So, where have YOU been?

This is a cool link:

Travelblog

You can mark what countries you've visited and it generates code for your webpage or blog. Here's where I've been:

With all the traveling I do, I amazed there is so little red. Maybe it's because I've been to like a gazillion little nations, like Singapore or Haiti, etc. In the next couple years I'd love to travel to Antarctica, S. America. Africa, the Nordic countries, and Russia. that ought to fill in the red a bit. How about you?

Tomorrow morning I fly to Beijing, China. I'm on deadline and have to spend most of my time writing, but will try to get out and about if the weather is nice. Maybe the Forbidden City this time. Will report back on the trip. Flying in China is always...interesting (to say the least).

Tales from the Chamber of Horrors

The FAA requires commercial airline pilots to have a minimum of 3 landings every 90 days. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but when you take into account there are 4 of us fliers on most trips (I'm speaking international here, domestic is a whole other story and getting landings is NEVER a problem), and usually only 2 legs, over and back, someone's going to get shortchanged--i.e. someone gets to land and somone gets to drool (oh, and talk to the passengers on the PA). Add vacation into the mix or the luck of the draw when bidding for certain days off, and 90 days can go by real fast, and here you are, getting ready to expire. This happened to me last week.

The landings desk as we call it is infamously run by the most brutal and heartless of the United schedulers. She has to be, because think about all the whining she hears when calling to assign a pilot a landings session in the simulator on their day off. So, Jennifer, aka Dominitrix, calls me, as always, choosing the ONE day I can't be away from home (after all, these ARE days off, but whatever) and after giving me 48 hrs notice to get my butt to Denver, answered my: "But I have no one to watch my kids that day," with an ever-so-slightly bored, "So?"

So, I beg friends to watch the kids the night before and after school the next day, and at 6 am I am on a flight to Denver, in coach (ugh) after waking up at 4 am. I get to Denver, and the dread increases. I do not like being here. Denver is a fine city, but it is forever linked in my mind with...The Chamber of Horrors, aka the United Airlines Flight Training Center. It's the largest commercial aviation training facility in the world. All United pilots are trained there, and a bunch of other carriers, too, from China to Russia, and most notably Air Force One. It can be a crowded place--1/3 of United's flight attendants are trained in emergency procedures at the facility, too. The C of H operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has almost 800 full-time employees.

I am scheduled for the 4 hours simulator with an instructor and 3 other pilots, also running out of landing currency. But do you think we each jump in the seat, grab three hops, and go home? Nah, that's for sissies. I'm up first. I take off, come around for an instrument approach in low weather, and am told to go missed approach. So, I go around, I come around again, and the instructor fails an engine. I land low visibility with 3 engines running. I take off again, back to 4 engines, and just as I rotate to take off, the inquisitor, er, I mean instructor fails an engine. Again, I bring it around and land. Except this time it's clear. But JUST clear is for weenies. He throws in a 20 knot crosswind. I land, all engines are given back, and I come around one last time, in a normal landing. This is repeated for each of us. I finally get back to the airport and barely make a 5:30 flight home. Good news, I get first class. Bad news, they only served a cold meal. But good news--liquor! I get back home around 8 pm, pick up kids, and finally fall into bed around midnight. I think I slept. But it may have been a coma imitating sleep!

This is the image United presents to the public of the Flight Training Center:

And this archive photo of a simulator looks innocent enough:

But I feel the traveling public needs to know the truth. I was able to sneak out at great risk a photo of what it really looks like inside one of these simulators (warning: disturbing image):

Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to my Sydney trip this weekend. And, no, I won't get to land...

Even the Writer's Life Has Its Perks!

(whispering) I'm not supposed to be here tonight; I'm supposed to be writing. MY FAVORITE EARTHLING is due in April. My calm, freakishly efficient 13 year-old daughter reminded me that's still 5 weeks away. But 5 weeks never feels as short as when you've got a book to write!

Consequently, while in Sydney I spent much of the layover in this glorious city holed up writing in my hotel room. (whaaa)

But while I was there, I received an e-mail from the amazing Shari Fitzpatrick! My character Evie in MY FAVORITE EARTHLING, the book I'm writing now, decides to pursue her dream of making her talent for candymaking into a business, so I was hoping to interview Shari about how her making chocolate covered strawberries in gift baskets for clients in the real estate business blossomed in a national, multi-multi million dollar business. So on my way home from the airport, we met and I asked my questions. Now, it may not be a box of designer shoes like Mary Janice Davidson gets, but, hey, look what Shari brought me:


Omigosh, these are incredible. The best strawberries EVER. I'll leave you today with the link to her website where you can order. http://www.berries.com/