Ridden Hard & Put Away Wet

I didn't mean to let 11 September go by without writing something. I can't believe five years have gone by already, and I have a lot of thoughts about how we as a nation remember that day and what's come after it. But I got to my hotel room on Monday and couldn't get past the first few lines. I was completely brain dead, toasted.

It's been a long time since I've flown a trip like this one. All last bid I had nice cushy SMF-BOI-RNO trips with four or less legs per day and lots of carefree California Dreamin'. No frantic turns, no Montana thunderstorms or wildfire smoke, no Seattle stress. Man, it made me go soft!

This trip really isn't that bad compared to what our MiniWhacker pilots do every day. But it's tough for a MegaWhacker trip. The first day had only four legs, but they were in four different airplanes! That's a personal record. It certainly makes a day seem much longer. I'm not sure what the aircraft routers were thinking. If I asked, they'd no doubt mumble something about the Big Picture. The second and third days had six and seven legs respectively, with seven hours of flying each. Today we finally catch a break: two legs and we're home. Hopefully the plane will be running on time.

Yesterday's first five legs were running the Seattle-Spokane shuttle. I actually like this flight a lot. It usually lasts around 35-45 minutes, so you stay busy without being frantic, and the Spokane rampers are great, and the scenery over the Cascades is beautiful on a nice day. This is often the route on which I do scenic tours, and I was able to do it twice yesterday for the first time in a while. I regret that I didn't get up to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness once this year, although hiking in Switzerland definately made up for it.

Here are some pictures I snapped yesterday:






These were actually last week but kinda cool: