Bumpy Ride

I got to sit the couch on Thursday from 4PM until 10PM - we had a couple of pre-boards...one was a false alarm (the crew was there before their plane arrived), and the other pre-board was legit. I helped everyone get on and settled before the CPT and FO arrived with the flight attendant that I was standing in for.

Right after I returned to the crewroom, crew scheduling called and told me that I had been assigned a 3-day trip starting the next day. I was kind of bummed. Not that I had gotten the trip, but that the trip didn't start until the next day! That meant a drive back home that night, and then back to the airport 12 hours later! I would have stayed with my friends who live near the airport, but I had forgotten a luggage strap at home and couldn't imagine doing a 3-day trip without it!

My crew is really very nice and easy-going. We flew from Denver to Milwaukee first, and then had a 2-hour sit in Milwaukee. We decided to go to the crewroom, but it was small, hot, dark and kind of depressing. The other pilots there were not at all happy, the FAs seemed to be depressed, and my Verizon wireless internet reception was really poor. So off I went to sit in the concourse to get away from the negativity and closer to the wireless reception!

Next up, we flew to MCO (Orlando), stayed there for 43 minutes, and then headed back to MKE. It was interesting how needy some of the passengers were. I don't know if it's because they don't fly a lot, or if they were just genuinely clueless...the return flight was very bumpy, and we had poor little kids getting sick. There was one up front, and one in the back. The poor kid in the back covered his clothes with vomit. It was gross, but the Mom and I managed to get him cleaned up (she did almost all of the work, I just provided her with bags, paper towels and napkins). When we landed in MKE, the hotel was not expecting us, and we ended up sitting on the hotel van for almost an hour before we headed to the hotel - they were waiting for another crew to come in from Las Vegas. We finally got to the hotel at 12:30AM.

I woke up the following morning at around 9AM, and then fell back asleep. The hotel front desk woke me up at 10:45AM, telling me that our van time changed...no big deal - I just had to be in the lobby 15 minutes earlier than I had expected.

Our flight today was to Tampa and back. We had a guy in row 1 who vomited the entire way. Right before we landed, his wife requested medical assistance at the gate. But later I heard from the CPT that the guy refused to go to the hospital. Go figure! He had lots of medical problems, and his wife was concerned that the vomiting was linked to one of his other problems. I guess we'll never know, huh? Coming back from Tampa went alot smoother. We were not full, the passengers were laid back and relaxed, and everything went smoothly.

When I got back to the hotel, I found out that one of my classmates, Sherri, was also going to be at the hotel! I got there at around 10PM, and she arrived just a little bit later. We met up at the bar with her crew - and I found that her CPT was my FAVORITE CPT - Gary! He's the ONLY CPT that I hug. Anyway, we had a nice time hanging out, telling stories, and just relaxing this evening. Sherri's crew and my crew are all heading to the airport on the same van tomorrow. They're doing the Orlando turn and we're going to Las Vegas and then back to Denver.

It was a really nice night hanging out with friends at the Milwaukee hotel...