Seven AM finds the sun radiating the landscape, the heat intense and lacking passion, the mosquito's vanquish themselves scorned lovers in hopes of tomorrow's night time rendezvous with the moon. I'm a simple man, and I'm pouring simple charcoal in a very small weber grill which sits on my back deck. I've had a steak marinating in my "Merica Fuck Yeah Marinade" for nearly twelve hours:
Merica Fuck Yeah Marinade
1 cup Red Wine
1/3 cup Soy Sauce
1/2 cup Olive Oil
2 tablespoons of Lemon Juice (from a real lemon)
2 tablespoons of Worcestershire (Lea and Perins- don't get trashy on me)
2 tablespoons of Ground Mustard
2 tablespoons of Honey
1 teaspoon of Minced Garlic
1 teaspoon of Cumin (my favorite spice, because I am eleven years old)
1 teaspoon of Onion Powder
1 teaspoon of Ground Pepper
During fifteen years of online Journaling, this is the first time I've ever shared a recipe. I am not Gordon Ramsey, but I consider myself well versed in the chorus of kitchens and pantries. The steak had sat on the counter, allowing it to return to room temperature. I had K remove it from the fridge when she awoke at five AM. Some folks do not believe in allowing a steak reclamation time; feel free to disagree or agree and leave the why's and the why not's.
I pan seared each side of the steak over a high gas flame for about thirty seconds. This accomplishes two things: It seals in the juices, so long as the steak has not been punctured, and also makes it look pretty, like one receives at a restaurant, blackened in all the right places. By eight thirty AM, the charcoal had died down, and the steak was ready to land on the grill.
By nine am, after allowing the steak to rest an appropriate seven minutes, I was eating deliciousness. At Ten AM, I was in bed, a sleep mask blocking hell's gate. Cerebus, the Texas Sun, long since abandoned his concern with blinds and curtains, his red eyes peering through regardless.
I'm on a series of midnight shifts at the moment. I traded into them, opting to work a double (2pm-6am) on my day off, and then work three of my original six rotational midnights, and trade out of the remaining three. We're scheduled with a block of four days off after six days of midnights. This trade essentially bought me eight days off, starting on Sunday.
Southwestern Trailways Corporation allows us to trade shifts, without losing pay, as we're all "Salary PLUS." Salary PLUS means that we make a base salary, work eight hours a day for six days a week with three days off, however if the operation goes to shit and we need to work overtime, we get that on top of our salary. It is a really, really nice place to work. In April, I had traded out of an entire six day work week, working doubles/days off leading up to it here and there, and had twelve days off of work straight. In May, I had nineteen days off of work. Early June saw me come down with pneumonia and miss another six days; fortunately, I had never called in sick, so I was still paid. Here, at the end of June, I have eight days off.
I haven't even used my vacation yet.
Many of you have asked what I do and the answer is a lot, but if you ask our Customers it could be "not enough." (queue endless comments about horror stories on my personal journal)
Let's pretend two pilots, Dick and Jane, are in Indianapolis, getting ready to push flight 666 to sin city, Nevada, then they were going to change planes and take flight 17 to San Diego (Phillip Rivers number, for those playing along), and then round out the night with a late departure on flight 24 from San Diego to Seattle. They have a twelve hour overnight in Seattle, and need to take out an 8am flight to Chicago Midway the next morning, and continue on to Baltimore, where they are based, and end their four days out working.
With me so far? Well flight 666 has a hydrolic leak on the front brake and is going to take a three hour delay, but flight 17 and flight 24 are still running on time, as they were different airplanes. I'm the guy that shuffles the puzzle around and finds new pilots in San Diego. We don't have pilots just sitting around in San Diego, mind you. We have ten bases to work with: Oakland, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Baltimore, and Denver. Of those ten bases, we have very few reserve pilots, who, thanks to their lovely contract (SWAPA), have two hours from the point of contact to make it to the airport pilot lounge.
So now, I have to recrew flight 17 and flight 24 in a way that fits in the SWAPA contract, which is larger than the Bible, and filled with even more bullshit. They can only have such a long duty day, it can be extended if it is original scheduled flying, there must be warm wash clothes in the cockpit awaiting them, and blowjobs are required (just kidding, but you get the idea).
Flight 666 finally gets fixed within an hour, and I find some people that were supposed to take Flight 49 up to San Francisco. Due to Air Traffic Control and fog in the area, there is a FAA mandated Ground Delay Program, which are causing our pilots taking flight 49 to San Francisco to have a fourteen hour day. These pilots, we'll call them Montana and Young.
So Dick and Jane started later in the day and our fine on their duty time, but Joe Montana and Steve Young are illegal to go up to San Francisco and then continue on with that aircraft to Kansas City. In this scenario, which is RARE, I can easily have Joe and Steve take the ontime flight up to Seattle from San Diego. I still have two hours, so I can get reserve pilots (if we have any) from our Las Vegas base to take flight 17 to San Diego, and our original pilots, Dick and Jane, can then "deadhead" (which is not smoking pot in the back of the plane listening to jer bear) or ride as passengers, directly from Las Vegas to San Francisco to take Montana and Young's plane to Kansas City.
With me?
No? I get lost too, but the more you do it the easier it gets. We also have to balance this with the FAA's Federal Air Regulation 117, a law mandating what pilots are allowed to do and not do safely during the course of their day. Then we have to contact the pilots and tell them their schedule has changed; 49.59% of them are clueless to the larger scope across the nation. Steve and Joe are tired, and they know they're illegal to continue onto San Francisco, so they're expecting us to just get them a hotel room, instead of take an earlier flight to Seattle. Dick and Jane don't want to ride in the back of the plane to San Francisco from Sin City, because its uncomfortable and then they have to fly another two and a half hours later. The reserves don't want to leave home in Las Vegas, because they're getting paid to sit on their asses all day and do nothing.
The "human" element is by far the most frustrating aspect of my job. The fact that these Customers, and we're talking several hundred at this point, all need to get places they expected/planned on being, pay ALL of our Salaries (PLUS overtime), seem to slip the mind of the pilots. My job is to get people places, in this case pilots, who then get our Customers to where they intend on staying.
We also handle pilot sick calls, family emergencies where they can't fly, and the like. On an average day at Southwestern Trailways, the largest domestic carrier in the United States, we have about six hundred flights that at one point did not have any pilots, in some cases until about twenty minutes before the plane pushes back from the gate.
The example solution is easy, but in reality, fixing one problem can often switch twelve pilots around, break up travel partners, extend people into much longer days, have them wake up much earlier the next day, ruin dinner plans they had in Nashville, etc etc etc. I understand what they go through.
Last night was brutal. Chicago had major storms which caused the airport to shut down completely. It was late and many of our pilots were set to expire as it was for their duty days. Most of them were heading West, where the business day still had three more hours in aviation terms. There were six of us, running Southwest Airlines well into the morning, some flights finishing up in Portland, Oregon, as other pilots were starting their days in Baltimore.
So yeah, I came home and grilled a nice juicy steak first thing in the morning. I feel I earned it. In four hours, I'm off into the battle again.
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