A Really Long Update, Part II

So yeah, the game was great. We spent the night in West Lafayette, going to some of our old favorite bars that night. The next morning we had to drive back to Indy so that we could take our friend Danielle to the airport, and take ourselves there too, for we were going back to Fort Lauderdale.

No, not for vacation, for moving. No, we didn't sell our condo; we're still working on that. We did, however, decide that we wanted our stuff back with us in Indiana, and since Abee had the next week off of work and I had taken that week off of work to be in tandem with her, one of us (I won't say which, but it wasn't me) decided that it would be the perfect time to go down to Ft. Lauderdale and get all our stuff that had been sitting unused since June.

We got in late Sunday night, got our rental car, and headed up to Pompano Beach. It was kinda nice to be back "home" again. (There are so many places that I have to call "home" in quotation marks these days) The next day our pod arrived. We decided to utilize one of those P.O.D.S. portable storage containers to do our moving. Once you load it up, they ship it to wherever you need it shipped to. It's especially ideal if you get free airline travel, like me.

It took three full days to load that thing. Almost half of our condo was already packed in boxes, but we still had to pack the other half. Abee did most of that, as she was not allowed to lift things due to being pregnant. I spent most of those three days going up and down the stairs with boxes and furniture. I was lucky to have a couple friends come by for a few minutes each to help me with the really big stuff, like our huge but awesome dual-reclining sofa, and a monster-sized china cabinet (I checked, it's the exact same size as a monster). Most of the time though it was just me and Abee, which was nice because it's hard to have "just me and Abee" nowadays when we're living with other family. However, I would have preferred something other than hard labor to spend those four days on, like watching movies or going to the beach. On Monday night we did manage to spend some time with two of our really good friends down there, Damon and Lisa. Not being able to see them much any more is probably my biggest regret about leaving Florida (I'm sure once winter hits Indiana I'll have another one).

At the end of the third day we were exhausted but were done loading and just had some fairly minor cleaning to do. We slept on an air mattress that night, and woke up just in time to pack it and our sheets, pillows, and bath towels into the pod before someone came to pick it up. It was Thursday by now and we had just enough time to visit the beach for a few minutes, say goodbye to my friends at the flight school where I taught, and head back to the airport to blast out of Florida and leave it behind again, for an indefinite amount of time. Someday I'll write a post explaining how much I hate Florida and how much I miss it at the same time.

We arrived "home" (Abee's parents' house, our temporary home) around 7:00p.m. on Thursday, but my busy week was not over. In just three hours my dad and brother Luke would be arriving so that the three of us could go on our long-planned trip to Washington, D.C. However, I have run out of time for writing right now, so that will have to wait until Part III. (This time I'm not going to guess at when I'll be able to get around to it.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Really Long Update, Part I

A lot has happened in the past few months, especially the last couple weeks. I should probably just make small updates more frequently, but that's not how I seem to do things. Here goes.

Well, it turns out that there actually were unsafe concentration levels of radon in the basement. Whoops. Well, we got all the cracks sealed, so everything should be fine now.

First the really huge news: Abee and I are expecting our first child next spring! We've been wanting to start having kids for a while now, but have been holding off until I could get a stable job. Well, I have the stable job now, and despite our current living situation, we decided to go for it. Here's the first picture, taken about 3 weeks ago:

That's the biggest news. Now for an update on the condo: It hasn't sold yet. Oh well. Life goes on.

Last fall I went to the Purdue homecoming football game with Abee's family. It was nice to be back at Purdue, especially in the fall, since at the time we were still living in Florida. I liked it so much that we decided to go to a game this year, and see if we could get some of our friends from college flown in using my travel benefits. My two roommates live out in San Francisco now, and they were unable to come. We ended up with one friend from Atlantic City making it over, and a few others who are still living in Indiana. We had a great time and Purdue won. Here are some pictures from that weekend. I should warn you; it turns out I can't take very straight pictures:

People filtering into the stadium with Purdue's "World's Largest Drum" leading the way.


The stadium is filling up. That nice new press box section wasn't there when I was going to school here.


The team takes the field.


The final score: Purdue 31, Iowa 6


The band puts on a concert in the Engineering Mall after the game.


Abee (in the pink hat) and our friends hanging out at the mall.


Abee and I at the mall.


The Purdue Bell Tower rising out of some nice fall foliage.


The fountain and Hovde Hall on the mall.


A nice (but crooked) picture of the mall with the bell tower in the background.

Well, it looks like that's all I have time to write right now. I'm in Cleveland and have to get ready to go to work. A lot more has happened though. Hopefully I will get to part 2 before the end of the week. Take care!

DOOM Piano Concert

This is by far the coolest thing that I have ever randomly stumbled upon on the Internet. It's a 9 minute medley of songs from the old DOOM games all done by this guy on a piano.

Radon is good for you, right?

So, I'm sitting here in my in-laws' basement, typing on my trusty 5-year-old desktop. The basement has been gutted because the sewers overflowed just after we moved out of here the last time, back in 2003. My monitor, speakers, and joystick are on top of a small plastic folding table, and my keyboard and mouse are on a slightly-smaller card table (green and white weave pattern) that I was able to slide under the plastic table. This is my new computer desk. My new computer chair is a folding chair with 1/4" of padding on it. This will most likely be my sanctuary for the next two years. I'm a little upset about this general situation, but overall I'd have to say things are pretty good. I'm almost done with my second play-though of Half-Life 2, and Abee is upstairs reading the new Harry Potter book.

So why are we in this situation? Well, "Half-Life 2: Episode 2" is coming out soon, and I still have yet to play "Half-Life 2: Episode 1" for the first time, which came out LAST summer. I didn't want to start Episode 1 without having the original Half-Life 2 fresh in my mind. And Abee is reading the new Harry Potter because she wants to read it before someone tells her the ending.

Oh, you meant why are we going to be here for the next two years? Well, as it turns out, we bought a condo in Ft. Lauderdale at what will probably become known as the absolute worst time in the state's history to buy one, October of 2005. If I haven't told the story yet, here it is: We were renting a really nice place very close to the Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport, where I worked. There was a tremendous real estate boom going on at the time, and most apartment complexes were being sold to companies that wanted to "convert" (i.e. sell) the apartments as condominiums. Our apartment complex was no exception. We were soon told we could buy our place at a "discount" of $180,000, or keep renting it but risk having it bought out from under us when the place goes on sale to the general public.

We knew we weren't going to live in Florida forever, but didn't know how much longer. We knew we loved our place and didn't want to risk moving to a place we would end up not liking, and with the way the market was going it looked like our choices were "buy or get out." Well, it's generally better to own than rent, and we were getting it at a discount besides, right? So we took the plunge and shortly thereafter the rest of the complex went on sale to the general public. The starting asking price for a unit of our floor plan was $225,000. We thought we had done pretty well. We knew the housing boom had to end someday but we felt we had enough of a cushion to survive and even probably make a little money if we had to sell the place in a hurry.

Just over a year later, when I got hired by Chautauqua and we decided it was time to go back home to Indiana, the market was completely different. Now our place has been on the market for 7 months, and in that time we had four people come look at it. We now have a different realtor and he says that to really get people in there, the minimum asking price needs to be $169,000. Let's say it finally sells for $160,000 (and this is probably being optimistic). That's a $20k hit, plus commission and fees and we're looking at probably $30k or more in the hole when it sells. We're pretty much counting on that now, and we're planning on staying here with Abee's parents until we make up that difference or they kick us out. The former will probably take us about two years. And until the place does sell, we're leaving my wonderful computer desk, and my very comfortable computer chair, down in Florida.

So now onto your next likely question, how can I then be saying things are pretty good? Well for one thing, we're knee-deep in family between living with Abee's and visiting mine several times a week, and that's pretty nice after being 1300 miles away for four years. I still have my job at Chautauqua, which is still a great job, and I now have over 400 people below me seniority-wise, which is great furlough protection. And like I mentioned the other week, I don't have to make an aerial commute to or from work anymore. I could go back to that and Abee and I could go back to living in our place in Ft. Lauderdale for five or so years until the market turns around. However, I really didn't like that commute, and Abee's made it pretty clear that she'd rather live here than go back to Florida. So here we are, and here I am, in the basement, about to play a little more Half-Life 2. I love Half-Life. Things are good.

What's new?

Not much, and at the same time, enough. Enough to make a post here after a few months at least.

We have moved out of Fort Lauderdale, though we haven't sold our place yet. At this point it looks like we're going to take a big loss on it. Whatever. At this point we just want to be rid of it and rid of Florida.

We're staying with Abee's parents for the time being. The bright side of that is when I finish my last flight of a trip, 20 minutes later I'm "home" rather than going to a crashpad or jumpseating on a 5-hour commute to Ft. Lauderdale. Oh did I mention being based in Indianapolis is great? I missed it here so much the last four years. Florida had its great bits and all, especially the ocean and the scenery while flying, but it just wasn't home.

The flying out of Indianapolis is pretty slow this month, and I'm still pretty junior in this base, so I'm on reserve this month, which means there are certain days I'm on call and certain days I'm guaranteed off, but no definite flying schedule. Generally it's nicer to have a set schedule. With that, you know ahead of time every day when and where you'll be working and every day that you'll be home, and you usually get about 80+ hours of flying a month. However, since I'm paid for a minimum of 75 hours of flying a month anyway, even on reserve, and I haven't had to work since July 1st (I've been on call, just haven't been called), and I'm not commuting, it's pretty nice. It's less money in the long run, but it's money for sitting around, which means more efficiency, or something. All that said, I managed to have a set schedule (a "line" it's called) in May and June, so I'm hoping there's enough flying here in August that I get a line then as well.

In the mean time, I love this movie. Yeah, I've already mentioned it before. But since the new Transformers movie rocks and this movie is narrated by Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) it deserves another watch.

Oh yeah, and my sister moved to Sydney. Whoa! Good luck Annie!

Cool Helicopter Video

Opening Day

From somewhere in Pennsylvania...

Well, today I flew a jet for the 127th time. I'm still having a blast. I'm writing this from my hotel room in State College, Pennsylvania, home of the Penn State Nittany Lions. I've been all over the past few months, including Chicago O'Hare, New York LaGuardia, Portland Maine, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., San Antonio, and all sorts of places in between. I've been based in Louisville, Kentucky since I started, but next month I will be transferred to Indianapolis, which is great. I'll be staying with my parents until Abee and I can sell our condo in Florida and move home to Indy this summer. So far that's not going so well; we've had two people look at the place since we put it up for sale in December. The real estate market in South Florida is abysmal at best right now.

I've been passing the time sitting in hotels by watching preseason White Sox baseball on mlb.tv, playing preseason baseball as the White Sox in MVP 2005, and playing an online role playing game called Star Wars Galaxies. I've also started watching the new Battlestar Galactica show, and I have to say it's very good. I also do some sightseeing whenever I can. On one trip our day ended in White Plains, New York at a nice early 10:00 a.m. I took a train to New York city, where I had never been before. I saw Grand Central Station (it looks as cool as it does in the movies), rode the subway, saw the World Trade Center site, Times Square, and Rockefeller Plaza. On another trip I visited Washington, D.C., and went to the Air and Space Museum, saw the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the National Archives, and visited the World War II memorial. Also, last week I saw the fort that they named Fort Wayne, Indiana after. From the air I've seen the B-2 stealth bomber fly over us at 38,000 feet, and just the other day saw some F-18s doing their pass over the speedway in Bristol, Tennessee as we were coming in to land there.

Below are a couple pictures my dad took while I was doing a turn in Indianapolis. Well, until next time...

The First Day

Today I flew a jet for the first time. I'm still waiting for it to sink in. In the mean time, I'm going to write about it while it's fresh in my mind.

Originally, my day was supposed to start at 5:30 in the morning. I was supposed to report in Louisville (my base) to fly the 6:30 flight to Cincinnati. From there it was a flight to Akron Ohio, then back to Cincinnati, then to New Orleans to finish the day. Unfortunately, the captain had a flat tire in his car in Minneapolis the night before and was not able to get to Louisville for the 6:30 flight. The earliest (and only) leg he could make it in time to fly was the one from Cincinnati to New Orleans. Now because this is my first week, I have to fly with a specially designated training captain. The captain they found to replace mine on those first few legs did not have such a designation, so they had to get a different first officer too.

Anyway, I got a call from crew scheduling this morning telling me about all of this, and the new plan was for me to catch a ride on a 12:00 noon flight from Louisville to Cincinnati, so that I could join my captain on that Cincinnati-New Orleans leg. I met the captain there at the terminal in Cincinnati, and he said he had some things to take care of, and for me to go ahead and preflight the airplane. I was kind of surprised that he just set me loose on my own like that, but then this was all stuff I had been trained for, it was my job, and I guess you gotta cut the umbilical cord at some point.

I found the gate that the plane was parked at. The flight attendant was there waiting for me. We went out to the plane and he opened the airstair door. I climbed up and put my bag in the closet and my flight kit in the cockpit. From that point on I was pleasantly surprised how naturally everything came. I checked the cockpit to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary, then I powered up the airplane and the auxiliary power unit, which is a small gas turbine that provides electricity and air conditioning when the engines are not running, as well as power to start the engines themselves. Once this was done I got on the radio and listened to the weather report, and then called up air traffic control to get our route clearance. Finally, I turned on the air conditioning system. As far as inspecting the exterior goes, I think it's important to mention here that all of my training for this airplane so far had been done in simulators, which only simulated the cockpit, not the exterior. They did show us a preflight on an actual plane, once, back in November.

Well apparently that (and all the other training) was enough. I grabbed the checklist and headed outside. Again, I was pleasantly surprised. As it turns out, I've preflighted lots of different airplanes hundreds of times before in my flying career, and this was (and felt like) pretty much the same thing, and the checklist I had spelled out all the important things to check. The only real differences were that this was much bigger, had jet engines, and said "Delta" on it. All that stuff is really just aesthetic when you think about it.

By the time I had finished this and got back into the cockpit, the captain arrived and the passengers started to board. I did the weight and balance paperwork as the passengers finished boarding, and then the captain and I did all of our setup checks to make sure we were ready to go. Then he signaled to the ground crew that we were ready to be pushed back. I called the ground controllers and got our pushback clearance. As we were pushed back, the captain started the engines and I called for our taxi clearance.

As we taxied out, I had to do what I was most nervous about doing on the entire flight - I had to go on the PA and tell the passengers that we were ready for takeoff and for the flight attendant to be seated. Eventually I worked up the courage and pushed the "talk" button and miraculously I didn't stutter or stumble or anything.

When we got to the runway the captain informed me that I would be flying the takeoff. I mostly expected to be watching him fly this flight, but by this time I was starting to get used to the surprises. The tower gave us our takeoff clearance. He taxied onto the runway and then told me that I had the controls. At this point my "programming" from the previous seven weeks took over. I set the power levers into the "thrust set" detent and we started rolling. I tried (and did well enough) to keep the airplane going down the middle of the runway without being too abrupt with the controls. The captain called out the rotation speed and I pulled back on the yoke. We started to climb so he called out "positive rate" and I called for him to raise the landing gear. Here we go!

Now I haven't mentioned this yet, but the weather was fairly crappy today. On the ground it was cold and rainy. After takeoff we were immediately in the clouds, and in the bumps. Most of the flight was very choppy, kind of like riding on a speedboat, but not quite as violent. The plane acted and flew so much like the simulator did that I had to remind myself that this was a real jet with 46 people behind me. The most major differences were the scenery was much better, and the wind and bumps felt more "real." Obvious I know, but the point is not much else was different.

As far as the enroute portion goes, it was really just like flying any other plane, except things happened a bit faster, but there were two of us so it actually seemed easier. We flew at 36,000 feet, which was just barely on top of the clouds, and yes, it was still bumpy up there. During that portion, I finally had time to take everything in and enjoy what was going on.

As we got close to New Orleans, the captain listened to the weather report and told Delta Operations at the airport when we would be arriving. We got the radios and the computers and everything set up for our approach, which I would also be flying.

The weather in New Orleans was not too bad. We could see the airport from about ten miles away. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but again, landing this plane was pretty much the same as landing any other plane. On the way down I was making small changes in pitch, power, and heading to keep us at the right speed, angle, and keep us lined up with the runway. I was a little worried about landing too hard, so I ended up floating down the runway a little too long, but I re-settled the plane and decelerated down the middle of the runway. The captain took over the controls and taxied us to the gate.

When we got there, another crew was waiting to take the plane back to Cincinatti, so we had to hurry up and get our stuff put away and get things ready for them to take over. Once we were done with this, we went through the airport and got on a shuttle bus to take us to a hotel. I'm writing this in my hotel room in New Orleans right now, and we are scheduled to fly out of here tomorrow at 11:00 a.m.

I've been excited about this day for quite a while, even had a dream or two about it. As it got closer I started to get a little nervous that I would forget everything I learned or would do something idiotic, but luckily none of that happened. Things did happen very quickly, which didn't give me much time to really savor what was going on. It will probably take a few more flights for my brain to completely catch up to the airplane, but overall I think I did pretty well for my first day, and the captain said I did pretty good too. Now, I'm going to get a good night's rest so that we can work our way back to Louisville tomorrow. It should be interesting; snow and rain are in the forecast.

note: Both exterior shots in this post are of the exact plane that I flew today. They weren't taken today, but it is the exact same aircraft, N563RP. The cockpit shot is not the same aircraft but ours is identical.