Now that I have a great trip experience to write about, I’ll definitely be posting a lot more in the next couple of days.  To sum it up here and now, I expired my last allowed paid vacation from my company this past weekend.  I decided to take a trip to Israel which happened to include a last minute 2-day trip to Cairo.  With that, I now have the remaining year to move all my trips around for larger breaks in between days of flying and maybe might be able to take another trip somewhere on the other side of the world.  Stay tuned for a nice post tonight on the first part of my 4 part journal entry.  Maybe it might just be 3 parts, but we’ll see… =)

Oh the joys of scheduling a 2 leg day with a four hour sit getting paid only per diem with no crew lounge.  Contemplating where to adventure to around the CVG airport, I find myself sitting her in the McDonalds in Concourse C with a brand new book that I just bought at the airport Borders Book Store.  I guess I shouldn’t complain about that though because I got 10% off for being an airport employee and the #1 at McDs was just as I imagined it would be. 

The books that I picked up by the way at by Atul Gawande entitled, “Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science” and his second book called “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.”

Today’s scheduled block pay (flight time) consists of 3 hours and 8 minutes.  Our total duty time though is 7 hours and 58 mins.  That means with our minimum duty rig of 2:1, I should get paid for almost 4 hours.  Oh joy… =)  Now with the weather slowly starting to roll into the Columbia, SC, our next destination and with more weather forecasted to arrive in ATL tomorrow, just makes sense that the last day of a 4 day, prior to me getting back to San Diego, should pose these anti-on-time hurdles.  It’s going to be nice though once I’m on vacation. 

I’m on the last four day trip prior to my 2-week vacation.  Plans are slowly solidifying, but as we all know, my standby pass is only good when I’m on the plane, seated, and the door is closed.  Till, then, we won’t know where I’m going to end up.  This is also the last vacation period that I have for 2008.  I’m going to have to bid around and move pairings around on my lines for the next few months in order to block together some good days off. 

Flying has been going well lately too.  I’m use to just working days in a row with 1 day off in between lately.  It wasn’t as rough as I thought it would be with all the low time blocks we have been getting.  (4-days of flying blocked to only 16 hours with one dead head)  The trips all look the same with 3 legs the first day followed by 2-2-3.  We have 2-hour sits in between our ATL round-trips which gives up ample time to grab some dinner too, but the days are that much longer.  You can’t complain much when other airlines are asking for voluntary leaves I guess.  I’m just glad to be getting credits of up to 80 hours or even more. 

I just bought a new backpack for my upcoming trip.  Tentatively, I’m heading to the Eastern Mediterranean Shores, but with the current coup in Lebanon, it’s getting me a little nervous.  I’m sure it’ll be okay, but we’ll see what ends up happening.  Back to the bag.  It’s a Kelty Redwing 3100 (3100 cubic inches of cargo / 50L) that was on sale at REI for $69.99.  I also had a $5.00 credit so that just made this bag that much more awesome / cheaper!!!  I didn’t want a metal frame because I’m all about carry-on luggage only and I think that the cargo space it advertises is more than enough for some summer traveling.  I’m really excited to put some miles on this bag.  I still have yet to get a locking mechanism for those stays at hostels.  Anyone have a good idea?  I just have a Master combo lock but haven’t the faintest idea on what to use to tie my bag up to the air-conditioner.  I’m not going to sew on an American Flag Patch or a Canadian one, but I was thinking about a California State Flag patch.  Maybe even something that has UCSD or San Diego.  Who knows. 

I promised to continue to update the blog on a daily if not every other day basis, but I’ve just got too much to say sometimes that I talk it out of myself and don’t write it down.  I’ll keep trying.

Today is the 3rd day out of a 4-day trip and is day 10 out of my 14 of 16 day work schedule.  Plans have gotten a little more solid in terms of when I plan to fly overseas to meet up one of my college friends in the Mediterranean coast.  I leave on a Saturday, arrive Sunday night and hang out for a couple of days.  We’re still not sure on what exactly we’re going to be doing once I get there, but I’m sure that more plans will come about closer to the dates.  (May 17 - 24th)

Flying this much isn’t that bad really, but being away from the comfort of home kind of stinks.  I haven’t been back to San Diego now for almost a month and am still dying to try out the new wetsuit that I bought a month prior to that. (O’Neil Mutant 4/3) Parents also moved back to San Diego so I’m really excited to get all setup again.  I probably won’t bring the PS3 back to San Diego since there are more chances of me playing it while in ATL but I’ll have a room close to the beach and everyone else around town.  Now, I just have to redo a lot of my permanent address stuff which is going to take a little figuring out.  Kind of stinks to keep on changing address especially with all the moves in the last 3 years. 

Just had some great Mexican food at Monterey Mexican Grill in Wichita, Kansas.  Usually can’t go wrong with Carnitas, and I wasn’t disappointed.