Other than my four day trip last month without a functional iphone, I have not had a normal overnight. The most sleep I've received on any given work night has been between 4-5 hours. Sound dangerous? Sound like this should not be allowed by the FAA's rest requirements? Indeed. There's a loophole in the regulations that treat my time in the hotel not as "rest," but as duty period. Therefore, I am paid to be in a hotel bed for four hours, but this comes at a cost. Needless to say, my sleep patterns are a bit screwy, since I sleep for a few hours, fly a plane, nap for a couple hours if I can, and do it all over again that evening.
These flights are called "standups," and I bid for them last month because people say I'm a standup guy. ;) I have done them many times before, but have found that I never did more than two in a row. This month, my schedule was all standups, all the time. This is not desirable unless you have the sleep routine of a raccoon or some other nocturnal animal. At one point in the month, I had five of them on my schedule in a row. zzZZZZZzzzzz While I am technically given the proper amount of "rest" between duty periods, it comes in the middle of the day when it is sometimes hard to force myself to sleep even when tired.
And this begins to take a toll. I had to make the first fatigued call of my career -- indicating that I did not feel fit for duty based entirely on my demanding schedule. Then I caught a cold. My usually robust immune system had been reduced to the strength of 1 ply toilet paper. While these standups often yielded some nice sunrises or moonsets as you see from these pictures, it also added a lot of stress. My first deicing of the season, flow delays into LAX, occupied gates, diversions due to bad weather. These are things that you don't want to happen when your rest time is limited. And eventually, my body surrendered.
My cold started off fairly tame. Just a little bit of congestion. But as all colds do, it went full force when I had to sit on a 4.5 hour flight across the country...in the jumpseat of a 737. I was relieved when the two pilots chose to take a lavatory break because it gave me an opportunity to stock up on more kleenex. I was dripping like crazy. To my knowledge I have not given my cold to anyone else, including Nicole.
Once in Florida, the warmer air helped it a little bit. I was experiencing very unseasonably cold temperatures in LA along with rain and storms. I could see my own breath one morning while doing the walk-around. This type of thing is unheard of. And despite having a cold, I traipsed into DisneyWorld. By now, I was on the mend.
At Epcot, we stopped briefly in Japan to look at all the HelloKitty merchandise and reflect on how the Japanese food at Epcot bares zero resemblance to the food Nicole and I ate in Japan. We did the usual boat ride around Mexico and noted that the Donald has been made into a piñata -- no doubt a result of recent political tensions.
After Epcot, we walked over to Hollywood Studios. After all, my parents insist on getting me the annual pass every year, so I need to get my money's worth. We watched a few Star Wars events - including one with everyone's favorites walking around in front of various screen projections. Later on there was a laser/fireworks show that was essentially a montage/homage to all the films that was projected onto the Chinese theater.
We did a few rides as well. We went on Toy Story Mania twice, with my score being reported as the "High Score of the Hour." It was 7:01. A minute later, I no longer had the high score, but better to have it for a minute than not at all. We also went on Star Tours. It was a very Star Wars kind of day. Perhaps Disney is going all in on Star Wars and they need to bring it back a bit. As I was finally recovering from my cold, I looked at my schedule with dread -- five days in a row to such hot spots as Reno and Eugene. Then came the prospect of being in the jumpseat again. Miraculously, I got a seat in back for some much needed rest before wondering when I'd have a normal night's rest again.
