am half jumping out of my isle seat (13c) on flight 2407 waking at the same time, trying to figure out what just happened. I guess my big 14b shoe had traversed into the isle a little ways because the flight attendant had just kicked me. Now, this wasn't an accidental stumble into me kick, this was a deliberate action of assault by this flight attendant while telling me to move at the same time. She made enough of a display of it that both of my row mates made comment of it. Along with this, she elected not to offer me a beverage. I wasn't happy about that! I like Coke once in a while!

It is obvious that being a flight attendant is not a glamorous profession any more. Pretty much what they do is try to make extra baggage room and serve drinks in very crowded pressurized cylindrical tubes day after day. With our very full flight, she apparently wasn't having a good day and it showed. She did not have a clue as to my circumstances or what I had been going through the last several weeks and couple years though. Sorry American, but I have been flying commercial for many decades and that incident was the worst display from an airline employee I have ever seen . Not only was it petty, it was technically criminal. I was physically assaulted for no reason other than the fact that I was tired.

Other than that, it was an uneventful flight. Okay, fast forward to my third and final flight between SeaTac and Fairbanks. The flight was great. I got my Coke! I ordered the Northwest snack pack or something like that. I opened it up and since the plane was dark, didn't notice the split in the sealed salami pack. You guessed it, I took that first bite of mold and just about hurled right there! I called the flight attendant, showed her, and got a profuse apology and a new snack pack. Go figure!

Like I said, these types of things don't just happen to everyone. God has extreme fun, putting Kitty and I in unique situations. We do not and have never had a dull, boring life together. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention...I came home to a major snow event. After all of this I've cleaned the roof from my storage tent twice, dug a neighbors car out of the snow and dug my truck out of the snow and we are getting more. Wait for the next post, I'll show you how we get unstuck in Alaska!

Kitty...I'm Home!

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