In Patagonia - Part One

Well, I've been procrastinating writing this post for a while since we returned from South America, because I knew it was going to be huge. We took some 1200 photos over the two weeks we were in Chile and Argentina, and there were actually quite a few things I never bothered to get the camera out for. Just selecting the photos I wanted to use in this post took a couple of hours, and I could only whittle it down to 150 or so. I'm forced to break it up into several parts but each one will still be large. You've been warned.

Having completed our family yuletide festivities on the 23rd and 24th, Dawn and I flew down to Atlanta on Christmas Day, and that night boarded a B767-400 to Santiago. I hadn't realized it would be a -400, so it was a nice surprise since I consider that the most comfortable plane in Widget's fleet, given the lie-flat suites in Business Elite. I have no idea how bad it is in coach, because I've never been there! I was able to get 5 or 6 good hours of sleep and woke as we descended over northern Chile in the morning light, the Pacific to our right and the Andes on our left.


We arrived at 8am on 26 December; Chile is three hours ahead of CST. After paying our $140/person gringo fee and clearing customs, we caught a Turbus coach into the city center, stopping first at the Turbus terminal to purchase tickets for our trip south the next day. We checked into our hostel, "La Casa Roja," an impressive crumbling mansion in the middle of tumbledown Barrio Brasil, and refreshed by a shower and change of clothes, set off to see the sights in Santiago. These included the Palacio de la Moneda, site of the 1973 CIA-backed coup that killed President Salvador Allende and ushered in the ironfisted rule of Augusto Pinochet; Iglesia de San Francisco, Santiago's oldest church and one of the few colonial buildings to survive Chile's powerful earthquakes; the bustling pedestrian paseos of the centro historico; the palm-lined Plaza de Armas with its Catedral Metropolitana providing a stark contrast to the modern skyscrapers surrounding it; and the covered 19th century Mercado Central, with its few produce vendors and fishmongers still eking it out among the cluster of tourist cafes. After lunch at Bar Nacional we crossed the river to Barrio Bellavista and took a cog railway up Cerro San Cristobal, a thousand-foot crest that dominates the city's skyline. From here I realized why I had such an persistent sense of deja vu: Santiago looks a lot like Los Angeles. It has roughly the same geography, similar climate and vegetation, same brown smog, and the same endless white sprawl. Later on I would find many other striking similarities between Chile and the American west coast - at least until we got to Southern Patagonia, where I made comparisons to Alaska and Norway that were completely inadequate in capturing the uniqueness of that wild and windswept land.


We hiked down the east side of Cerro San Cristobal, into a leafy residential neighborhood that looked oddly like some of the posher parts of Dallas. Hot and exhausted, we hopped back to Barrio Brasil on the Metro and retired to the hostel pool to soak our tired feet and sip pisco colas until sundown. Later we ventured back out to Barrio Bellas Artes for a late night stroll and dinner, but didn't stay late enough to sample the nightlife; we had an early bus to catch the next morning.


The bus trip from Santiago to Pucón took nearly twelve hours, most of that spent in Chile's central valley. Again the comparison to California proved apt, for much of it looked strikingly like California's central valley and boasted the same assortment of orchards, vineyards, and dusty farm towns. As we went further south, I started seeing dashes of northern California and southern Oregon; then we turned east, towards a symmetrical volcano with a blue lake at its base that would've looked perfectly in place in the Cascades. This is the very-active Volcán Villarica, Pucón's raison d'être despite its occasional threats of total destruction. Its snowcapped peak loomed large over Pucón as we walked from the bus terminal to our hostel in the golden evening light. It was impossible not to look.


The British couple who run the Tree House Hostel are an extremely friendly and welcoming pair, and we were soon relaxing in the leafy backyard with beers in hand, chatting with a gaggle of travelers who'd just come back from climbing the volcano. This is the most popular activity in Pucón, but there's a great deal more on offer, including whitewater rafting, canyoning, paragliding, skydiving, ziplining, and horseback riding. I'd heard Pucón described as the Interlaken of South America, which actually predisposed me to dislike it; however, I found it considerably more relaxed and enjoyable than its Swiss counterpart despite offering a similar range of high-testosterone activities.


We began Wednesday with a walk to the black sand Playa Grande, on the east end of the large freshwater Lago Villarica. We rented a 12 foot dinghy for $10/hour once I figured out what the spanish word for sailboat is (velero), and spent two hours sailing to the north side of the lake and back. It was a gorgeous day with warm sunshine and just enough wind to make for a good, spirited sail. The breeze was not strong enough, however, to keep away the large biting horseflies (tabanos) for which southern Chile is known. Our course bobbed and weaved a bit as I swatted them away. Curiously, the flies left us once we returned to shore, so we lingered on the beach and soaked in the sun for a bit before lunch. We belatedly put on sunscreen; I hadn't thought to do it before, with the water and wind hiding the strength of the summer sun. The damage was done, my pale winter skin was burnt. I would later discover that the further south you get, sunburn becomes an inevitable fact of life regardless of how much sunscreen you put on. Patagonians get a constant barrage of UV rays in the summer thanks to the somewhat shrunken but still present hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.


After lunch we were picked up by a minivan and taken to one of several canopy tours that surround Pucón. This activity was selected as a compromise with my long-suffering bride; left to my own devices, I might've dragged her up a volcano or down a raging river. In fact, I ended up really enjoying the canopy tour. There were twenty or twenty-five sturdy ziplines winding through the broadleaf forest and crisscrossing a river canyon, each connected by a network of wooden ladders, platforms, and catwalks high in the treetops. It was a lot of fun, like playing in the treeforts of my childhood. It took nearly 90 minutes to complete the course, which was just about right. Dawn had approached the ziplines with considerable trepidation but did quite well and was even rather enjoying herself by the end.


After returning to the hostel we spent an hour or two relaxing in their backyard hammocks, reading and chatting with passersby, when an Aussie told me I absolutely could not miss the night trip to Termas los Pozones. We decided a visit to the hot springs would be a nice way to cap off a busy day, so we hurriedly grabbed some dinner before the 8pm shuttle. The route to the springs was incredibly gorgeous, winding as it did above deep and verdant river valleys with vertiginous views of rugged mountains and volcanoes turned pink in the alpenglow. The sun was finally setting when we arrived at Los Pozones an hour later. The termas consist of six natural rock-lined pools of varying temperatures set alongside a rushing river. It was relaxing to lay back in the steaming waters, close my eyes, and listen to the babble of languages from the other bathers. As the sky darkened, a multitude of stars appeared over the remote valley, many of them unfamiliar. I spotted Orion far north of his usual hunting grounds, Venus in the west, and Jupiter nearly overhead. At midnight we finally left the pools, dried off, and headed up the hill to the waiting minivan for a sleepy ride home. We had another early bus, so it'd be a short night. We'd had a very nice taste of Pucón, though. I wouldn't have minded spending another few days, which seems to be a constant theme of our trips. There's always so much to see and do, and such limited time when you have a job back in the real world to hold down.


Six A.M. came quite early, and we were soon blearily trudging to the bus station with our heavy packs. I'd liked to have viewed the scenery on our drive to Puerto Varas, but instead slept through much of it. We arrived shortly after noon and found a picturesque small town on a crystalline lake reflecting two snowcapped volcanoes (the Fuji-like Volcán Orsono and the older, collapsed Volcán Calbuco). Despite the superficial resemblance to Pucón, Puerto Varas has a rather different vibe. It has a longer history, older buildings, a statelier pace, and seems to attract an older and more local crowd. Like much of Southern Chile and Northern Patagonia, Puerto Varas was settled in the mid-19th century by German immigrants. Their influence lingers on in the architecture, cuisine, excellent beers, and a fair number of blond-haired, blue-eyed locals speaking rapid Spanish.


We stayed at Casa Margouya, a unique Chilean-French guesthouse near the lakefront. Here, as in many places throughout this trip, the inadequacy of my high-school Spanish frustrated me. It had been fine in Spain last year, but in retrospect that's probably because most Spaniards usually switched to English before my Spanish got embarrassingly bad. We've traveled to Europe so much the last few years that I've become rather used to everyone knowing English, and rather complacent in my pre-trip language studies. I heard very little English in South America except on the Navimag ferry. Few locals speak more than a few words of it, even in the tourist hotspots. Here's the thing: there's little reason for them to learn it. A large portion of the tourism is by affluent urban Chileans and other South Americans. There are surprisingly few estadounidense around, considering South America is virtually in our backyard. All the foreign backpackers doing the six-month tour of the continent speak Spanish fluently by the time they get down to Chile. Even most of the Dutchmen, Germans and Swiss just popping over for a few weeks seem to speak better Spanish than I do.

Now mind you, the language barrier didn't cause any real practical problems. We were always able to find our way around and ask questions and make purchases and do activities using a combination of my broken Spanish and the locals' limited English and the usual international words and pantomimes and notepad doodles. I think we would've been fine even if I spoke no Spanish at all. I just felt bad being that guy, the typical monoglot American butchering the locals' language and then woefully resorting to "Lo siento, solamente hablo un poco espanol...y lo hablo terrible! ¿Habla usted algún inglés?" The staff at Casa Margouya were really nice and helpful and spoke a decent bit of English and did their best to not look baffled at my Spanish, but I was intensely conscious of the fact that all the other guests, foreigners included, were speaking to them in reasonably good Spanish. It was much the same elsewhere throughout Chile and Argentina. This didn't ruin the trip for me; to the contrary, I loved South America and want to go back and explore much more of the continent. It did, however, convince me that I need to get serious about relearning Spanish - to get at least to the point of competency I was at in college, and preferably to fluency.

After checking into Casa Margouya we walked along the lakeshore to Cerro Philippi, a forested headland criss-crossed by walking paths; it afforded some nice views of the lake, volcanoes, and town. We walked back into town via a circular route on dirt roads flanked by old houses, many rather Germanic, and many seemingly abandoned. The place had a definite aura of bygone glory to it. We crossed the town center, popped into Dane's Cafe for an afternoon empanada del horno and tasty Stocker Pale Ale, and then visited the Sacred Heart Church. The German settlers patterned it on a similar church in the Black Forest, but sheathed it in the local style with corrugated tin!


We walked down the bay to the Playa Grande, which was covered with sunbathers enjoying the warm afternoon on Lago Llanquihue. The eastern sky was actually covered with a haze that I initially thought was volcanic ash from the continuously erupting Volcán Puyehue but turned out to be smoke from some large forest fires near its base. I waded in the surprisingly warm lake and took a nap on the dark sand (whoops, no sunscreen again). The sun was getting low in the sky by the time we walked back to the centro and went shopping for provisions for the four-day ferry ride starting the next day. When we emerged with shopping bags in hand, we detoured to the jetty to watch Orsono and Calbuco fade into velvet as the sun set behind us. The rest of the night was pretty low-key, spent reading and chatting and playing cards and mixing pisco sours at Margouya. The next day we were sailing on the Navimag from Puerto Montt, 20 minutes south of Puerto Varas. I'd really enjoyed Chile thus far, and was excited to venture further south into Patagonia.

War Stories

I spend a lot of time at FL350. A lot of time. NewCo's average stage length is longer than most regional airlines', particularly those that fly turboprops and 35-50 seat jets. For the most part that's a good thing. It means less work, less stress, less unpaid time on the ground. It results in more efficient trips and more days off work. That said, three hours of cruise time can feel very long indeed if you don't have anything to make the time pass by quicker. My company, like most, prohibits reading non-company material. After the NW188 fiasco, laptops and small electronics are verboten as well. With a few noteworthy exceptions, there's not a great deal of sightseeing to be had from six miles above the earth's surface. Reading the AOM (Aircraft Operations Manual) or FOM (Flight Operations Manual) is always an option...but the FAA frowns upon falling asleep in flight! That leaves one sole source of in-flight entertainment: the guy or gal sitting next to you.

The vast majority of Captains and First Officers I've flown with throughout my career were fantastic folks to fly with. I can only think of a few - less than one hand's worth - who I hope to never fly another trip with. There were also some perfectly nice people who weren't very talkative or otherwise stuck to themselves, and that's OK. A lot of the Captains at Horizon were a generation older than me, so we ended up talking about their grandchildren or retirement plans. That was OK too. Most of my FOs at NewCo, however, are around my age; I often find we have a great deal in common to talk about. I've made some great lifelong friends over the course of a 4-day trip.

There's a certain art to inflight conversation. You need to pace yourself, make it last. Your conversations drift from topic to topic, never lingering on any one so long it goes stale. You inevitably talk shop but try not to make it the focus. You gossip a little bit while trying not to sound like a gossip. You gripe a bit while trying not to sound like a bitter prick. You steer clear of controversial subjects until you know your partner well. You try to make sure you're not dominating the conversation. You make mental notes along the way so you don't bore your FO with the same old stories next time you fly together. You try to keep from getting so engrossed you miss radio calls. You keep an eye on the clock, and if you do it right you'll wrap up the conversation neatly right about the time you start preparing for descent.

When I meet an FO for the first time, typical preflight conversation centers around who we flew for last, where we live, how the commute went, how many days we had off. You're busy so you keep it pretty light. After the rush of takeoff and the dance of the initial climb, you tend to push your chair back a bit climbing through 18,000 feet, and you might ask your partner if they're married, for how long, what their spouse does, and whether they have kids. Leveling off in cruise, you might ask who they flew with last, compare notes on your flight attendants for the trip, and trade your most recent airline rumors. Once we've settled in a bit, I'll often ask my FO where they learned to fly. As often as not at NewCo, it's UND. When that's the case we'll reminisce a while, I'll recount how cold it was working the flight line at GFK, we'll figure out who we both knew, I'll badmouth the flying team kids a bit, and they'll tell a hilarious story about drinking with Kent Lovelace at the Down UNDer. If my FO didn't go to UND, I mention almost apologetically that I did, and proceed to gripe about how overpriced and overprotective the program is and how miserable Grand Forks was.

To steer the conversation away from flying for a bit I'll bring up skiing or travel or motorcycles and from there we talk about hobbies, which is usually good for a half hour or so unless my FO has no life outside of work (or more often, no money thanks to atrocious first-year payrates). Most of the time my FOs and I have at least one pasttime in common, and when we don't they usually have some other hobby I find interesting. I've flown with woodworkers, homebrewers, mountain climbers, and one ambitious girl who's run marathons in all 50 states and several countries besides. One FO, now a Captain, is building a Long-EZ in his garage. There are a few other FOs who are still active in general aviation - one of whom ended up doing my tailwheel endorsement in his 1946 Piper Cub, which I still occasionally fly.

The richest vein of cockpit conversation, however, are the war stories. Nearly everyone I fly with had a great deal of experience prior to joining NewCo. In almost all cases there was a previous airline or airlines, and most flight instructed prior to that. Some spent long nights flying decrepit freighters, as I did. Others flew skydivers or towed banners or did ferry work. The common thread running through all this prior experience is that it was generally more fun, more interesting, more challenging, and occasionally more frightening than flying the JungleBus for NewCo. I have rather few war stories from my time at NewCo but I have a ton of them from my time as a flight instructor and freight dog. It's the same for most people I fly with.

I've told most of my war stories from ADP, AEX, Ameriflight, and Horizon here over the years so I won't repeat myself. I will say that most war stories fall in the broad categories of rookie mistakes you made early in your career, students who tried to kill you, airplanes breaking in dramatic fashion, fantastically bad weather (ice and thunderstorms, particularly), and shady employers pressuring you to do really stupid stuff. It's my experience that war stories tend to get refined with each telling and possibly even exaggerated a bit, until you're not quite sure if you're remembering the event itself or the way that you've told it over the years.

A war story might flow naturally out of the conversation, or be sparked by something that happens in flight, or be triggered by a similar story from your partner. Lately I've been doing a lot of flying out west, including regular forays to Southern California. Few of my FOs are familiar with this area of the country so I point out landmarks, which lend themselves to the telling of war stories. There's Big Bear City, where I took an old Warrior on a summer day and had to fly the length of the lake in ground effect to escape the high terrain. There's Mount Baldy, where Daniel Katz mysteriously disappeared with Archer Five Three Whiskey and escaped detection for years despite an intense search until the wreckage was finally spotted in 2008. There's Owens Dry Lake, where I was once helplessly sucked from 6500' to 10500' in under a minute, power-off, in a Piper Lance in the clutch of unusually low wave activity.

Not all war stories took place in flight. More than a few concern particularly epic layovers - sometimes something especially noteworthy that the crew did together, but more often outrageous drunken antics on one or more crewmembers' parts. Nearly everyone has stories about flight attendants that turned out to by psychotic or merely intent on nabbing themselves a pilot regardless of his interest or lack thereof. Most female pilots have stories about seriously awkward advances from creepy old Captains. I don't know if NewCo is more sane/boring than other regionals or if our pilots just self-censor stories that occured here, but the majority of layover war stories seem to come from airlines of the teller's past.

Telling war stories reminds us of where we've been and how far we've come. Even when the circumstances of the story are astonishing or frightening or sad, there's a certain nostalgia to them. They remind us of a time when flying was stimulating, adventurous, and even dangerous - anything but routine. Mind you, the fond memories are almost entirely retrospective. Very few broke, tired young pilots have much good to say about their current situation. They're not looking for a bevy of amusing war stories, they're searching for the quickest way up and out to a better job. The 2002 version of myself would look rather dimly at 2012 Sam complaining about the boredom of Captaining a glass-cockpit jet from coast to coast. It would've sounded like a distant, lovely dream at the time. It's only in retrospect, now that time has dulled the less pleasant aspects in my memory, that I realize what a unique, often interesting life I led back then. And so it is across the industry, and indeed across humankind.

Southward

Merry Christmas to all! Today Dawn and I are flying to Atlanta and then onwards to Santiago, Chile, for the start of a two-week vacation in South America. We'll be stopping in Santiago, Púcon, and Puerto Varas before boarding the Navimag ferry for a four-day journey through the Patagonian fjords to Puerto Natales. From there we will spend a few days trekking in Torres del Paine National Park, cross the border to Argentina, tour the Perito Moreño glacier, and stay in El Calafate. Finally we'll fly up to Buenos Aires for one day before returning to the States on January 8, flight loads and Volcán Puyehue permitting.

I have a post queued up and ready to go on our return, and then I'll get a post about the trip up as soon as I can. In the meantime, everyone have a safe and happy holidays.

Silent Night

Today is December 22, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Here in Minneapolis it is short indeed, at 8 hours and 46 minutes. The sun rises at nearly 8AM, sets at 4:30PM, and never reaches higher than 21.6º above the horizon. This is the price we pay for gloriously long summer days with lingering sunsets and dusky twilights that cling to the western horizon 'till nearly midnight. This time of year, those languid summer evenings are what the 9-to-5ers think about as they drive to and from work in pitch black darkness. I personally feel that the constant gloom of a Minnesota winter is far more oppressive than the extreme cold. Today, though, I'll feel better knowing that the worst is behind us and it will get a little lighter every single day.

Ironically, given my attitude towards winter's long nights, I love night flying. Roughly 20% of my total flight time, 1500 hours out of nearly 8000, is night time. Of course I occasionally flew at night during training and flight instructing, but it wasn't until my time as a freight dog that I regularly flew after dark. For a while I flew cancelled checks from Las Vegas to Burbank every weeknight at midnight, and it was on that run that I learned to love the homey glow of a darkened cockpit, the march of the stars overhead, the glowing clusters of civilization slipping past through the inky void of the Mojave. Alas, that was also the run on which I awoke from a micro-sleep on short final to Burbank with no recollection of the previous thirty minutes.

Today, the flow of the seasons is reflected in the pages of my logbook. The night time column, rarely touched in summers, is darkened by entries nearly every day in wintertime. Some pages, it constitutes nearly half of my flight time. I don't mind at all. Night flying in airliners may lack some of the romance of being alone over the Mojave, but it also lacks the unseen mountains, the suddenly rough engines, the unexpected icing, and most of the bonenumbing fatigue. Truth told, the modern airliner is as easy to fly at night as at high noon - and in some respects, easier. I have radar, GPS, and TAWS to keep me out of trouble. I have an FO to talk with and to keep me awake. I have flight attendants to bring me coffee. There is less traffic, quiet reigns on the radio, and ATC is exceptionally accommodating.

Most of all I love the feeling of a smooth flight on a clear, dark eve. The magic of flight, once so self-evident in my youth but lost to familiarity years ago, returns once more. The smallness of my little pressurized world of aluminum and fiberglass becomes evident before the fathomless expanse of the universe laid bare above us. The amber cockpit, dimmed to the softest glow, becomes a cocoon, a time capsule, a magic carpet floating across the slumbering earth. The cares of my day and the pressures and frustrations of my job slip away. I become peaceful, content, and grateful in the silence. Night is a wonderful time to be aloft.

I think many, if not most, pilots who've been flying long feel the way I do. I can see it on the countenance of my First Officers. Our nocturnal conversations are unusually relaxed, genial, and thoughtful. Acquaintances become friends and friends become confidants in the dimness of their shared cockpit.

For all my fondness of night flying, I haven't flown after dark in a small plane since 2004 - until recently, that is. The Cessna 170 I fly is nicely equipped for night VFR, and not being able to fly at night greatly limits your flying during a Minnesota winter. Weekend before last, I took the 170 up for three nighttime trips around the pattern. At first it was downright eerie. There was none of the comfortable familiarity of the JungleBus. I felt naked - understandably so, in a single-engine piston at a deserted, poorly lit airport. After three full-stop landings, though, the old familiarity started coming back. Dawn climbed in and we took off for a flight around the Twin Cities, looking at Christmas lights and circling downtown Minneapolis. It was a beautiful, and fun, and relaxing way to spend an evening, sharing the magic of a night flight with my lovely wife.

I enjoyed it so much that I did it again this weekend, this time with my little brother Steve and his girlfriend Torrie. She'd never flown in a small plane so I had her sit up front, and she was enraptured from the start. As we flew over their house and around downtown and past Lake Calhoun, Torrie reached back to take Steve's hand and I could see it etched on their faces: the thing I love about night flying, the thing I first loved about flying itself. On the way back out to Buffalo, I had Torrie fly the plane. Later, as we put the old bird back in her hangar, Steve and Torrie talked excitedly about what it would take to get their pilots licenses and buy an airplane.

Maybe they really got bit hard, or maybe it's just talk fueled by the excitement of the moment. It doesn't matter. It felt really good to give them that. It's said that the best gift you can give is that which you value dearly. That's exactly what I gave them. It felt wonderful...it felt, I dare say, like Christmas.

Wanting

If you've been in aviation very long, you've likely heard some variation of the following story:

A student pilot was practicing touch and goes in a Piper Cub at the local grass strip when he saw a Bonanza zoom overhead. "Wow," he thought, "I wish I could fly a fast, sexy airplane like that!"

The Bonanza pilot was plodding along at 150 knots when he got passed by a Baron. "Boy, that's the ticket," he said. "I need to get a twin!"

The Baron pilot was slogging through the bumps when he saw a Cheyenne pass overhead. "I wish I had a turboprop," he groused. "I could get up and out of this weather!"

The Cheyenne pilot massaged his temples; it'd been a long night on the medivac run. Just then he saw a Citation go by. "Oh, to fly a jet!" he sighed. "Props are for boats!"

The Citation pilot looked at his groundspeed readout impatiently. There was a hellacious headwind, and if he didn't get the boss to his meeting on time there would be hell to pay. He looked up at a B747 crossing overhead. "Wouldn't that be the life!" he mused. "Big, fast airplane. Exotic destinations. Hot young flight attendants!"

The 747 Captain looked down at the earth, trying to stay awake for the tenth hour of a twelve hour crossing from Tokyo. He picked at the lukewarm crew meal that'd been grudgingly served by the very senior, very old, and very disgruntled A-line. Just then he spied a little yellow speck moving across the tree tops far, far below. A Piper Cub! The Captain turned to his FO with a smile and said, "Oh man, what I wouldn't give to be out flying a Cub right now!"

It's an aviation story, but the "grass is greener" syndrome is in no way confined to the pilot population. It is a human phenomenon. We undervalue what we have and overvalue what we do not. Especially in this age of plenty, we've become accustomed to wanting increasingly superfluous things, and getting them immediately - consequences be damned. Modern economies are essentially built on an unending cycle of desire and consumption. You could argue that the present economic malaise is due to individuals, businesses, and governments all (re)discovering that their wants far outstrip their resources.

Aviation, like so much of the country, feels like it is at a standstill right now, waiting for something to happen. There are few retirements. Nobody is growing; many companies are shrinking. American Airlines just declared bankruptcy, and few believe that airline consolidation is complete. Everyone's sitting tight, biding their time, wishing for some good news, any good news. Waiting, and wanting.

I've been a Captain at NewCo for nearly four years now. I've had the flight time to go elsewhere for some time, if anyone worth going to was hiring. I still have flow rights to WidgetCo, our mainline partner, and I've been on the brink of going there for over a year. They just announced they are not planning to hire in 2012; it's largely speculated they will hold off until 3Q 2013. I've become rather restless. I often peruse the aviation message boards and job sites in search of something better. When Tianjin Airlines recently upped their base salary for JungleBus Captains in China to $188,000/year, it was hard not to give Parc Aviation a call. Even doing something different at NewCo would help. I'd love to be a check airman; unfortunately, my company has resisted hiring check airmen in my seniority block for fear of immediately losing us to WidgetCo.

All this career angst, this wanting something different, completely ignores how good I have it right now. I'm living in base, with a 25 minute drive to work. I'm bidding at 14% seniority in my category and getting my pick of trips. I've averaging 17 days off work per month and making a perfectly livable wage. Nobody should be feeling sorry for me, least of all myself. Restlessness is truly an affliction of the comfortable. My career woes feel pretty pathetic when I talk to friends still at Horizon, or 20-year Comair Captains facing the extinction of their airline. They also feel petty next to the one, unobtainable thing that Dawn and I have really wanted for the last five years.

Longtime readers may recall me writing about Dawn's miscarriage in early 2007. That pregnancy was a surprise, but one we accepted and were ultimately happy about until we lost the baby. The realization that we were financially ill-prepared for parenthood led directly to me leaving Horizon and taking the job at NewCo. Since then we've been continuously trying for a baby. We've had trouble getting pregnant but did succeed twice, only to suffer two more miscarriages - most recently this last weekend. It was very early, less than a month in, but it hurt like hell. It felt like a door slamming shut. The first two we could say, "Well, this sort of thing happens," but now it seems increasingly certain Dawn will not be able to carry to term. It's what she wants more than anything.

My initial reaction was anger. I was angrier than I've been in a long time - at chance, the universe, God. Simply being unable to conceive would be hard enough but there'd always be that glimmer of hope. This seemed downright cruel, like Lucy and the football. The initial excitement and hope made it so much worse when it ended abruptly in a by-now-familiar torrent of physical and emotional pain. The fact that it was my wife who was going through hell and there was absolutely nothing I could say or do to make it better absolutely enraged me. No convenient target presented itself, however.

In the midst of this I had three days of simulator training scheduled - my twelve month event, the checkride I must pass to keep my job. I considered cancelling. Nobody would have blamed me given the circumstances, and the company would've readily rescheduled. Ultimately I decided to just get it over with, and flew what was possibly the best checkride of my life. It was flawless. I've always done my best flying under stress. It was also pretty therapeutic, a chance to clear my head for a few hours and do something I enjoy, and then think things over on the drive home.

Here's the conclusion I've come to after thinking it over a while: this is one hard, painful part of what has otherwise been a very good life. I've built a good career doing something I love during the worst ten years in that industry's history. I'm married to my best friend, a woman who understands me better than anyone alive and shares many of my interests. We have a nice house, good friends, and loving family. We have our health. We've been able to explore many beautiful corners of the world. We're doing well financially. There are so many people who are far worse off, especially these last few years. I have absolutely no right to be angry at chance, the universe, God, or myself because our many blessings happen to not include children, or because we have to work through the hardship of miscarriage.

Dawn and I have talked this over and concluded that while we'd love kids and will try at least once more, we can't make it the biggest thing in our lives simply because it's what we don't have. We'll live our lives as though we won't be able to have children, and if it turns out we can, fine. On that note, Dawn is starting work on her Masters degree next month. The idea is have her done around the time that WidgetCo starts hiring so her pay increase will offset my pay cut and prevent us from dipping into our savings. As a bit of a last hurrah before she gets swamped with studies, we're flying to South America later this month for 2.5 weeks in Chile & Argentina, including doing some trekking in Patagonia. It's not exactly what I wanted for Christmas, but I'm thankful for the chance to do it nonetheless.

In Bruges

I'll admit it: I went to Belgium to see Bruges, and I went to Bruges because of the movie. I saw "In Bruges" when it came out in 2008 and, like everyone else, immediately put Bruges on my "to do" list. I never actually got there for a few years despite being in the neighborhood multiple times because...well, you have to go through Belgium to get there. I was led to believe the best part of Belgium is the beer, and I do enjoy that - from afar. Everything else was evidently copped from the Dutch or French, but more bland than either...or so I heard among the European backpacker set. Well, now I have been to Bruges and Belgium, and I am ready to pronounce judgement: yes, Bruges really is that fantastic, and its charms were not exaggerated by the movie. Yes, Belgium is ugly and bland...if by Belgium, you mean Brussels.

Dawn was gone to New York City for the weekend with four of her cousins, leaving me to my own devices for a three day weekend. After getting off work on Friday, I hopped on an Airbus 330 to Amsterdam - in first class, of course, it's the only way to fly! I woke up in Europe feeling reasonably fresh and boarded an Intercity train southward. I passed Den Haag and Rotterdam, changed trains in Antwerp, and again in the medieval Flemish city of Ghent. I was "In Bruges" by 2pm.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and all of the next morning walking around Bruges. I took a boat ride through the canals and climbed the belfry. I ate frites while people-watching in Grote Markt and a canal-side wafel at the Sunday morning flea market. Saturday night, I sampled some local brews in a warm, dim tavern with 400 Belgian beers on offer, met a couple of guys from near Edinburgh, and ended the night singing karaoke with the Scots in a Celtic bar with some Danish girls while some loudmouth South Carolinian drunkenly proclaimed that he was more Scottish than the lads wearing kilts (yes, really; "to get girls to talk to us"; seemed to work!). Ah, globalism.

There were quite a few other tourists, especially for late October, but they mostly mass around Grote Markt and the rest of the town largely retains its quiet charm. All the "te koop" signs in empty windows provided a clue why. Only 20,000 people actually live in the town center, a fraction of the medieval population. I inquired about one average-looking canal house for sale, and was told the asking price was €3,000,000. It had been vacant for three years.


Sunday afternoon, I took the one-hour train ride to Brussels. I wasn't horribly impressed. It's like someone took Amsterdam, Paris, and Frankfurt, put them together and shook hard, and threw in a little Stalinist architecture for good measure. The end result is that you have 16th century Flemish row houses next to elegant 19th century Parisian buildings next to ugly concrete apartment blocks next to gleaming modern skyscrapers next to a massive parking garage. The very center around the town square has a few well-preserved medieval blocks, but they are clogged with tourist restaurants and kitschy gift shops. There are some pretty spots, to be sure. There are a few tranquil squares worth lingering in. I took a tram east of the city, past the European Parliament, and found gorgeous landscaped parks with quiet lakes and swans and stately villas surrounded by rolling forestland. On my return I grabbed a cheap, scrumptious doner kebap from a ubiquitous falafal stand and parked myself in a great little bar that had good, cheap Belgian beers - and the Vikings-Packers game on TV, of all things!


Mostly, though, Brussels made me wonder if it is the source of Belgium's ho-hum reputation, and perhaps the rest of the country is quite worthy of exploration. Both Antwerp and Ghent looked inviting when I passed through. I'd quite like to visit the Ardennes. I stayed up playing cards with a group of students on my return to the hostel Sunday night, and they told me Liège is a fun town. That would have to wait for other weekends, though. Monday morning, I headed back across the Atlantic. It was a great little trip, but work awaited.