Work!

[Kyle]The time finally came for me to go back to work. I had spent the week desperately going from chemist to chemist looking for strychnine tablets. Unfortunately, every one of them said they’ve been fresh out since last year’s financial collapse.

It didn’t actually turn out to be that bad, especially since I hardly did anything. Since it’s been so long since I have flown, in order to qualify to command an airplane with passengers, I had to do a simulator ride. I hadn’t been gone long enough, however, to require recurrent training before the sim ride, so it was right back into the fire for me. Like the sim ride that captains do twice a year, this is basically a repeat of the big exam we do to get qualified in the airplane initially. It starts with 1 ½ hours of questioning about airplane systems, company procedures and FAA regulations. Since I’ve done so many of these, a lot of this stuff has become second nature to me so that part of it was not a real problem. The scary part for me was that there had been a lot of revisions to our procedures while I was gone. I stopped in Newark to pick them up on the way to Houston. I only had a few hours to study everything and then get the revisions inserted into the manuals. They check our manual status before the ride and an out of date manual is cause for suspension without pay.

Our biggest revisions are to the various navigational charts we keep in binders totaling about 9 inches thick. These come out every two weeks and generally take between 40 minutes and an hour and a half to complete each one. I had missed seven while I was gone. Luckily for me, while I was gone, the union negotiated a deal with the company that said anybody coming back from leave that was more than six revisions out would be entitled to all new books of charts at no charge. I talked to the woman in charge of manuals at the training center. She said I could get all new content. All I had to do was come in a little early for the ride. I got there with an hour and a half to spare but I couldn’t get a hold of her and get the charts until 20 minutes to go. They were current until the last two revisions – a medium one and a BIG one. I was in the lunchroom in a fury of flying paper when the Check Airman arrived. Crap! This did not make me look responsible. Once I explained the situation, he seemed pretty understanding. He couldn’t cut me any slack on having the manuals up to date but he did take what seemed to me like an unusually long time to go get a cup of pre exam coffee, so I just made it.

The actual ride in the simulator was kind of fun, at least as far as a jeopardy event with your career on the line can be. It was good to get back into the old seat and get my hands dirty with the usual string of emergency procedures. Everything came back to me pretty quickly. There were only a couple of times early on when I actually had to think about where a particular switch was instead of having my hand instinctively fall on it.

After that, it was back to the hotel for a few hours sleep and then the long trip back to Scotland. In spite of the stress of the exam, it really made for a pretty easy work ‘week’ and a nice transition back in.

[Maryanne]While Kyle was off at work, I had a host of tasks to try and complete on the boat... Well I managed about a 1/4 of them, and saved the rest for Kyle's return (oops).

I was planning to be waiting at the airport for Kyle's arrival, but the plane landed early - still we had a wonderful drive back to Oban via some fantastic Scottish scenery - and as a nice welcome back the sun even shone for Kyle.


Scenes from the roadside on Kyle's return home