Pilot Prejudice

Kansas City

I’m not normally prejudice. As a rule, I treat everybody as equal as possible and though in reality it never happens, I try to have identical expectations from everyone I meet (even gingers). However, there is one arena where I recently found I do have a little prejudice and I don’t think I’m alone. It happened when boarding a flight from Phoenix to St. Louis. When I passed by the cockpit (or the flight deck, as they instructed us to call it at Boeing) I glanced at the pilot and I actually flinched when I saw how young he was. He must have been in his late twenties, but looked to be about 19. He had peach fuzz on his chin and I’m sure he must have just graduated college where at his frat he was probably named after some large saltwater fish. I feel like I’m a pretty good flyer. I’ve flown in and out of some small airports on desolate peaks in developing countries with airlines of dubious record, but this dude made me feel nervous before we even took off. He had this high-pitched voice that would’ve been more appropriate offering a bong, than reading flight coordinates.

So yes, I’m ageist when it comes to my airplane pilots. I want my pilot to be if not old, at least properly grizzled. He should have a limp or even a false leg preferably from being shot down over Hanoi. Nothing’s going to faze this guy. I want him to have a gravelly voice with slow soothing grunts. If, for example, we lose the right wing, I want him to be able to come on over the speaker and say in that voice, “Ahhhh, well folks… it looks like we might have lost our starboard flipper there… but ahhh, you shouldn’t worry too much. We were only planning on… ahhhh turning left from here on out anyway. We should be on the ground in about oohhhh… 27 minutes or so. So folks just sit back and enjoy the extended view from the right.”

And just so you don’t think I’m sexist as well, I’m perfectly fine with women pilots, I just happen to be talking about male pilots at the moment. Strangely enough, now that I’m thinking about it, I want my female pilots to be younger, prim, no-nonsense women with a healthy belief in God. I don’t know why.

What I learned today: If you lose your cel phone charger, ask a hotel. They more than likely will have a huge basket of them and they’ll give you one

Big Country

On a plane between Oklahoma City and Minneapolis

Well… I’ll tell you one thing: this job is giving me an opportunity to visit cities I would never choose to go to on my own. For example, I’ve just left Oklahoma City. Yessirree, I sure did, I tell you what. I must say that, for the most part, I’ve been fairly impressed with the hotels BER uses. In Tulsa we stayed in a beautiful Crown Plaza and I’m on my way to Minneapolis where I think we’re staying in a Marriot. However, last night we stayed in a Clarion… in Oklahoma City. The carpets were stained with what I could only assume to be chaw juice and the lobby/buffet area smelled like cheese zombie. The one thing I will say is that it seems the smaller and the crappier hotel, the better service we get in our conference room. Last week, I stayed at a lovely Hilton on Long Island but the hotel people couldn’t give two shits about our little seminar because there were six other 'conferences' going on, while today the people over at the “convention center” (and yes it was an effort to refrain from using my fingers to parenthesize every time I used this overly-ambitious term today) fell all over themselves helping us out.


One thing that I’ve forgotten about the South or maybe it's a new thing, is one of the ways they have of saying thank you. Rather than saying thank you or I appreciate it, like us ho-hum northerners, some our Southern friends say “I appreciate you.” Now this isn’t after giving them relationship advice or talking them off a ledge, but after everyday activities like making a bank transaction or buying a sandwich. I first heard this in Columbia, South Carolina but then recently heard it again today in Oklahoma City. However, I must admit, it meant more the first time because the SC woman’s accent oozed so much that the word 'appreciate', actually dripped into the word 'you', giving 'you' like 5 syllables, which somehow gave it even more significance. Y-oo-ooo-uuu. Meanwhile, the OK guy’s “I appreciate ya” felt like somebody hurling dry toast at my forehead. Still, it’s nice to know that he appreciated not only my sandwich buying capabilities, but ME.


What I learned today: There are an inordinate number of male teachers named Todd.

Hallow-hilarity

Tulsa, OK

I am so glad that Halloween fell on a Saturday this year and I was able to be home, rather than stuck in

Martha as Beyonce, myself and Adam the beet

some Podunk town like I am right now (my apologies to anybody reading from Oklahoma… oh yeah, I DON’T KNOW ANYBODY HERE). Anyway, it was good fun. I had been hearing about the Sisheimer’s Halloween parties ever since I got hooked up with the Mastatal crowd. I was doubly excited because I came up with (in my mind anyway) a good costume idea. I found a grey onesy on the internet, sewed (yes that’s right, I sewed) on paper claws, ears and a tail put together from the ripped-off limbs of a stuffed monkey. Finally, I made a crown out of yellow poster board to finish off my Max from Where The Wild Things Are costume. It would’ve been a lot cooler had I thought of it before the movie came out, but it was still fun. Nate, my roommate, went as Dr. Simon Funke from the show Arrested Development and with the horseshoe hair, mustache and never-nude cut-offs looked just like him. Awesome. Sparky and Dickie (his friend from Sacremento) both painted cardboard boxes and glued on computer parts and went as robots.

The party itself was mainly held in the Sisheimer’s back yard and basement. For the first time I can remember, it was a clear nice evening for Halloween. When we got to the party, I was shocked to find somebody had actually made a very convincing Where The Wild Things Are monster outfit, which made for some fun pictures.

My favorite costume of the night was worn by my friend Adam. He came over to Casi Casa before the party to hang out with us and he was dressed in a lame drunk Airplane Pilot outfit, which basically meant his Pilot’s shirt was half-untucked, but whatever, I’ve definitely had some lazy-ass Halloween costumes. But later at the party it got worse, because we were chatting to a couple of girls and he was going on and on about how he wasn’t just a pilot, but some Russian pilot who got drunk before flying and the girls had no idea what he was talking about and I kept nudging him and saying under my breath, “Dude, shut-up. Nobody wants to hear the story about the Russian pilot.” But he just kept going until the girls excused themselves and I said, “Couldn’t you at least be the Northwest pilots who fell asleep? You know, a little more current.” He just smiled. Little did I know, the pilot costume was only a decoy. Later, all of a sudden, out comes this dude wearing a giant papier-mâché beet that covered his entire body from the waist up to about 3 feet over his head with no arm holes and whatdoyouknow it was Adam It was hilarious because it was so random. Who goes to a costume party in a lame decoy costume?

It was a great night, but not so fun waking up to go to the airport the next morning. By the way, you can view photos from the night at my facebook page.

What I learned today: They’ve done amazing things in the whiteout business since I was in school… AMAZING THINGS!

New Joisey!

Newark, New Jersey

Snatches of an actual conversation going on next to me at the bar in the Holiday Inn in Newark:

"You know when you first winked at me, I thought you were a hooker (there was no doubt she was a hooker). I mean why would a girl like you be interested in an old guy like me?"

"I just like older men."

"So you're not a hooker?"

"No baby, of course not." (She was barely able to keep a straight face)

"Good, good... So what do you do?"

"Oh, I run my own little business."

"Ah, an entrepreneur! That's great! What kind of business?"

"Umm...let's talk about you."


Hilarious. It's so rare that a place actually lives up to the expectation you have in your head.

That night I went out to see some friends, Alan and Nicole at a great bar named Tierney's in Montclair New Jersey. I wish I would've had more time, but it was kind of fun flashing into town for a couple of hours.

My Birthday!

Providence, RI

Ah, Fall in New England. Though the rain is coming down today, the past couple of days have been spectacular. As we’ve been driving through New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the days have been crisp and cool. The trees are draped with leaves the color of perfectly toasted marshmallows.

Yesterday was my birthday and Drew (another PM who happened to be in Providence as well) and I went out for dinner. We had a few beers at Rick’s Roadhouse in town and were served the biggest plate of nachos I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a few plates of nachos.
My presenter this week is named Al Guenther. Al is 73 years old (with the energy of a 13 year old) and is a nutty physics teacher with intense OCD. His presentations are full of crazy science experiments that he shows to high school science teachers so they can use them in their class rooms. He has about eight tables of displays and exhibits that all fit very exactly into to two huge red suitcases. To help facilitate my packing of his exhibits, he has color-coded diagrams of how each wire, magnet or tube fits into its particular film canister, shoe box or tackle box. Then he has other color-coded diagrams that explain how each container fits into his suitcases. Basically, think of the way I organize my stuff and then picture the opposite.

It‘s a little trying figuring out how to pack up his stuff, but he makes up for it by being hilarious. He’s got some great stories, which is lucky since we’ve had a couple of three hour drives. He told me about how he had to flee Iran on Black Friday because he was working for the Shah. They had to sit on the runway for a couple of hours not knowing if they would be allowed to take off. Can you imagine what it must have felt like when they finally got in air?

What I learned today: Gloria (the woman who lives in my GPS) has absolutely no confidence in my sense of direction.

My Posse's on Broadway

Manchester, NH

After a long week rather than flying home, I decided to fly to Denver and then take a redeye to New York,
Meg Vita and I

so when I finally reached Manhattan I had only a couple of hours of airplane sleep. Luckily, I was revived by visiting one of my favorite people in the world (and many of yours) Meg Vita. She took a day and a half out of her very busy schedule at Columbia to hang out with me in the NYC. It was one of those weekends that though we only had thirty hours or so, we did so much it seemed like much longer. The highlights included a Brooklyn brewery tour (the beer more than the tour), whipping through Williamsburg in some dude’s BMW, big gulp margaritas, midnight meringue, a long hike through Central Park, coming out of the Park at the exact right street, portabella cheese burgers and the best chocolate peanut butter shake I’ve ever had.

The weekend was capped off when I picked up my rental car for my week in New England. In the morning, when we left Meg’s apartment, she decided to bring along a scarf, just in case my rental car was a convertible. “It won’t be a convertible, Meg,” I said confidently, “but bring it along if you want.” Well whatdoyaknow, when I walked up to the National Rent-a-car desk in mid-town Manhattan, the woman’s brow furrowed when she said, “All I have left is a Volvo C70. It’s not very big… but it’s a convertible.” Yessir, we cruised down Broadway in Manhattan in a beautiful black convertible, Meg looking like a starlet wearing my Ray-Ban (like) sunglasses and her scarf wrapped around her head, the ends fluttering in the breeze. When I got up here to New Hampshire, I had to exchange it for an SUV because it wasn’t big enough to carry my presenter’s suitcases, but it was totally worth it. Awesome couple of days!

What I learned today: When a street person asks you for money, it’s much harder to say no when you’re driving a flash convertible

The Joy of Children

Denver, CO

So I want to talk for a moment about babies on planes. When it comes to hyperactivity or other “imbalances” parents are quick on the draw to feed their kids Ritalin, Addrall and the such, so can’t we as a society decided that a very mild sedative be okay for children on flights? I can’t help but think with all of our fancy technology we could come up with a cherry flavored liquid form of valium that’s safe for kids under the age of seven.

These were my (more humane) thoughts as I squirmed and tried to get comfortable while the child in front of me screamed and cried the entire flight from Atlanta to Denver. I must say, as bad as it was for me, it must have been ten times worse for the Mom, so I felt for her (even though she obviously didn’t prescribe to my kiddie valium strategy). Ahh… it’s just so easy to comment on the way to raise a child when you have none of your own.

What I learned today: The quantity of helpful hotel people divided by the number
of screaming babies on the airplane equals the amount of joy I have in my heart.