Rob is off on a four-day trip.
I shouldn't whine, because we are coming off a vacation-like six days together, where we didn't fly anywhere, didn't do anything exotic, just spent time together in our home. It was wonderful! More on that later.
But, after having him here for six days, I feel like I'm rattling around this empty house, at loose ends. To make it worse, I have MY days off this week, right in the middle of HIS trip. So, I'm off, trying to fill my time so I won't miss him too much. These kinds of days are the worst possible days for him to be flying out of the country. He doesn't have an international calling plan. So, when he flies to Canada or Mexico...we are stuck with texting apps like Google Talk or What's App.
Yesterday, I discovered that What's App's latest version has a voice function. Not a voice-to-text function. I hate those. This is like using voice-mail.
Please don't mention Skype or Face-time. Zoikes! I've been leery of that technology since The Jetsons! No, Thanks! Rob has a pleasant image of me in his memory, and a few decent snapshots on his phone, let's not subject him to the scary, harsh-lighting, bad-angle close-up that Skype delivers.
So, I was thrilled with the voice capability. It is better than talking on the phone in terms of clarity. And there's something about knowing your voice is being recorded, that makes you take time with your words. I was not even horribly chagrined to listen to my own recorded voice playing back to me, a prospect that is usually too awful to entertain. But, to hear Rob's voice, crisply and clearly telling me that he loved me, wishing me sweet dreams, and saying goodnight, this was pure joy. We only played around with it for a few minutes. Though we were both so excited about it, he needed to get to bed. His alarm was set for 2:30 a.m. for a painfully early show-time.
Tomorrow, he will be home. I will hear his dear voice in person. But, yesterday, when he was so far away that we could not even talk on the phone, I was so very grateful to this simple, free phone app, for making it more bearable.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Base Changes: Unsure what the Future Holds
Rob's company is opening several new airline bases. This is a good thing, I'm sure, but it opens up a great deal of instability in the short term. The company must staff the new bases, and they don't have a ready source of new hires, so that staff will come from current pilots who are based elsewhere.
We have been lucky so far. Rob spent a month based in Newark when he started. He immediately put in a trade request and was able to transfer to Chicago. This makes our lives so much more liveable. His commute to work is just one 40 minute flight. I almost don't remember what Newark was like. But, I am about to find out: with the new base openings, he got a transfer to Newark.
Starting next month, Rob will have to have a "crash pad". Sounds fun, right? Not so much. For a fair price, he will rent a bed and use of a kitchen essentially. The official crash pads are run like dorms with strict rules and regs regarding visitors, drinking and cleanliness. It is my hope that he won't be spending any time there at all, but since he is still flying on reserve, chances are good that he will spend some nights there. Here's the way it will likely work: he will fly to Newark the night before he has to work, and sleep at the crash pad. The next morning, hopefully he will have an assignment and will spend the next 4 days flying, on the last of which he will make his way home...if he gets done early enough to make a flight home. If he doesn't, that means another night in Newark and flying home on his day off.
We are both hopeful that he will have enough seniority to hold a line in Newark very soon. This may make the cross-country commute more doable. He will know what he is flying, and when, instead of being on-call for his work days. He will also be able to drop trips that don't work well with his commuting schedule. If he's a line holder, he may not have to do as much commuting on his days off. This means more time at home: something commercial airline pilots hold dear.
I found another great blog about life with a pilot. comebackdaddy.blogspot.com This woman has many more years of experience at this than I do and I'm sure she and her pilot have rolled with lots of major job changes. Enjoy!
Anyway, I am trying to be optimistic. We will get through it.
We have been lucky so far. Rob spent a month based in Newark when he started. He immediately put in a trade request and was able to transfer to Chicago. This makes our lives so much more liveable. His commute to work is just one 40 minute flight. I almost don't remember what Newark was like. But, I am about to find out: with the new base openings, he got a transfer to Newark.
Starting next month, Rob will have to have a "crash pad". Sounds fun, right? Not so much. For a fair price, he will rent a bed and use of a kitchen essentially. The official crash pads are run like dorms with strict rules and regs regarding visitors, drinking and cleanliness. It is my hope that he won't be spending any time there at all, but since he is still flying on reserve, chances are good that he will spend some nights there. Here's the way it will likely work: he will fly to Newark the night before he has to work, and sleep at the crash pad. The next morning, hopefully he will have an assignment and will spend the next 4 days flying, on the last of which he will make his way home...if he gets done early enough to make a flight home. If he doesn't, that means another night in Newark and flying home on his day off.
We are both hopeful that he will have enough seniority to hold a line in Newark very soon. This may make the cross-country commute more doable. He will know what he is flying, and when, instead of being on-call for his work days. He will also be able to drop trips that don't work well with his commuting schedule. If he's a line holder, he may not have to do as much commuting on his days off. This means more time at home: something commercial airline pilots hold dear.
I found another great blog about life with a pilot. comebackdaddy.blogspot.com This woman has many more years of experience at this than I do and I'm sure she and her pilot have rolled with lots of major job changes. Enjoy!
Anyway, I am trying to be optimistic. We will get through it.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Pass Travel Fail
It's not the first time I've had to resort to this. But, it always feels like a fail.
We just got back from a sweet little dive trip to the Keys. Took our newly certified diving youngsters, R & A, for their first real ocean diving experience.
From a week out of our planned excursion, the flights looked WIDE open. Rob was hugely optimistic. Things hadn't looked this good for pass travel in a long time. And we knew it would be tricky traveling with 5 people; we never even entertained the idea that we would all take the same flights.
As our travel dates drew nearer, we realized we had a small problem. Rob had only recently undertaken to add R to his travel benefits as an approved "friend", and the paperwork had not yet cleared. Not good!
It came down to the day before we were to leave. I was on call, Rob at the end of a 4-day trip and it was decision time. The kids were psyched to go; Rob's dad had taken off work, Rob and I had finagled our schedules to get the time off as well, and our dives and hotel were already reserved. We decided we would go whether R was flying free or not. We would book him on Delta and Rob would fly with him while the rest of us played the standby game. Gulp.
When I got home from work, at the end of a long shift, with only 2 hours of sleep the night before, Rob and I sat down and looked at the flight loads again. He showed me what the bad weather had done to flight loads: everything was now overbooked. Not good! With a good imagination and endless optimism, you could possibly envision the 5 of us getting to the Keys at some point the next day, but it sounded exhausting. I knew my day would be starting at 3am, whether I made it to Miami by noon or by midnight. With that information, we gave in and booked a full-price ticket for me as well. Rob, his dad and A, as immediate family members, got discounted fares. Sigh...
Of course we love Delta, for the Biscoff and peanuts, but mostly we enjoyed the ease of traveling as a group with guaranteed seats!
That's the caveat with pass travel. You always have to have a plan B and plan C. Buying full-price tickets is usually plan D (desperate), but it is always a possibility. In the past, I've only done it when I needed to get home to cover my call shift. Doing it because we had not planned fully in advance to get R's paperwork approved, and being too exhausted to play the game, it felt like a pass travel FAIL.
We just got back from a sweet little dive trip to the Keys. Took our newly certified diving youngsters, R & A, for their first real ocean diving experience.
From a week out of our planned excursion, the flights looked WIDE open. Rob was hugely optimistic. Things hadn't looked this good for pass travel in a long time. And we knew it would be tricky traveling with 5 people; we never even entertained the idea that we would all take the same flights.
As our travel dates drew nearer, we realized we had a small problem. Rob had only recently undertaken to add R to his travel benefits as an approved "friend", and the paperwork had not yet cleared. Not good!
It came down to the day before we were to leave. I was on call, Rob at the end of a 4-day trip and it was decision time. The kids were psyched to go; Rob's dad had taken off work, Rob and I had finagled our schedules to get the time off as well, and our dives and hotel were already reserved. We decided we would go whether R was flying free or not. We would book him on Delta and Rob would fly with him while the rest of us played the standby game. Gulp.
When I got home from work, at the end of a long shift, with only 2 hours of sleep the night before, Rob and I sat down and looked at the flight loads again. He showed me what the bad weather had done to flight loads: everything was now overbooked. Not good! With a good imagination and endless optimism, you could possibly envision the 5 of us getting to the Keys at some point the next day, but it sounded exhausting. I knew my day would be starting at 3am, whether I made it to Miami by noon or by midnight. With that information, we gave in and booked a full-price ticket for me as well. Rob, his dad and A, as immediate family members, got discounted fares. Sigh...
Of course we love Delta, for the Biscoff and peanuts, but mostly we enjoyed the ease of traveling as a group with guaranteed seats!
That's the caveat with pass travel. You always have to have a plan B and plan C. Buying full-price tickets is usually plan D (desperate), but it is always a possibility. In the past, I've only done it when I needed to get home to cover my call shift. Doing it because we had not planned fully in advance to get R's paperwork approved, and being too exhausted to play the game, it felt like a pass travel FAIL.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
The Airline Diet: Packing His Lunch
When Rob and I first met, he was about 40 pounds heavier. I thought he was hot of course and would never have guessed that he had 40 pounds to lose. About 9 months ago, he started losing weight. It was a conscious decision and has been the result of mostly dietary changes, some changes in his exercise habits.
When Rob decided he wanted to lose weight, he started using a calorie tracker. We both really like myfitnesspal.com, which allows you to enter your profile and then track your daily caloric intake and caloric burn (a combination of resting metabolic rate and exercise). You can set a weight loss goal and track your progress. It's free and has a smart phone app that allows you to scan food labels to easily enter the nutritional content of your meals. Using the calorie tracker, allowed Rob to see how much in excess his typical diet was. For a couple of weeks, he used tracking alone to reduce his intake. He felt hungry alot, but he dropped about 5 pounds.
Then we looked into some of the more common diets. The research doesn't really show a major difference in efficacy among the most popular diet plans: atkins, south beach, weight watchers, the mediterranean diet. Any diet that reduces caloric intake will help you lose weight. What the research does show is that for long term results, the diet needs to be more than just a diet. You need to actually change, permanently, the way that you eat.
However; I often recommend a low-carb diet to my patients. Carbohydrates tend to be the biggest culprit in the typical American diet: highly processed, loaded with fats, addictive. If you can break the grip that carbs have on you, you can win the weight battle. And, when you take simple, refined carbohydrates out of the picture, what you have left, looks like real food.
Rob was drawn to the P90X diet plan, because he wanted to build muscle while losing weight. For that, he knew he would need protein. So, we ordered a special insulated meal bag that would fit enough food for a 4-day trip and began packing his protein rich meals. 9 months later, he is still eating this way. If you had asked him a year ago, he would have sworn that giving up bread and pasta would NEVER happen. Now, he's the guy who orders a hamburger and asks the waitress to hold the bun, but bring extra lettuce.
Here's his full flight kit with meal bag attached. It's pretty heavy at the front end of his trips.
When Rob decided he wanted to lose weight, he started using a calorie tracker. We both really like myfitnesspal.com, which allows you to enter your profile and then track your daily caloric intake and caloric burn (a combination of resting metabolic rate and exercise). You can set a weight loss goal and track your progress. It's free and has a smart phone app that allows you to scan food labels to easily enter the nutritional content of your meals. Using the calorie tracker, allowed Rob to see how much in excess his typical diet was. For a couple of weeks, he used tracking alone to reduce his intake. He felt hungry alot, but he dropped about 5 pounds.
Then we looked into some of the more common diets. The research doesn't really show a major difference in efficacy among the most popular diet plans: atkins, south beach, weight watchers, the mediterranean diet. Any diet that reduces caloric intake will help you lose weight. What the research does show is that for long term results, the diet needs to be more than just a diet. You need to actually change, permanently, the way that you eat.
However; I often recommend a low-carb diet to my patients. Carbohydrates tend to be the biggest culprit in the typical American diet: highly processed, loaded with fats, addictive. If you can break the grip that carbs have on you, you can win the weight battle. And, when you take simple, refined carbohydrates out of the picture, what you have left, looks like real food.
Rob was drawn to the P90X diet plan, because he wanted to build muscle while losing weight. For that, he knew he would need protein. So, we ordered a special insulated meal bag that would fit enough food for a 4-day trip and began packing his protein rich meals. 9 months later, he is still eating this way. If you had asked him a year ago, he would have sworn that giving up bread and pasta would NEVER happen. Now, he's the guy who orders a hamburger and asks the waitress to hold the bun, but bring extra lettuce.
Here's his full flight kit with meal bag attached. It's pretty heavy at the front end of his trips.
 |
| That's the meal bag on top |
The night before he leaves, I cook chicken breasts: either grilled, or flattened and sauteed with olive oil and seasoning. I also usually do the same with some lean pork chops. I pack sugar snap peas, carrots, grape tomatoes and a variety of fruit. He takes at least 4 protein bars and some trail mix or nuts. Sometimes, there will be leftovers from a recent meal and if so, I always send that so he will have some variety. But, mostly, his meals consist of this: a chicken breast and a handful of carrots, or a pork chop and a handful of grape tomatoes.
We pack freezer bags in around his food. He refrigerates everything if his hotel room has a refrigerator and will sometimes have the luxury of a microwave to warm up his meal. Otherwise, he is eating his chicken breast cold, and right out of the ziploc bag. Yum.
He will occasionally eat a meal with the crew if they have a long overnight. His weakness is chicken wings but he mitigates the damage by never ordering fries with them. When he is home, our meals are not quite so austere, but I don't make pasta, and we never do sandwiches anymore. He will have an omelet for breakfast most days: with mostly egg whites and one full egg. I usually fill it with veggies, but I don't skip the cheese. We rarely miss Wing Tuesday at Buffalo Wild Wings and he has not given up beer. But it seems to be working. Eating this way, out of his high protein meal bag roughly 2/3 of the time, and a clean/semi paleo diet at home, has resulted in 40 pounds of weight loss over 9 months.
I wish I could get him to run. He says he does run...between gates sometimes, but only if it's to catch a flight home. His exercise consists of a once a week P90X work-out supplemented by push-ups and pull-ups. But, it works for him. He looks good, and he feels good.
When 2/3 of your time is spent in airports and hotels, eating right can be challenging. The lunch bag has been our solution.
He agreed to let me post before and after pics. These are just snapshots, so they may not do the transformation justice. Here goes!
Before: After:
 |
| 6/2013 |
 |
| 9/2012 |
Monday, July 1, 2013
Mile-High Book Club
Rob has lost some things. Yep. He sure has. Some expensive things, like IPads and Kindles. He doesn't get to carry expensive electronics anymore. I applied the cheap, paperback rule to him as well.
Good news is, there's a secret, airline industry book club. I've read some really good books this year that Rob has brought home from work. Books left behind on airplanes and found by the flight attendant, read first or immediately passed on to someone else on the crew.
Most recently, Lisa Gardner's Live to Tell, made it home with Rob. He read it first and passed it on to me. I'm a little embarrassed to admit I've never read her work before, but I will definitely pick up another of her books next time I need one for traveling.
So, to those of you who have left beloved books on airplanes, or like A did on our last trip, in the bathroom at the airport, don't worry! Your book has surely found its way into the hands of a reader, maybe even the pilot who flew your plane home. It will be passed along, making its way through the Mile-High Book Club, hand to hand, accompanied by the same passionate hand-sell pitch the book-seller might have used, if book-sellers still existed. "I loved it! Stayed up all night reading!"
Thanks for your donation to the Mile-High Book Club, and if you find that lovely story by Sue Monk Kidd, the one about the bees? You're welcome.
Lost or found a good book in the airport recently? What do you read when you are traveling?
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Going Out On A Wing
What is an acceptable level of risk? How do you decide? These are questions we ask in the healthcare field every day. They come up in all areas of life, however.
When I was a kid, I was a tomboy. My options were limited, but I did what I could: tree climbing, bike riding, water-skiing. In high school, I once climbed to the top of a water tower. It was foolish, probably illegal if not actually dangerous, but thrilling just the same. As a young mom, my risk taking aptitude went way down. The idea of doing anything that might leave my young children motherless was painful to me. As they have grown, my natural tendency to be a bit of a risk taker has returned.
I enjoy things like roller coasters and white water rafting. I love flying small planes, scuba dive whenever I get the chance and just recently took up rock climbing. On my bucket list: skydiving.
But that guy, Felix Baumgartner, who took a free dive from space last year? The fellow (Nik Wallenda) tight-rope walking across the Grand Canyon? The young kid, Alex Honnold, who free solo climbs (that's without ropes, my friends) sheer mountain faces? And the famed wing walker, Jane Wicker, who died just yesterday in a fiery crash during an air-show, these folks have a risk taking appetite that perplexes me.
I revisit these thoughts occasionally and yesterday was such an occasion.
Flying into Dayton to meet Rob for a date night: This was mid-trip for him; he was coming from Newark and had a long layover. I was off for the weekend. The planets were in alignment. And the Pass-Travel Gods were with me. I had easily gotten seats onto both flights and we were circling Dayton after a short, uneventful flight from Chicago. Lost in my novel, I hadn't really noticed that we were in a holding pattern until our captain's voice suddenly filled the cabin. In somber tones, filled with the characteristic pauses and long vowels of a pilot, he shared with us the news that "an incident" had occurred at the Dayton airshow. The airport was closed. We were running low on fuel and would have to reroute to Columbus.
I have never been more proud of my fellow travelers. Generally news of any delay, much less, being rerouted to a different airport, would have been the source of much grumbling. But that was not the case. There were questions called up to the flight attendant regarding logistics, but overall the mood was reverent and calm. "An incident". We had no other news at that time, but we all expected it would be bad. Once we had landed in Columbus and our captain had more news to share, we'd all fired up our phones to get the news ourselves.
I had a text waiting for me from Rob whose flight from Newark to Dayton had been delayed for the same reason. "Jane Wicker crashed. F_ _ _". He'd seen Jane perform, had met and talked with her before. His reaction was not dissimilar from the crew flying my plane. Sadness and dismay. A sobering reminder that flying is not risk free.
So, these were the conversations that dominated our time together. Why? Why do people pursue these extreme sports where one small error means certain death? Pilots of commercial jets are not risk-averse individuals generally, but they appreciate the value of back-up systems, of having a second set of eyes in the cockpit. When you are flying a stunt plane upside down, at low-altitude, one miscalculation, one wrong gust of wind and nobody walks away from it. There's no margin of error. The same can be said of the free solo rock climbing. No ropes. No harness. 2,000 feet up on sheer rock. I just don't get it.
I love the thrill of adventure sports, but I would never climb without a harness. There must be something different about someone who can. Someone who undertakes the extreme, unprotected sport. Maybe these are the explorers and adventurers of the modern day. Maybe they are all similar to Alex Honnolt who speaks of the sense of peace that overcomes him when he's on the rock. But, I can't help but wonder if we are not culpable in some way, just by watching. Are we no better than those who filled the coliseum to watch the bloodsports?
Maybe it's too many years of working in healthcare, where risk mitigation is always forefront in our minds. Some things, like healthcare, flying, scuba diving and rock climbing have inherent risk. If we are going to practice those things, we use our protocols, our checklists, our buddy system, our harness and ropes. We expect good outcomes because we practice safely. We don't go out on a wing and just hope that everything works out.
Today, the sadness of yesterday's events lingers. I never met Jane. It sounds like she had a very full and vibrant life. I sure hope that somewhere along the way she had a conversation like the one I had with Rob yesterday. "I hope I die doing what I love," he told me. "But not until I'm really old and feeble." I think of Jane's family, and the family of her pilot, and hope that they know with certainty that their loved ones died doing something that they loved.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
How Our Lives Look
Yesterday we stood on the wide beach of a western shore.
I leaned against you and you wrapped your arms around me.
We listened to the crashing waves and watched the rays surfing in the clear blue.
We talked about sea-breezes and land- breezes and made love one last time in the hotel.
Then we boarded one plane and then another, winging our way home.
Today we sang together an old Bette Midlar song
And you played your guitar
We ate oatmeal and I pounded chicken breasts and cooked them for your trip.
We went belt shopping and found leather gloves and a beanie to keep you warm.
And then you left for Quebec.
And I came here to catch babies.
Tomorrow you will fly home to me
And we will sleep together, my head on your shoulder for awhile, in OUR bed.
And we will wake up the next day and eat eggs.
And there will be music, and errands, and lunch with your dad
And then our children will come home and fill our house.
Every once in awhile I catch myself-
I remember the days of anxiety when I couldn't imagine what our lives would be like and when I would ask you to tell me how our lives would look.
Now, when I remember those days, I think: like this. This is how our lives look.
I leaned against you and you wrapped your arms around me.
We listened to the crashing waves and watched the rays surfing in the clear blue.
We talked about sea-breezes and land- breezes and made love one last time in the hotel.
Then we boarded one plane and then another, winging our way home.
Today we sang together an old Bette Midlar song
And you played your guitar
We ate oatmeal and I pounded chicken breasts and cooked them for your trip.
We went belt shopping and found leather gloves and a beanie to keep you warm.
And then you left for Quebec.
And I came here to catch babies.
Tomorrow you will fly home to me
And we will sleep together, my head on your shoulder for awhile, in OUR bed.
And we will wake up the next day and eat eggs.
And there will be music, and errands, and lunch with your dad
And then our children will come home and fill our house.
Every once in awhile I catch myself-
I remember the days of anxiety when I couldn't imagine what our lives would be like and when I would ask you to tell me how our lives would look.
Now, when I remember those days, I think: like this. This is how our lives look.
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