THANKSGIVING

Be sure to check out this week's Ask Cap'n Meryl
question & answer about Icing.

First a few notes: After my mention in the last
Update of The World At My Feet and telling about
one of the adventures in it, having to do with an
attempt to help buy planes that had belonged to
the former Shah of Iran, I had an impressive
number of orders. Many were multiple orders
intended for Christmas gifts, I'm sure.

I've had some orders from around the world
including Singapore, India, England, Finland and
South Africa, to name just a few countries, but I
want to remind all my international readers,
including our military men and women, that there
is no extra charge for international shipping.

I finally finished all the recording for the
audio version of the book and final editing is in
progress now by the studio in London which
approached me about doing the project. They're
adding all sorts of interesting sound effects,
like beach noises for the Prologue which takes
place at the Caspian Sea in Iran, my dad's
rattling of the newspaper when I'm talking to him
while he's trying to read, etc. I'll make an
announcement via this newsletter when the final
product is out, the price is set and it's
available for purchase.

I received the video for one of several segments
I participated in for The Gregory Mantell Show
which was taped in Palm Springs a month ago or
so. This particular segment has to do with
memory loss and I was used as a volunteer to help
demonstrate a particular memory technique. I
could tell you about the method, but I forgot
what it was (aren't we witty today?). You'll
find the segment, which runs about 20 minutes,
posted here and my part starts about halfway
through:
Media Links

Al The Web Guy also posted an earlier TV
interview I did with Greg, which was taped in Los
Angeles, entitled, "How Safe is Flying?" You'll
find this interview link just below the one about
memory.

Now, on to this week's Update. There are two
holidays I take more seriously than all other
holidays. One is Thanksgiving, when I reflect on
all that I have to be thankful for. It takes
awhile as I have an abundance of good things in
my life.

The other holiday, since you're wondering,
happens to be New Year's, when I think about the
year ahead and list all the goals I want to
achieve. This is the night I feel I can start
out with a clean slate for the coming year, and
wipe the previous year's slate clean of
anything and everything not so wonderful. I see
it as a chance to start over with new goals, or
another shot at achieving previous goals.

But let's talk about Thanksgiving. Early in my
flying career when I was as junior as could be on
the seniority list, an interesting phenomenon
occurred repeatedly. I was on reserve, meaning I
was on call. Even some schedules of reserve
flying had some combinations of days that
resulted in having major holidays off. I was,
however, so junior I usually couldn't get that
type of schedule but was invariably scheduled to
work right through Thanksgiving, Christmas and
New Year's. And if I wasn't actually assigned
flights, I was scheduled to be on call, meaning I
had to be in the city where I was based.

However, year after year, either I had a
scheduled flight that would cancel for some
reason, or I managed to get some days off through
the holidays, or I was actually on call but with
so many extra pilots on call ahead of me that I
actually made it home to my parents' house on
many occasions for Thanksgiving, Christmas
and/or New Year's.

My very first Christmas with United, for example,
I had been assigned an eight day trip that would
have put us in Tokyo for Christmas. Less than a
day before that trip was to leave, I got a call
saying the entire sequence had cancelled, so I
went home to San Diego at the last minute and
spent the holidays there.

When I couldn't make it home on the right days,
my Mom just moved the holiday in question for me.
They'd have their Thanksgiving with our extended
family, but if I missed it she would pretty much
do it all over again for me, just as she did for
birthdays and other occasions. It was more
important to my family that I manage to be there
at all than it was that I made it on the right
day.

That was pre-Al The Web Guy, of course. Now I
have my personal chef (he's incredible in the
kitchen) all the time and although of course I
still enjoy visiting my family, he's taken over
Thanksgiving dinner which we enjoy at home with
some friends. It's actually quite nice to not
have to travel during the hectic holiday season,
although as a pilot I never minded it. In fact,
I would let our reserve crew schedulers know that
I was quite willing to fly to let some other
pilots with spouses and kids spend the holidays
at home. I know there were other single pilots
who volunteered as well.

My most memorable Thanksgiving was right here in
the United States. I had been sent TDY (Temporary
Duty) to cover a shortage of B-727 captains in
Washington, D.C. for a month (it turned into two
months). Pilots could stay anywhere they wanted
if they could negotiate a hotel price of $50 per
day. That may not sound like much to work with,
but hotels almost universally gave steep
discounts to airline crews.

As it happens, my Dad knew someone at the
Ritz-Carlton near Washington's National Airport
(now Reagan National) and I got my deal after
inviting the manager to lunch and explaining the
situation. As it turns out, the holiday season
is quite slow for hotels and I was given a huge
suite that was much larger than the apartment I
was living in at the time. I was told I might be
asked to switch to a regular room if a paying
client came along, but none did.

A subway station is located directly below the
hotel, which is attached to a huge mall with a
movie theater complex. As an occupant of a
suite, even though the price was ridiculously
discounted and the airline was paying for it, I
had special privileges such as use of a private
facility in the hotel with indoor pool and steam
bath, and having my own chauffeur. Yes, my own
chauffeur.

Most of the time, however, I took the subway
wherever I needed to go and got to know the city
really well. I went through all of the
Smithonisan museums, the National Zoo, the
monuments, and just about everything there was to
see and do, I saw and did. It was fall with
crisp, gorgeous weather and foliage brilliant
with autumn colors, the city was very uncrowded
with kids back in school.

The one and only time my pager ever went off
during the entire two months I was there, I was
just finishing up a White House tour. This was
before cell-phones were popular and I had to ask
a White House attendant to use a phone, which
they were happy to allow. It was an emergency
situation for United with a plane full of
passengers already boarded and a sick captain who
bailed after checking in for his flight.

I caught a cab back the hotel, quickly donned my
uniform and called my chauffer for a ride to the
airport. I stepped out of the limo at National
Airport, taking the hand my chauffeur proffered.
He was decked out in a formal uniform complete
with top-hat. A businessman was standing there,
apparently waiting for a ride, and commented, "No
wonder airfares are so high!" he joked. I didn't
really have time to explain, but just told him it
wasn't what it looked like. It did seem kind of
funny, though.

I was back at the hotel in time for Thanksgiving
although my schedule required me to stay in
Washington rather than go home. In my suite a
note had been slipped under the door. It said,
"Captain Getline, you are cordially invited to
join the hotel executive staff for our
Thanksgiving Buffet with our compliments."

Such a deal! This was a very elaborate buffet
put on by the hotel for its guests for about $40
per person or something like that, and there I
was, staying in a gorgeous suite at my airline's
expense and now a guest for Thanksgiving dinner.
It was a spectacular spread, to say the least.

When I finally checked out of the Ritz for my
next assignment (TDY in New York for the next
month), I checked with the hotel staff to see
about a gift that the manager would surely like.
She was a chocoholic, as it turns out. As it
also turns out, Godiva Chocolates had a store in
the mall right there at the hotel and I got her a
two-pound box of her favorites.

Small thanks for a wonderful stay and memorable
Thanksgiving in our nation's Capitol.

And with that,
Until Next Time,
Maintain Airspeed,

Cap'n Meryl

THE AMAZING RACE

Be sure to check out this week's Ask Cap'n Meryl
question & answer about missed approaches:
Missed Approaches

Before I get to this week's topic, I have just a
couple of things I want to mention:

First, I had a call from my friend Bettina Bathe
in Calgary. Bettina is the author of the highly
successful children's' series "Violet the Pilot."
Bettina had told me several months ago that her
books were being developed into a play, which was
pretty exciting news. Even more exciting, the
play is now a reality and will be performed in
Toronto this coming April and May. Since that's
a bit in the future yet, I'll give more details
as we get closer for those in the Toronto area
who might want to attend. You can visit Violet
the Pilot at www.violetthepilot.com .

Also, remember Sally Jessy Raphael? Her TV show
ended several years ago, but now she's on the
radio and I had the pleasure of being her guest
last Tuesday. Al The Web Guy has posted that
interview, lasting about 13 minutes or so, here
on my Media Links page:
Media Links .

Sally was a real pleasure to interview with, and
even mentioned me again the next day which, of
course, is highly flattering. The interview
primarily centered on "The World At My Feet."

Speaking of which, that brings me to this week's
title. I swore I would NOT get addicted to any
reality shows. However, I made the mistake of
watching one episode of "The Amazing Race" last
season and got hooked. I thought I might be able
to overcome the addiction, and even attended
several meetings of RSA (Reality Shows Anonymous)
but it was no use. Ever since I saw the
participants breaking wine bottles over each
other's heads every time a cuckoo in a cuckoo
clock went off, and watched them try to learn the
Schuhplattler dressed in lederhosen, I just have
to watch.

Now, I just finished recording the audio version
of "The World At My Feet" for a studio in London,
and as I read the chapter called "Iran" it
occurred to me that I had participated in my own
Amazing Race of sorts.

Frankly, my whole life could be looked at as an
Amazing Race but specifically, in the late
seventies, when I was flying for a small commuter
airline in southern California, one incident in
particular stands out. My airline decided to buy
some more Navajo Chieftains for their operation.
A Chieftain is a nine passenger light twin.

The Chief Pilot of this commuter airline had
flown B-727's relatively recently for Iran Air.
Through a contact in Iran he discovered a small
airline in Teheran had three Chieftains for sale
at a ridiculously cheap price. It was discovered
later that the planes were the property of the
deposed Shah of Iran and were being sold by those
who had confiscated his property, including more
than forty aircraft, as we later discovered.
Even the Shah's private B-707 with a gold bathtub
was put up for sale (the asking price was $8
Million).

There were only about sixteen pilots at this
commuter at the time, including fifteen guys and
me. We were all unmarried and all had the same
goal, which was to build flight time so we could
get hired by a major airline. We all had
tremendous drive and a sense of adventure, and
the thought of ferrying airplanes from Iran all
the way back to Los Angeles was just too much to
resist for any of us. We all wanted to be part
of it.

When we heard our Chief Pilot was going to go to
Iran to negotiate a purchase and then ferry the
three airplanes back one by one, there was
nothing less than a "feeding frenzy" of pilots
trying to convince him he should take some of us
along to help fly the planes back.

"Nothing doing," our Chief Pilot said. "I can't
take you all, so nobody goes." What he thought
he had going for himself was that, although he
still had a work visa to get into Iran, none of
us could get one as visas were unavailable to
Americans at that time. He thought he was safe.

He didn't count on all of us calling the Iranian
consulate in San Francisco begging for visas, but
we certainly did. Only one of us was actually
issued a visa and subsequently made it all the
way to Iran. Now, guess who that might have
been.

Right, and I had ridiculous obstacles to
overcome, just as in the TV show. For instance,
I had to figure out how to first talk my way into
being issued a visa when none were being issued.
Then I had to figure out how to get to Iran
virtually for free (it wound up costing me $10
round trip), how to come up with the bucks to
make the deal happen after the chief pilot quit
and no longer had any backing (the planes were so
cheap we decided to buy and sell the airplanes
ourselves), etc.

If you've not yet read my book, I hope this
tidbit will now inspire you to reconsider (see
offer at the end) and if you already have it
yourself, maybe you have a friend or child who
would enjoy reading the rest of the story. "That
time of year" is quickly approaching, and it
really is one heck of a story.

Sometimes I forget or don't appreciate what a
wild ride I had getting to an airline job, but
reading through the entire manuscript out loud
for the audio version served as a reminder. I
actually had to re-record several sections as I
couldn't get through them without laughing out
loud, like during the chapter about the blimp
pilot and the ridiculous joke he played on me.

But that's another story (and one you can hear
via a radio interview on my Book Synopsis page,
recorded in 1983):
Book Synopsis


Incidentally, my thanks to the folks at "Colorado
Country Life" magazine who wrote an unexpected
and really nice review for "The World at My
Feet." Their reviewer describes it as a
"hard-to-put-down" book.

Hopefully you will agree.