Quite a whirlwind week last week. More flying in one week than I've done in quite a while.I had my birthday on Friday, July 27th and early the next morning we flew down to Phoenix for a couple of days to decompress. We flew down on Ted who were tolerable, Channel 9 makes the time go by.
We flew back on Monday night, again on Ted. Phoenix was in the middle of monsoon season and we got to dodge some wicked thunderstorms on the way out. Lots of red blotches on the weather radar. We picked our way through the build ups and actually had a smooth ride home.
The very next morning, I had the privilege and honor of flying to LAX for the day on a beautiful Virgin America airplane. Won't go into details, suffice to say it was absolutely fantastic and there were only about 15 of us on the plane.
We were just down there for the day but it was a great experience and wonderful to finally ride one of our beautiful birds.
Then on Friday I had a meeting in Las Vegas and couldn't spare much more than a few hours, so I flew to Vegas...for a few hours. Six hours to be precise. I flew down again on Ted, who again were tolerable. The flight was very full (Friday to Vegas, of course) and they were asking for volunteers to go on a later flight. No chance, bucko. There were also people were already in a "festive spirit"....at 10am. Nice. When I got on the plane I asked the flight attendant if Channel 9 was going to be available and he stuck is head inside the flight deck and relayed my question to the Captain who replied with "Awww sure, why the hell not......but I'll be speaking in tongues!" The flight was smooth and quick, only and hour and ten minutes. Of course it was bumpy from about 20,000 down to the ground at LAS but...it always is. I say that, but actually this was my first flight into LAS - I've driven there before, never flown.
A short visit later (I didn't even get to leave the airport) I was back at the gate, getting back on Ted to SFO. This flight was a little more interesting. We boarded, I sat in my usual seat, 1A and we taxi'd and took off. I'm listening to Channel 9 the whole time and at about 20,000 feet I hear our Captain radio LA Center asking if we could slow down because we needed to lower the landing gear.....WTF? Almost after we got permission, the Captain came on the PA and announced that our brakes were still really hot and we were going to slow down and drop the gear for a few minutes so it can cool down. Makes sense, I suppose. The controller didn't even question it so I'm guessing this happens quite often out of LAS. Anyway, we dropped the gear which at that speed was pretty loud, and the plane lurched a bit as the drag was introduced. 5 minutes later, up came the gear and on we went. Nice easy flight back to SFO via the MOD VOR.
So yes, lots of flying which I'm loving. And even more to come...stay tuned.