The New Year...

2006 is Over!

Happy New Year!

This year has a been a wonderful year for me. I met a wonderful girl on the beach, had some amazing experiences in the air, traveled around the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, passed my probation checkride at American Eagle, and many other wonderful things happened to me. I am very fortunate!

I hope everyone has a great start to the new year. I'll post alot more pictures when I have time.

No entiendo nada porque soy gringo...Felicidades!

Merry Christmas!

I would like to wish everyone or nobody (whoever reads this) a very Merry Christmas!

My Christmas will be spent in Barbados on a short overnight. It seems like almost all of our overnights are short these days. The only two good ones that I can think of are Canouwan Island and Nevis. Those are the only two islands that I really enjoy on our ever increasingly "efficient" schedules.

For example, last night I arrived at the airport at 7am. After a full day of flying, we took off a little late at 530pm for our three hour flight to Trinidad. So at 830pm we landed, by 900pm we were through customs and waiting outside for the taxi. After a 30 minute taxi drive we were finally at the hotel. It is now 945pm and I am walking down the road to a Long John Silvers for my highlight of the evening...crabcakes fast food style. Well, after I find it is closed for a company Christmas party I get a Strawberry shake for dinner at a little ice cream store and go to bed. At 5am my phone rings and it is time to get up...25 minutes to shower and get dressed, 30 minutes in the taxi and then three hours over the ocean...

Maybe you could understand now why pilots take off on wrong runways and make mistakes sometimes...do this kind of schedule for a few months and you are TIRED.

Goodnight and Merry Christmas from San Juan, Puerto Rico! Tomorrow I am up early for the "ping pong". We take off early and here is what we do: SJU to Santo Domingo to St. Maarten to Santo Domingo to SJU.

A sunset depature from San Juan

I guess it is time for an update!

Hello Loyal Readers,

I have been very busy with other stuff for the past month I guess! Anyway, I have so much to talk about that today I will skip sleeping/waiting while stuck in Culebra, microburst adventures while flying, car troubles, great fun times, and taking my inflatable raft out to an island and hitting coral...and partially sinking. What I will talk about is....flying...(and all the loyal readers just stopped reading).

Today and over the past few weeks I have had some moments up in the air where many feelings and emotions go through my mind. I never really talk about this to the people in my life that I really care about, but I want to try to explain why I will fly airplanes until something like jail or death stops me.

Flying makes all earthly problems go away...

The other day I woke up early for a two day trip and I was tired and not feeling too well. When I got into my car I found that in all the heavy rain the night before my window had leaked and water was all over the inside of my car. When I started the engine there was water or something in the gas line and it took a long long time to make it to the airport on probably one cylinder. I had two choices...have the engine quit or floor it and go fast, which is the only time the engine really worked as it should. Anyway, after all this and then the even bigger hastle of the incompetent TSA people at the airport it was finally time to fly.

We lifted off into a nice Caribbean morning, scattered clouds, light winds, and the whirr of the two turboprops in the background...suddenly I had no water in my car, no engine that didn't work, and was not mad at the security people...they didn't exist to me anymore! The only thing up there is your thoughts and voice in your head, clouds, easy procedures to depart the area that are now so routine my body just does them, and the blue sky.

Nature is more beautiful from the air...

Sometimes I get tired of seeing litter or things that are run down...as soon as I am airborne there is no trash, just mountains, clouds, sun or moon, and ocean. Today I flew into Dominica, usually I just see a monkey or two jumping or sitting in trees as we fly down the ravine toward the runway...imagine looking left or right and only seeing awall of green. This is what is is like, ocean ahead with huge waves splashing into the rocks at the end of the runway, a banana farm below, mountains to the right, and lots of trees to the left...with monkeys. Well, today I was fortunate enough to see even more! I saw two whales off the coast of the rocky island! It is amazing to me that right now as I type all this nonsense that there are thousands of whales and huge ocean creatures in the seas doing there things that they do...they don't care about us...we don't really ever think of them. But it is all happening...all the time.

Life could always be worse than it is...

Somedays I am around people who hate life. They hate Puerto Rico, they hate the company, and they hate people. Sometimes it is tempting to agree with them and get into the mood of criticizing everything and doing nothing about it.

When I fly to Dominican Republic and see a BEAUTIFUL countryside I am amazed to think that people will risk death by boating to Puerto Rico, or even try to jump into the landing gear wells of airplanes! All departures from the DR in large aircraft are escorted by a truck or dirtbike until takeoff...just to keep people from trying to jump into the aircraft! How can we complain about our life if people are willing to die trying to leave what I (and you would too) consider a beautiful country?

Also speaking of "life could always be worse" today I came home for a two hour break in flights. I ate some breakfast then went onto my computer just to waste some time. I found a website with cockpit voice recordings and NTSB movies of air disasters. One in particular struck me. I watched the AA flight that crashed out of New York shortly after 9/11. It showed me how in a split second everything that we are worried about or mad about can mean nothing. There was a guy I knew a little in Canouwan Island in the Grenadines who worked on the ramp for American Eagle. The other day he got into an airplane called an Islander to catch a ride to St. Vincent...his home. The plane disappeared in deep water somewhere in the approximately 30 miles between Canouwan and St. Vincent. Neither he or the pilot were ever found.

No I am not a new philosopher or anything crazy like that. I just wanted to share how I felt today with the internet (since I have no idea if anyone actually reads this garbage). Until next time...