Baja Video Blog - Episode 2

Baja Video Blog - Episode 1

Back from Baja

I got back from my two week dirt bike trip down Baja California on Thursday to find a letter from the FAA waiting me, approving my special issuance medical. Now I'm waiting for the company to come up with a return to service plan for me, but expect I'll be flying again very soon.

In the meantime I'm having a little fun with the photos and film from the Baja trip. This was one of those trips that didn't go even remotely as planned, sometimes to the point of extreme frustration. Through it all, we met many fantastic people and had amazing experiences we never would have had if everything went according to plan. In short, it was a real adventure.

Partly because I got so much GoPro footage, I decided to try something different in how I report the trip on this blog. Rather than doing a lengthy writeup, I'm putting together several documentary episodes - video blogs, really - about the trip. I expect the first one to be ready shortly. In the meantime, I put together a short (4 minute) music video featuring some of the best action of the trip. Enjoy!

Not Entirely Grounded

It's been an interesting winter, with a pronounced lack of deicing, snowstorms, holding, divert fuel calculations, or icy Saskatoon layovers. Of course, being on medical leave also means I haven't had any nice sunny San Antonio layovers to help cope with the Minnesota winter doldrums, either. I've been able to stay surprisingly busy - medical treatment, chasing down paperwork for my special issuance medical application, a few weekend trips to warmer locales like LA and Alaska, a few paid writing assignments, and the various duties of a hausfrau haven't left too much time for moping. In two weeks I leave for a long-awaited dirtbike ride down Baja with my friend Brad, and I expect to get an answer on the medical shortly after I get back.

I'm looking forward to it. I've started to really miss flying - hassles and ennui of modern button-pushing regional airline flying included. I miss being part of a crew, I miss being useful, I miss going places and having some variety in my week. I miss just being in the air.

At least I have the Cub to fly. It falls under Sport Pilot rules, so I don't need a medical to fly it - only a driver's license and self-certification that I'm fit to fly when I take it up (my medical wasn't denied or suspended - don't worry, I checked with EAA Legal to make sure I was ok first!). Mind you, Minnesota winters aren't quite the Cub's element - if it's not snowing or blowing stink, it's usually too cold for comfort - but I've been able to sneak in a few very enjoyable days aloft. I think I'm actually the only club member that has flown it since November!

A few days ago, I took my friend and fellow NewCo captain Dan up in the Cub to try his hand at taildragger wrangling. I brought along a GoPro Hero HD camera I recently scored off craigslist for the upcoming Baja trip, and a roll of duct tape to secure it to a strut. The footage came out pretty decently for my first effort, and I made an amusing little video on iMovie out of it. Enjoy!

Grounded

"What would you do if you couldn't be a pilot?"

The question was first posed in one of my aviation classes at UND, and has stuck with me since. It was always rhetorical, based on various imagined hazards ranging from a family history of diabetes to an industry meltdown rather than any specific, imminent threat. Early in my career any outcome seemed entirely possible, as did my imagined alternatives: Become an air traffic controller. Go back to school. Go into architecture or law. As I aged and my career became more established, both the prospect of not being able to fly and the chances of pursing an alternative course seemed increasingly remote, and the doomsday scenarios faded from my mind.

Yet here I am, in a sterile medical office, staring blankly at an anatomical poster on the wall and trying to understand what the doctor is telling me while the red master warning bell in my brain is blaring deafeningly. I wasn't expecting life-changing news today. I had a sharp pain on the right side of my abdomen last night, and grudgingly made a rare visit to the clinic on the off chance it was appendicitis. I dutifully drank some foul-smelling liquid and lay down for a CT scan, and figured worst-case scenario I'd be getting my appendix taken out laparoscopically before the day was done. And now this doctor is telling me that I have an inflamed ileum, he thinks it's likely Crohn's Disease, and I need to see a specialist to find out for sure.

I didn't know anything about Crohn's except that Dawn and I have two acquaintances with the disease, and their lives have been a living hell of torturous pain, ineffective medicine, failed surgeries, withered bodies, stunted careers, and strained marriages. I knew it was incurable. If I have Crohn's, I thought, it must mean the end of my flying career. The doctor was telling me that many Crohn's cases are mild and controllable with medication and diet, but I scarcely heard him. What am I going to do now? I thought. I looked across the room at Dawn. Despite her forcibly calm demeanor, I could tell she was thinking the same thing.

That was five weeks ago. Since then, I've gone to a gastroenterologist, consulted with several Aviation Medical Examiners, undergone a MRI, and had a colonoscopy. Crohn's is a tough disease to diagnose with certainty, and on the advice of ALPA Aeromedical, I continued to fly while the diagnosis was uncertain but I remained asymptomatic. I flew my trips in December knowing they would probably be my last in a while. And then, just before Christmas, came the final word: I do indeed have Crohn's, albeit a currently mild case. Based on past symptoms, I have probably been living and flying with it untreated for around ten years. Now that it's official, though, I'm grounded - for the time being.

The good news is that my diagnosis isn't nearly the death knell for my career that I initially imagined. Nearly 2,000 pilots currently hold a first class medical despite having Crohn's or ulcerative colitis. Most of the medicines used to treat Crohn's, including the one my gastroenterologist is putting me on (Remicade), are approved by the FAA and require only a short test period to make sure there are no severe side effects. Assuming that I don't have any, and the FAA has no objections to my case and their case load isn't more backed up than usual, I should be able to get a waiver by April or May.

Nevertheless, Crohn's is a somewhat mysterious and unpredictable malady, and despite my relatively mild symptoms thus far, it could take a turn for the worse at some point and end my flying career. I have a few things to occupy my time during my months out of work, but inevitably I'll return to the question: what will I do if at some point I can't be a pilot? I really don't know, right now. Aviation is my first love and has become such a large part of my identity that it would be very, very hard to give it up, even if I had to continue in a non-flying role. I guess I can consider the next few months a sort of trial run for an earth-bound existence. Fortunately, I have a few tailwheel-rated friends who can tag along in the C170 or the Cub when that old flying bug gets restless and starts biting again.

Two Towns

"That dusty old chair there, the one above the icebox...I don't know if this is bullshit or not, but supposedly Abraham Lincoln sat in that chair during a speech at Cooper Union across the street."

I'd never thought to ask about the significance of the chair. There's too much other interesting stuff in here to catch the eye. Abe Lincoln did indeed give a lengthy address at Cooper Union while campaigning for President in 1860. I fleetingly wondered how the chair made its way from the Great Hall to a then-brand-new tavern a block away, or for that matter why a famously capable orator like Honest Abe would sit down while delivering an important speech. Before I could voice my skepticism, our rather tipsy and gregarious barmate shouted over the noise of the bar:

"If you look down, on the rail, you'll see a pair of handcuffs left by Harry Houdini himself."

All of our eyes fell to the floor. Oops, I was standing on them. Indeed, there was a pair of handcuffs, cuffed to the rail. If Harry Houdini hadn't left them, someone else had done so a very long time ago, given their rusty condition. "Is that true, Pete?" The grey-clad bartender's name isn't actually Pete but I'm horrible at remembering names, hadn't been to McSorley's in a while, and Pete is a great bartender's name. Pete grinned and nodded. "Supposedly. Was before my time." Houdini's been dead since 1926, and Pete's only been working at McSorley's for 30-some years.

McSorley's Old Ale House is New York City's oldest bar, having been established in 1854. I rather literally stumbled upon the place on a long New Year's Eve layover five years ago, and have coming back ever since. I have a number of other favorite haunts in the Village and soho, but my visits usually start or end by taking the crew to McSorleys. It's a dark, dusty, grimy sort of place, with sawdust on the floor and cobwebs on broken overhead fans. The walls are covered with historic photos, memorabilia, and newspaper clippings; nothing's been removed since 1910, which is also probably the last time the place was given a good cleaning. McSorley's unapologetically serves exactly two things: light ale and dark ale. One of my flight attendants once asked for a margarita at McSorley's, with hilarious results.

The tables are communal, and as McSorley's is almost always crowded, I've drank with some really interesting people over the years. While the bar certainly attracts out-of-town tourists, a surprisingly number of patrons are local regulars who know a ton about its history, or are at least good at making stuff up. I've heard that John F. Kennedy was a regular there (he was there once) and that the Supreme Court made them start admitting women it 1970 (it was a district court) and that e.e. cummings wrote an ode in praise of McSorley's (it was a short poem, thank God). The historical particulars don't really matter, it's the congenial atmosphere that keeps me coming back, and bringing crews with me.

I was staring into the bottom of my sixth glass - never fear, McSorley's glasses are tiny and six glasses is no more than a pint and a half. "Where you folks headed next?" asked Pete.

"Umm... I was thinking around the corner to Continental, or maybe over to Off the Wagon on MacDougal." I looked over at my crew. Actually, they didn't seem like the college-bar type.

"Continental? Don't take em to that dump! Take em to a classy joint, like Pete's Tavern in 18th, or Old Town just west of there."

Which is how we found ourselves near Gramercy Park eyeing up a red brick facade that proclaimed Pete's Tavern to be the oldest bar in New York...established in 1864. Inside, Pete's is the diametrical opposite of McSorley's: clean, polished, with a gorgeous long bar and cozy private booths and neat rows of framed photos of various contemporary celebrities posing with bartenders. It was mostly empty, and quiet. We perched ourselves on stools and ordered pints of Pete's 1864 Ale. "So, what's the story with the oldest bar claim?" I asked our portly bartender, who looked very much like a James. "Wasn't McSorley's here ten years earlier?"

James' eyes narrowed. "McSorley's is completely full of shit," he scoffed. "We had a 140 year celebration here a few years ago, and the Times did some research, and they found that the site of McSorley's was still an open field in 1860. There's no record of the place existing until 1870. They just made it up," James concluded bitterly, as though it was a personal affront to him. Clearly, I'd touched a nerve and stepped into the middle of an ongoing old-bar feud. We excused ourselves after one beer; the girls wanted to see the Christmas decorations at Rockefeller Center and do some window-shopping on Fifth Avenue.

Twenty-four hours later, I was huffing and wheezing in the freezing mountain air. Fat snowflakes sifted down through boughs of ponderosa pine, blanketing the ground on both sides of the path and making the scree underfoot alarmingly slippery. "Just keep going, one foot in front of the other," I commanded myself as I trudged up the incline. Rob was well ahead, charging pretty much straight up the mountain. I didn't remember the trail being this long the last time I did it, or this steep. Clearly, I'm out of shape, in no small part thanks to East Coast layovers with no hiking and too much tasty beer.

I slipped with a yelp, caught myself on a branch, and gingerly stepped back onto the path. I cursed myself for not bringing hiking boots on account of the extra weight and bulk in my overnight bag. Rob had warned me several days before the trip that we would be doing a six mile hike up Mount Sentinel. At least I had the foresight to bring a headlamp; with a 1:30pm landing time and a December early sunset, I rather doubted we'd get off the mountain before we lost the light. Doing this in a snowstorm probably wasn't the smartest decision, but neither Rob nor I were willing to be the first one to wuss out. I huffed around a switchback and saw Rob at a clearing, looking out over Hellgate Canyon. I gratefully stopped to catch my breath and grabbed a swig of water before resuming the upwards slog.

It was 4pm by the time we reached the peak. Last time I was here it was a bright summer day with refreshing pine breezes and a commanding view of the valley and surrounding mountains. Today, Missoula's glowing lights looked like a far-off, cozy dream through the falling snow. It was already getting dark, and we wasted no time in starting down the perilously steep trail - the one that dispenses entirely with switchbacks and proceeds straight down the mountain towards the M. The inadequacies of my tennis shoes became even more obvious as I slipped and slid my way down the mountain. We met a hiker on his way upward (!) in the snow and fading light. He eyed my choice of footwear dubiously and advised me "You be careful, now."

I somehow made it down to the M intact, and from there the heavily traveled path with its 11 switchbacks made for an easy descent to the University of Montana campus as the last light faded. There were, incredibly, a steady stream of college kids heading up the mountain, toting backpacks heavily laden with winter camping gear. They were all, rather predictably, in much better shape than I. Rob and I were now inside our "twelve hour limit" so we dispensed with the celebratory beer and headed back to the layover hotel. I was tired, but happy that we got out and made the most of our Missoula layover, same as we did in New York the prior day. I know of very few jobs where you can be sampling New York City's oldest bars one afternoon, and hiking in the mountains in Montana the next. That's pretty neat. Ongoing instability in the regional world makes it easy to start second-guessing one's career choices, but there are a lot of things I do like about my job; it's nice to have a good trip with a good crew to remind me of them.

After the Storm

"Cleveland Center, NewCo 5831, checking on flight level three five zero."

"NewCo 5831, Cleveland Center, good morning...uh, are you really going to LaGuardia?"

"Yeah Cleveland, they tell us we are. We have our swimmies and goggles on."

I wasn't quite sure I believed it myself. Three days prior, the airport was under water, a lot of water, and dirty seawater at that. Hurricane Sandy proved to have just a bit more punch than I sampled flying through the very outer rings in my friend's Warrior, with storm surge of up to twelve feet in New York Harbor. LaGuardia didn't get that much, but it didn't need to; most of the airport sits mere feet above Flushing Bay. Floodwaters covered the runways, the taxiways, the ramps, and came all the way up to the various terminals. By Tuesday, photos of the flooded airport were circulating around the internet. I had a four day trip with turns through LaGuardia every day starting on Wednesday. I strongly doubted I'd be flying much of it.

Indeed, crew scheduling rang me up on Tuesday evening to inform me that Wednesday's schedule had been modified. Instead of flying MSP-CLT-LGA-MSN, I would fly the revenue flight to Charlotte and then reposition directly to Madison. That struck me as a little insane since we were scheduled to fly MSN-LGA on Thursday morning, and surely that wasn't happening! The crew scheduler said that WidgetCo had declined to cancel the flight just yet. Ok, then. Wednesday morning we flew to Charlotte, and then treated our brand new flight attendant to her first jumpseat experience on our Part 91 repo up to Madison. That night I kept expecting to hear from crew scheduling, but they never called.

So we dutifully showed up Thursday morning in Madison. Our plane was there. We had a gate agent, and his gate display said we were flying to New York. He had our release and paperwork pulled up. Indeed, the NOTAMs showed the airport open for business at 8am - but there were five pages of lights and signs and navaids out of service, it took me twenty minutes to work through the list! Basically, they were down to one runway (13/31), no ILSes, no approach lights, no VASIs or PAPIs or any other sort of crutch for us button-pushing airline-pilot types. So we loaded up our surprisingly light load and took off for New York, me still wondering if we'd really land there.

Well, we did. It was an easy arrival and a nicely challenging Expressway visual starting directly over the field, almost like an overhead entry to the downwind at a GA airport. Eyeballing our distance versus altitude the whole way through the circle, rolling out on a one-mile final at 300 feet, no sweat for a Cub pilot! Who needs a VASI? My first impression on arrival was how busy the airport was already, considering it had just opened for arrivals barely two hours prior. My second impression was how surprisingly clean it was. I was expecting a bit more of a post-apocalyptic vibe.

In fact, most of the busyness was WidgetCo traffic. Both of their terminals were already chock-a-block, before USAir had landed even a single airplane. Our rampers charged out enthusiastically as we approached the gate. The gate agent gave our flight attendant a big hug when she opened the door; we were her first flight. Being a few minutes early, I went inside the terminal and found things humming right along. The list of cancelled flights on the information screens was surprisingly short. Gate agents told me about the absolutely massive cleanup effort on Tuesday and Wednesday. They said Widget was housing and feeding pretty much all their employees in a nearby hotel, since the lack of public transit made it nearly impossible to commute between their homes and the airport. I asked about how the ground equipment survived the saltwater. Turns out somebody smart had convoyed all the ground equipment over to a nearby parking garage before the storm. Good on em.

Our exit wasn't quite as seamless as our entrance; we had to wait holding short of Runway 31 for a good 25 minutes before there was an opening in the arrivals big enough to let us take off. That's okay, we got to watch a bunch of Expressway Visuals and grade the efforts. I also noticed a few small signs of the flood around the taxiway - a sign bent backwards, a patch of seaweed on the tarmac. Overall, though, LaGuardia got back on its feet very quickly, a hearty credit to an oft-maligned airport. And WidgetCo did a magnificent job of getting their operation humming at nearly full strength only days after being inundated by a hurricane. I'm occasionally critical of airline mismanagement on this blog, but not this time. The situation was clearly very well managed. It was also resolved though a lot of hard work under difficult conditions by the fine folks Widget has working for them in New York. Bravo.