Paris with Mom!

I got to go to Paris with my Mom right before her birthday, it was an incredible gift to be able to share with her! She was so cute taking everything in! I love my Mom! Yes we got Business Class on Delta both directions, it was amazing!

"I wonder if you know? How they live in Tokyo"

This trip with Sarah started as a trip to Costa Rica, then Belize, then Paris....all the flights prevented us from getting to these places. So at the very last minute, as both of us scoured our phones to find the next flight out of Seattle to ANYWHERE, Tokyo happened to be leaving 15 minutes later. The two of us ran across the terminal and jumped on the Narita, Japan flight! As we sat in our first class seats we suddenly realized that we had no idea how to even get out of the airport we were headed to, let alone where to stay or anything else! With the help of some other crew members we got directions to a hostel that might work when we got there, but from there we were winging it (pun totally intended!)

 

We were both very excited to be on an A330 that had "pod" seats that laid all the way flat into a bed, Sarah's first time in Business Class. We watched movies, ate great food, and freaked out the entire 10 hour flight.

 

We landed in Narita in the early evening, got on the train, then proceeded to get completely lost trying to find the hostel after leaving the train. Eventually we found someone that was spoke basically no English, but went out of her way to walk us to the hostel that we never could have found on our own. The hostel had filled up during our flight, so a very kind Australian kid walked us to another hostel about half a mile away. Luckily they had space and we got settled for the night.

 

We met some really awesome people at the hostel the first night as we all hung out in the common room together, plans were made for going out the next night after everyone was done with all their sight-seeing. The next night we accidentally stayed out all night with all the hostel-peeps, because apparently nothing in Japan closes at night and we didn't know that!

 

This trip was an absolute blast, it was flying by the seat of our pants and being exhausted by the time our whirlwind trip was over. We can't wait to go explore more of the world together, Sarah is an amazing travel buddy. We were able to work together when flights went south or when a weird dude got a little scary during our tourist time. I'm loving this job that gives me these opportunities!



 

 Japanese option for dinner on the flight

 I literally still have no idea what I was eating....

 Harajuku district

Waiting for the train after our accidental all-nighter

 The Mountain Dew tastes SOOOOOO amazing over there and there were vending machines randomly along the street everywhere we went

 Sarah and I at the traditional dinner we went to with everyone from the hostel

Hostel night out!

PDX Shootout

I'm going to be lazy and just repost the article that Skywest created about our event. It was a blast! I love my airline family here in PDX! They didn't list it, but I took third in the shooting competition and got a $25 gift card to Cabela's!

 

 

EMB Captain Tracy Leland, PDX and CRJ First Officer Dustin Taylor, SFO recently organized the first annual Taylor-Made Farms BBQ & Shootout. A good number of SkyWest employees turned out for the event including, pilots, flight attendants and ramp agents from a variety of bases. The event was held on Dustin’s spacious farm in Lebanon, Ore.

That day, there were four ranges safely set up at 15, 30, 150 and 200 yards for folks to bring their firearms and ammo for practice; there was even an area for skeet shooting. This was a great opportunity for participants to try out different firearms that included .22, 9mm, .40, .45 ACP, 44mag, 357 mag, Rancher mini 14, AK-47, AR-15, .300 Savage, 30-06 and the list goes on!
The afternoon ended with a friendly competition for accuracy with handguns, rifles and finally skeet. The grand-prize winner was EMB Captain Matt Richardson, PDX who received $100 of Taylor-Made Farms pasture-raised meat (check out www.taylor-madefarms.com). First runner-up was EMB First Officer Kevin Molskness, PDX who received a hand-made clock from PDX mechanic, Wally Colson. Several other prizes were also given awarded.

An additional challenge of was presented for the marksmen (and markswomen) as they were fine-tuning their techniques to avoid hitting Dustin’s precious livestock that was on the farm!

The bbq portion of the event included Dustin’s delicious bbq chicken (pasture-raised) as well as wood-fired pizza heated in a travel brick oven!
With fantastic weather, awesome food and great company, all who participated had an enjoyable time. Stay tuned for the Second Annual Taylor-Made Farm BBQ & Shootout – everyone’s invited!

 

Not a Barroom Brawl!

Wow I haven't posted in a long time! In my defense, I've been moving and flying....AND playing a lot! But my experience in the wee hours of this morning definitely warrant a post! Little bit of background, we have a 2-day trip that includes 18 hours in our hotel in Burbank, CA. It's a good paying trip and you get to spend a whole day in sunny So Cal, I love it! There have been, in the past, a few issues with this particular hotel. However, the hotel staff takes good care of us, knows most of us by name, and goes above and beyond to make sure we have some good comfortable rest here. That being said, this is NOT what happened last night.

We got to the hotel around 10:00 PM last night, my First Officer and I were both on the same floor. When we got off the elevator to head to our rooms, there were three African American women standing in the hallway having a difficult time getting their keys to work. This happens to be a common problem in this hotel, so my First Officer (who is an older gentleman and always will jump to help some damsels in distress) walked over to see if he could maybe get their keys to work. No luck, we bid the ladies goodnight and went into our rooms.

I've been working this trip a lot, so I usually can't fall asleep until about 1:00 AM after I get to my room, get fed, showered, and chilled out from flying. This was the norm for last night as well, and I drifted off into my peaceful sleep. At about 3:30 AM, I'm startled awake by the sound of, "I will rip your nappy-a** cheap weave out yo head!!!!" (I'm not being racist, I'm quoting) in the most high-pitched screaming voice. Then followed by the all three women screaming things at each other, doors slamming and a HUGE thud into MY door.... Alright, now I'm annoyed. I go look out my peephole, sure enough, the three women are having a full on brawl! Half in the hallway, half in their room. One woman, now has a fourth individual on speaker phone, that is also screaming. My first natural instinct was to throw my door open and try to stop this whole craziness, then my better judgement stepped in. I didn't feel like getting shanked, and they seemed that they could possibly be capable of that at this point.

I went and called the front desk, they informed me that they had already been informed and were sending security up. I went back to my peephole to scope this sitch out. The women had taken the fight back inside their own room, but the volume was still through the roof. Security banged on their door, the women cracked the door, with the deadbolt in place. The security guard didn't even get to say one word before, "We're good, sorry about the noise!" was snapped at him and the door was slammed back shut. Apparently, the security guard thought his job was done and just walked away. The volume went down slightly for a few minutes and then the it was back on like Donkey Kong! Now I'm really getting irritated, as I've been awake for 35 minutes with this craziness. I call the front desk again. This time, he promises that the women are being removed and apologizes profusely. I go back to watch again. This time the security guard and the manager show up and ask the women to leave, which I guess they had already decided was a good idea and had started packing up. 15 more minutes of yelling, cussing, ruffled feathers flying about, and then silence! Oh blessed silence!

It's pretty rare to have an experience like that, but way to ring in my one year anniversary with the airline! It's my crazy FA life! As of today, I've been in this for a year and I still enjoy it and love it as much as I did the day I stepped foot on my first online CRJ200 in Denver for my IOE (Inflight training). There's never a dull moment. And I've had the time of my life in Portland, I couldn't ask for better crews and more amazing people. The city is in incredible and I will never forget the incredible experiences I'm having. I couldn't be happier in this crazy journey!

Paris!

My job comes with terrible pay, long hours, WAY too much time away from home and family, etc etc etc....but there are some incredible perks! Say, ummm, First Class round trip to Paris costing me not a penny more than my normal daily expenses at home! Yes I believe sometimes it all feels worth it! We left Seattle on the 2nd, direct Delta to Paris, then back home on the 5th. It was INCREDIBLE! I loved Paris!

At first I was concerned about the rumors that people were rude there, but we found that people were only like that in the major downtown areas. I started thinking about it, I would be annoyed if I had to live in uniform in an airport being asked questions 24/7....similar to downtown Paris and the millions of tourists that pass through there yearly. We stayed in a hostel/hotel in a suburb of Paris and it was awesome! People were very kind and incredibly fun to be around! We spent minimal time doing the tourist-y type of attractions and then most of our time we just would start wandering the city streets and get lost in neighborhoods. This is officially my favorite way to see a new place, you don't feel like livestock being herded some place. Do it as the locals do! It was also endearing to little shop owners as I butched my little bit of French that I tried to use. They were so kind and would help me learn the words I couldn't find. I also learned French people have a general intolerance for small children, so word to the wise, not a great holiday place if you have kids under the age of about 14 years. Well since a picture is worth a thousand words, here come a few :)

Disclaimer: Can't for the life of me figure out why some of my captions are underlined...please just ignore, I'm a bit to jet-lagged to mess with formatting any longer today.

My First Class ticket on our way out of Seattle

Croque Madame: thin piece of french bread with ham and cheese and an egg. Could have eaten this for every meal!

In France, the cafes all close for a few hours in the afternoons, rendering you little to do for a few hours. I decided to introduce my travel-buddy to Kinder Eggs! I remember my cousins and aunts and uncles coming back from Germany and bringing these to us....come to find out they are equally amusing to two adults in the middle of the afternoon as they were to children haha
Carousel at the Eiffel Tower, I just thought it was beautiful
There is this bridge over the water near Notre Dame that you can buy a lock, you then write your lover and your own name on the lock, lock it on the bridge and throw the key away into the river. I've decided someday when I grow up, I'll meet a boy and we'll go do this

I have more pictures, but they will have to come in a later post as my travel-buddy has the camera they exist on. I will get them up eventually. Au revoir!

Ran Out of Excuses

So I haven't blogged in forever, but today I ran out of excuses not to blog...so here comes a bit of a catch up blog. Maybe I'll just bullet point the major events...yes that's a better idea, and less overwhelming.

• Put in a transfer for Minneapolis, struggled with the decision for weeks. Had a long sit in SFO with my awesome crew and ran into a whole bunch of other awesome crew that I work with in Portland. By the end of that day, I realized I wasn't ok with the probability of permanently saying good-bye to PDX. I pulled my transfer that same night and it felt like someone lifted a bunch of bricks off my shoulders!
• Since I have decided to stick Portland out for the foreseeable future, life has gotten quite a bit easier. My days of being on reserve and not being called have become much more agreeable. I have taken to exploring the city more again, working out with my roommate and making myself branch out and make new friends.
• I discovered Powell's Books....VERY dangerous store, I could easily spend my entire paycheck there. I have resisted the temptation and settle to sit in their cafe with my tea and book, surrounded by the beautiful smell of aged books!
• I sold The Mom-Car....very sad but good day. I haven't used my lovely Malibu in months, being in Portland I use the train and have no use for a car. My budget needed a bit of a reprieve. Richie's roommate purchased my steadfast companion from me this month. She did her job well, never broke down on me, sped me to the almost demise of my driver's license, and then on to a new clean life with a new career. Served me well, she will be missed!
• I entered the world of singledom again. Not really much to say there, other than I am really starting to wonder when men will have a shelf life longer than a banana with me. That being said I'm taking a major break and just enjoying life as it comes instead for awhile.
• I worked my butt off for four months, burned myself out, which led to the command decision that I needed a vacation. Grabbed one of my pilot-buddies and hauled off to Vegas for three days! Got some much needed sunshine (after months in Portland, I'd begun to wonder if it even existed anymore) and some play time away from all my communicative devices i.e. cellphone, facebook, email etc etc
• Later on in February I ended up with 5 days off (unheard of in Reserve World) so I headed down to Cotati (hour north of San Fran) to hang out with my awesome Cottrell friends! Love their kids and got some much needed girl time with Erika. And some MUCH needed time to work on my motorcycle and take that beautiful beast out for a quick spin. Had to leave it at a quick spin because I had a little TOO much fun on that spin, new sidewall was visible when I got back.
• I got to have two girl-dates on Valentine's day. First came when one of my besties got called on a trip from Los Angeles to fly up to Portland. She caught me in the airport, I was so happy to see her I almost cried! Haven't seen her in months! Then I jetted off to San Fran, where Erika picked me up from the airport, we decided to do some sushi in the city...totally didn't realize until her husband made fun of us that two ladies out together in San Francisco on Valentine's day looked really REALLY funny for the fact that we're both straight. Ended up being a good laugh and some amazing sushi!
• After my few days in Cotati, I crashed an overnight with a crew in Monterey (that means I knew crew members and could go stay with them in their hotel). We all split the cost of renting a car the next day and drove to Carmel the next day. It was BEAUTIFUL! Got to hang out on the beach for a little bit, hard to remember why I ever left the beach! My Monterey overnight turned into staying at a hotel in San Fran the next night. I picked up the last couple flights for the other flight attendant, but by the time our delayed flight got out of Monterey we had missed our connection back up to Portland. So they put us up in a hotel in San Fran and we got to hang out with another crew that was there, it was so fun! Great breakfast in the morning too!
• I have read all of my roommates textbooks and several novels in the last couple months while sitting on reserve. I actually am really loving the fact that I have all this time to read again!
• I'm still fighting the uphill battle to get out of debt and am really looking forward to that raise in June. I've learned how to live on oatmeal, so it will seem like I'm making tons of money by the time it comes around. Can't thank my parents enough for helping me out making ends meet while I made this crazy career change.
• I found a book that I LOVE, it's called How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. I totally recommend it to EVERYONE! Pretty easy read, was incredibly eye-opening for me and some of my past and current choices and the things that led to those decisions. I'm going to be re-reading it again shortly!

Ok ok, I think that pretty much covers most everything. I'm having a hard time missing my family up here in the Northwest, I'm seriously looking forward to Rachel, Buddy and Revin moving to Seattle this summer! A 30 minute flight from me so I can go squish my Baby Shark Nephew to death on a regular basis! I also added Richie to my United flight benefits as his Christmas present...maybe we can talk the whole family into migrating to the Northwest ;)

Libby's Ballroom

So since I'm on call in Portland, I couldn't make it to Idaho to watch Libby kick butt live, but I did get to watch it on a live stream! Technology rocks my face off! Anyway, today I had some time to go back and find her performances in the stream that was saved. I'll list them by hours:minutes so you can find the approximate time that her performances were at.

Latin 2:58

Smooth 4:47

Swing 7:12 (which she totally loses her skirt in this one, wardrobe malfunctions are part of every performer's life, she handled it fabulously! And I laughed so hard I choked!)

Caberet 7:46 (she has a key role as the beauty that climbs the stairs and falls to her death in the middle, AWESOME!!!)


I'm so proud of you Bug!!! The link is below...

http://eisn.ezstream.com/play/index.cfm?fuseaction=embstay&id=2A1CD81A45&dsplvl=brd