"JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE BEACH"
Latest column at USAToday.com
USAToday.com
Before we get started with this Weekly Update:
NOTES:
I will be appearing LIVE (as opposed to dead, I guess)
on a VERY big radio travel show broadcast from New York
this coming Sunday, June 12th. Listenership is a
reported 14.2 Million! I'll be doing this interview by
phone from home in Denver. Since it runs live on the
Internet I thought I'd let my readers know so you can
tune in if you'd like. The show is "Travel With Val"
and can be heard in the New York City area on WOR Radio
710 AM. Her show starts at noon Eastern Time and I'll
be on in the second hour starting at about 1:15 PM or
so Eastern Time. Here's the link for you Internet
listeners: Radio Station 710.com This is
a call-in show and don't forget to adjust for your time
zone.
In the hour just BEFORE that, at 9:00 AM PACIFIC Time,
I'll be appearing for about 10 minutes or so on a show
broadcast from San Diego on KFMB 760 AM. You can check
this one out at TravelTalkRadio.com. The hostess is
Sandy Dhuyvetter.
Also, some other notes before we begin:
Photo Gallery Notes: Photo Gallery
1. New Album Added on Page 2 of Photo Gallery called
"Seattle-Tokyo-Honolulu."
2. New picture in the "Sky Ladies" Album on page
two-Bettina Jenkins Bathe-pilot/author.
3. Five new photos added to U.S. Album on Page 1 of
Photo Gallery - Click on "Latest Uploads" when you get
to this Album and click on each picture for text. My
own favorite new photo from this album is here, called
"Denver International Rainbow."
DIA Rainbow
"JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE BEACH"
In last week's Update ("Yesterday's News) I reported
that I had been assigned a trip originating in Seattle
with layovers in Tokyo, Honolulu and Tokyo again. This
is normally a six-day trip for a Seattle crew but
because I was assigned to fly it while being a reserve
pilot in Chicago, a layover in Seattle at each end of
the trip was added on, making it an eight-day trip. On
top of that, I'd already been in Chicago for two days
waiting for an assignment when this trip was assigned
to me, so I'll have been gone ten days by the time I
return home to Denver. Make it nine days as I won't
actually spend that last night in Seattle but instead
will catch the first flight home when I hit terra firma
in Seattle. I'm gone more than I'm home each month,
but this is the longest I've been gone on any one trip
since the late eighties when we routinely flew trips
this long and longer throughout Asia in the DC-10.
I met my copilot and "bunkie" (relief pilot) at Seattle
Flight Operations at SeaTac Airport. Our relief pilot
would stay with us just for the first leg to Tokyo;
she'd then fly back as someone else's relief pilot on a
return flight the next day. This was the third day in
a row a Chicago pilot was being assigned to a Seattle
trip and I made the mistake of asking flippantly,
"What're you guys doing to all your captains?"
Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut. In fact, I
had been called to fly this trip to fill in for a
captain who had been killed, along with his 36-year old
nephew, the previous week on Mt. Rainier. Although
very experienced, they got caught in a brutal and
unforgiving snowstorm and died of hypothermia. The
captain's picture and a short biography was framed and
on a stand right where we picked up our flight papers,
but there's often something there honoring a retiring
pilot or other notable occasions and I simply hadn't
paid any attention to it as I don't know many Seattle
pilots.
In any case, the three of us took off for Tokyo with a
full load of passengers aboard our Boeing 777. The
North Pacific has notoriously little adverse weather to
cope with and our flight was uneventful. There was an
undercast most of the way but a break in the clouds
just east of Russia's Kamchatsky Peninsula allowed me
to get a picture of a couple of Russian Islands. Check
out www.fromthecockpit.com/gallery and go to the
Seattle-Tokyo-Honolulu Album. If you're new to the
gallery there are lots of Japan pictures located, not
terribly surprisingly, in the Japan Album.
My copilot and I continued, after a day's stay in
Tokyo, to Honolulu. This was an all-night trip, almost
eight hours long. We took off from Tokyo at dusk and
arrived in Honolulu around 7:00 AM. I'm basically a
night person anyway so I enjoy a good all-nighter, but
the majority of pilots seem to prefer daylight flying.
In any case, it's always gorgeous arriving in the
Hawaii Islands, especially in the early morning or at
sunset. We were treated to a spectacular sunrise just
past Midway Island, around 5:00 AM Hawaii time although
I'm not really sure what time zone we were in at
sunrise. As a matter of fact, throughout this whole
trip I had trouble keeping up with either the time or
the date. We would cross the International Dateline a
total of four times.
Upon arrival in Honolulu, it always takes awhile to get
through customs and get to the hotel-just over an hour
this time, which is actually fairly efficient. Once
there, I called Cap'n Al The Web Guy as I always do
first thing when I arrive at a domestic station.
Internationally, we tend to communicate more by email,
which works better with the large time differences.
After assuring me that he and "the boys" (our
Chattering Lorrie "Houdini" and our ferrets Charlie and
Petey, all of whom you can visit at the "At Home" Album
in the Photo Gallery at the link given earlier) were
just fine, I went for a swim. Our layover hotel is
about a block from Waikiki Beach and it was a
typically beautiful and sunny Hawaiian day.
And now I have a confession to make: There are
specific foreign dishes I love, like Jägerschnitzel and
Saurbraten in Germany, Piroshki in Russia, Polish
sausage in Poland (yes, really), chicken and herbs in
France as only the French can make it, etc. But I'm
just not fond of the food in Japan and I'm especially
not crazy about eating fish, with some notable
exceptions. To make things worse I have a horrific
sweet tooth. When I got to Waikiki Beach I'm afraid the
first thing I did was head for Baskin Robbins for a
double cone-Chocolate Fudge on the bottom and Mint
Chocolate Chip on top, if you insist on knowing the
sordid details. I then proceeded to a bench in garden
at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel (hotel can be seen in the
Seattle-Tokyo-Honolulu Album) where I enjoyed it very
slowly. My idea of a great breakfast, but don't tell
my mother. (There is a store in Honolulu called
"Chocolate for Breakfast." The first time I saw it I
almost knocked some tourists over as I dashed inside.
I can't tell you how disappointed I was to discover it
was just a fashionable clothing store-what a waste!)
Contrary to the advice of sensible people everywhere,
right after I downed my double cone, I went and jumped
in the water which was its normal, warm and gentle
self. I always have my swimming goggles with me and
took an excursion or two along the bottom. I met a few
fish, nothing too scary (although they might not
agree). No conniving jellyfish lying in wait and no
oysters having a tea party on the ocean floor. (New
readers, click here
Jellyfish Poem and here
Oyster Poem if you wish to be
enlightened about those last two comments.)
On our night flight we had seen several shooting stars
as we so often do. Of course I made a wish for each
one we saw, but then I got to wondering what undersea
critters wish upon. For the answer, click here:
Starfish Poem
One thing I have to be very careful of in Hawaii: My
bathing suit is black so when I'm all sprawled out on
the beach, if there happen to be any members of
Greenpeace lurking around, I must use extreme cautious
lest some well-meaning person attempts to haul me back
into the water again. Not a pretty thought and I have
to be on my guard at all times.
Later in the day, instead of having a decent meal which
I could at least pretend was a little healthy, I'm
afraid I stopped at one of what seems like billions of
convenience stores and had a hot dog. Not even a good
hot dog, but a really cheap one. And you know what?
It's exactly what I wanted. It hit the spot and THEN I
finally got some much-overdue sleep.
So that was and usually is my Hawaii layover: stuff I
shouldn't eat, swimming and sleeping. In other words,
a mini-vacation. This job truly can be a "day at the
beach" although flying from Denver to Chicago to
Seattle to Tokyo to Hawaii is probably getting there
the hard way by any sane person's standards.
We took off from Honolulu around 10:00 AM the next day
and headed back to Tokyo. This time our flight would
be in daylight and it was just as well. For the first
time during this entire trip we had some really ugly
weather out over the Pacific. Midway Island lies about
1200 miles west of Honolulu, and it was just after that
we caught sight of some thunderstorms that were already
higher than we were capable of flying. There is a
picture around Midway that I've included in my new
photo album, but it's a little hard to see through a
scattered cloud layer. What you can pick out is the
turquoise water of the lagoon.
On went the radar for a good look and, to our dismay,
even on the most extended scale of over 600 miles, we
could see storms paralleling us on each side of our
projected route to Tokyo. The satellite images we had
viewed in Honolulu Flight Operations hadn't shown these
storms forecast to build quite so fast or so high.
We got a general clearance from Tokyo Control (via
satellite datalink, kind of like email) to deviate
around the storms as necessary-zigging and zagging
first south, then north and then south again around and
between them. We also experimented with different
altitudes after getting clearance for that as well. No
matter what we did, we had a really rough ride and had
to seat our flight attendants for about an hour and a
half along with our passengers. I made a public
address announcement letting everyone know we weren't
actually in any weather at all, but were passing
between thirty and one hundred miles away from some
nasty storms, and that was what was causing the rough
ride.
Of all the things that make passengers nervous, I've
discovered it's turbulence which causes the most white
knuckles. Although we prefer a smooth ride for our own
comfort and convenience as well as that of our
passengers, turbulence is not generally a huge concern
to pilots and the airplane doesn't care at all-it's
stressed for everything up to and including hurricanes
(you've heard of "Hurricane Hunters?"). Please check
out www.flyingfearless.com for a Free Report on
turbulence and nine other items of concern to
passengers, if you haven't already.
Eventually we got through it, of course, and by that
time we were just outside Tokyo. We landed midday and
were done for another 24 hours.
As I write this, I'm still in Tokyo. It's about 10:30
AM and I'm going for a swim in the hotel pool. Our
pickup is in a few hours so it's time to head back to
the U.S. and then back home to Denver, Cap'n Al The Web
Guy and the boys. After just two days at home it'll be
time to head back for Chicago and find out where I'm
headed next. As always, I never know where I'm going
next until I'm underway.
I hope you've enjoyed coming along with me on my latest
trip and, as always…
Until next time….
Maintain Airspeed!
Cap'n Meryl
http://www.fromthecockpit.com
http://www.flyingfearless.com
To UNSUBSCRIBE………
USAToday.com
Before we get started with this Weekly Update:
NOTES:
I will be appearing LIVE (as opposed to dead, I guess)
on a VERY big radio travel show broadcast from New York
this coming Sunday, June 12th. Listenership is a
reported 14.2 Million! I'll be doing this interview by
phone from home in Denver. Since it runs live on the
Internet I thought I'd let my readers know so you can
tune in if you'd like. The show is "Travel With Val"
and can be heard in the New York City area on WOR Radio
710 AM. Her show starts at noon Eastern Time and I'll
be on in the second hour starting at about 1:15 PM or
so Eastern Time. Here's the link for you Internet
listeners: Radio Station 710.com This is
a call-in show and don't forget to adjust for your time
zone.
In the hour just BEFORE that, at 9:00 AM PACIFIC Time,
I'll be appearing for about 10 minutes or so on a show
broadcast from San Diego on KFMB 760 AM. You can check
this one out at TravelTalkRadio.com. The hostess is
Sandy Dhuyvetter.
Also, some other notes before we begin:
Photo Gallery Notes: Photo Gallery
1. New Album Added on Page 2 of Photo Gallery called
"Seattle-Tokyo-Honolulu."
2. New picture in the "Sky Ladies" Album on page
two-Bettina Jenkins Bathe-pilot/author.
3. Five new photos added to U.S. Album on Page 1 of
Photo Gallery - Click on "Latest Uploads" when you get
to this Album and click on each picture for text. My
own favorite new photo from this album is here, called
"Denver International Rainbow."
DIA Rainbow
"JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE BEACH"
In last week's Update ("Yesterday's News) I reported
that I had been assigned a trip originating in Seattle
with layovers in Tokyo, Honolulu and Tokyo again. This
is normally a six-day trip for a Seattle crew but
because I was assigned to fly it while being a reserve
pilot in Chicago, a layover in Seattle at each end of
the trip was added on, making it an eight-day trip. On
top of that, I'd already been in Chicago for two days
waiting for an assignment when this trip was assigned
to me, so I'll have been gone ten days by the time I
return home to Denver. Make it nine days as I won't
actually spend that last night in Seattle but instead
will catch the first flight home when I hit terra firma
in Seattle. I'm gone more than I'm home each month,
but this is the longest I've been gone on any one trip
since the late eighties when we routinely flew trips
this long and longer throughout Asia in the DC-10.
I met my copilot and "bunkie" (relief pilot) at Seattle
Flight Operations at SeaTac Airport. Our relief pilot
would stay with us just for the first leg to Tokyo;
she'd then fly back as someone else's relief pilot on a
return flight the next day. This was the third day in
a row a Chicago pilot was being assigned to a Seattle
trip and I made the mistake of asking flippantly,
"What're you guys doing to all your captains?"
Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut. In fact, I
had been called to fly this trip to fill in for a
captain who had been killed, along with his 36-year old
nephew, the previous week on Mt. Rainier. Although
very experienced, they got caught in a brutal and
unforgiving snowstorm and died of hypothermia. The
captain's picture and a short biography was framed and
on a stand right where we picked up our flight papers,
but there's often something there honoring a retiring
pilot or other notable occasions and I simply hadn't
paid any attention to it as I don't know many Seattle
pilots.
In any case, the three of us took off for Tokyo with a
full load of passengers aboard our Boeing 777. The
North Pacific has notoriously little adverse weather to
cope with and our flight was uneventful. There was an
undercast most of the way but a break in the clouds
just east of Russia's Kamchatsky Peninsula allowed me
to get a picture of a couple of Russian Islands. Check
out www.fromthecockpit.com/gallery and go to the
Seattle-Tokyo-Honolulu Album. If you're new to the
gallery there are lots of Japan pictures located, not
terribly surprisingly, in the Japan Album.
My copilot and I continued, after a day's stay in
Tokyo, to Honolulu. This was an all-night trip, almost
eight hours long. We took off from Tokyo at dusk and
arrived in Honolulu around 7:00 AM. I'm basically a
night person anyway so I enjoy a good all-nighter, but
the majority of pilots seem to prefer daylight flying.
In any case, it's always gorgeous arriving in the
Hawaii Islands, especially in the early morning or at
sunset. We were treated to a spectacular sunrise just
past Midway Island, around 5:00 AM Hawaii time although
I'm not really sure what time zone we were in at
sunrise. As a matter of fact, throughout this whole
trip I had trouble keeping up with either the time or
the date. We would cross the International Dateline a
total of four times.
Upon arrival in Honolulu, it always takes awhile to get
through customs and get to the hotel-just over an hour
this time, which is actually fairly efficient. Once
there, I called Cap'n Al The Web Guy as I always do
first thing when I arrive at a domestic station.
Internationally, we tend to communicate more by email,
which works better with the large time differences.
After assuring me that he and "the boys" (our
Chattering Lorrie "Houdini" and our ferrets Charlie and
Petey, all of whom you can visit at the "At Home" Album
in the Photo Gallery at the link given earlier) were
just fine, I went for a swim. Our layover hotel is
about a block from Waikiki Beach and it was a
typically beautiful and sunny Hawaiian day.
And now I have a confession to make: There are
specific foreign dishes I love, like Jägerschnitzel and
Saurbraten in Germany, Piroshki in Russia, Polish
sausage in Poland (yes, really), chicken and herbs in
France as only the French can make it, etc. But I'm
just not fond of the food in Japan and I'm especially
not crazy about eating fish, with some notable
exceptions. To make things worse I have a horrific
sweet tooth. When I got to Waikiki Beach I'm afraid the
first thing I did was head for Baskin Robbins for a
double cone-Chocolate Fudge on the bottom and Mint
Chocolate Chip on top, if you insist on knowing the
sordid details. I then proceeded to a bench in garden
at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel (hotel can be seen in the
Seattle-Tokyo-Honolulu Album) where I enjoyed it very
slowly. My idea of a great breakfast, but don't tell
my mother. (There is a store in Honolulu called
"Chocolate for Breakfast." The first time I saw it I
almost knocked some tourists over as I dashed inside.
I can't tell you how disappointed I was to discover it
was just a fashionable clothing store-what a waste!)
Contrary to the advice of sensible people everywhere,
right after I downed my double cone, I went and jumped
in the water which was its normal, warm and gentle
self. I always have my swimming goggles with me and
took an excursion or two along the bottom. I met a few
fish, nothing too scary (although they might not
agree). No conniving jellyfish lying in wait and no
oysters having a tea party on the ocean floor. (New
readers, click here
Jellyfish Poem and here
Oyster Poem if you wish to be
enlightened about those last two comments.)
On our night flight we had seen several shooting stars
as we so often do. Of course I made a wish for each
one we saw, but then I got to wondering what undersea
critters wish upon. For the answer, click here:
Starfish Poem
One thing I have to be very careful of in Hawaii: My
bathing suit is black so when I'm all sprawled out on
the beach, if there happen to be any members of
Greenpeace lurking around, I must use extreme cautious
lest some well-meaning person attempts to haul me back
into the water again. Not a pretty thought and I have
to be on my guard at all times.
Later in the day, instead of having a decent meal which
I could at least pretend was a little healthy, I'm
afraid I stopped at one of what seems like billions of
convenience stores and had a hot dog. Not even a good
hot dog, but a really cheap one. And you know what?
It's exactly what I wanted. It hit the spot and THEN I
finally got some much-overdue sleep.
So that was and usually is my Hawaii layover: stuff I
shouldn't eat, swimming and sleeping. In other words,
a mini-vacation. This job truly can be a "day at the
beach" although flying from Denver to Chicago to
Seattle to Tokyo to Hawaii is probably getting there
the hard way by any sane person's standards.
We took off from Honolulu around 10:00 AM the next day
and headed back to Tokyo. This time our flight would
be in daylight and it was just as well. For the first
time during this entire trip we had some really ugly
weather out over the Pacific. Midway Island lies about
1200 miles west of Honolulu, and it was just after that
we caught sight of some thunderstorms that were already
higher than we were capable of flying. There is a
picture around Midway that I've included in my new
photo album, but it's a little hard to see through a
scattered cloud layer. What you can pick out is the
turquoise water of the lagoon.
On went the radar for a good look and, to our dismay,
even on the most extended scale of over 600 miles, we
could see storms paralleling us on each side of our
projected route to Tokyo. The satellite images we had
viewed in Honolulu Flight Operations hadn't shown these
storms forecast to build quite so fast or so high.
We got a general clearance from Tokyo Control (via
satellite datalink, kind of like email) to deviate
around the storms as necessary-zigging and zagging
first south, then north and then south again around and
between them. We also experimented with different
altitudes after getting clearance for that as well. No
matter what we did, we had a really rough ride and had
to seat our flight attendants for about an hour and a
half along with our passengers. I made a public
address announcement letting everyone know we weren't
actually in any weather at all, but were passing
between thirty and one hundred miles away from some
nasty storms, and that was what was causing the rough
ride.
Of all the things that make passengers nervous, I've
discovered it's turbulence which causes the most white
knuckles. Although we prefer a smooth ride for our own
comfort and convenience as well as that of our
passengers, turbulence is not generally a huge concern
to pilots and the airplane doesn't care at all-it's
stressed for everything up to and including hurricanes
(you've heard of "Hurricane Hunters?"). Please check
out www.flyingfearless.com for a Free Report on
turbulence and nine other items of concern to
passengers, if you haven't already.
Eventually we got through it, of course, and by that
time we were just outside Tokyo. We landed midday and
were done for another 24 hours.
As I write this, I'm still in Tokyo. It's about 10:30
AM and I'm going for a swim in the hotel pool. Our
pickup is in a few hours so it's time to head back to
the U.S. and then back home to Denver, Cap'n Al The Web
Guy and the boys. After just two days at home it'll be
time to head back for Chicago and find out where I'm
headed next. As always, I never know where I'm going
next until I'm underway.
I hope you've enjoyed coming along with me on my latest
trip and, as always…
Until next time….
Maintain Airspeed!
Cap'n Meryl
http://www.fromthecockpit.com
http://www.flyingfearless.com
To UNSUBSCRIBE………
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