Travels, travels, travels....oh my!

I've had a few full months of working like crazy and fitting in as much play time in between! I made a trip to Amsterdam, San Diego, and covered most of the North American continent on a 4 day trip for work. Some how I still haven't run out of steam! I love the chaos that is my vagabond lifestyle! Somehow I've managed to keep an amazing man in tow since Thanksgiving as well. I've tried to keep facebook and instagram updated, just finally got to my blog tonight.

 

Went snowboarding with a high school volleyball teammate, had a blast!

Have made several trips to Seattle to see my little booger monster and run around and play! Love my little nephew and his amazing parents

Finally made it to a TrailBlazers basketball game with free tickets for a double date with the besties

 



 

Hiking in the Gorge, we're hoping to maybe summit St. Helen's this fall before the snow

 

Had a long overnight in Palm Springs, wandered around town and enjoyed my time away from the rain by soaking in the sun

 

St. Patrick's Day celebrations in downtown Portland

Josh, one of my very good pilot buddies, turned 40 and we had a surprise party with family and friends

 



More Auntie time with my Revin

 



 

This sweet Tonka truck has joined me on my adventures. He's a 1986, and has over 364,000 miles on him and I'm totally enamored with him!

 

 

My pilots and I in San Luis Obispo on an overnight. We went to the beach and on a 8 mile bike ride, amazing crew!

 

 

This was one of the highlights of my last few months! We took my roommate, Andrea, to Vegas to celebrate her 30th birthday and got VIP to see Marroon 5! It was absolutely incredible!

 

 

I was able to make a weekend trip to Amsterdam to meet up with a couple of my friends that were stationed in Germany.

 

 

Made it to San Diego for the weekend and got to see my lovely Kathleeni Lentini! She's as spunky and lively and beautiful as ever!

 

 

Since this man has recently become a large part of my life and my time away from work, introducing Phil. We've gone camping and to San Diego. I'm looking forward to our continued dating adventures. There are already many more trips in the works for our future :)

 

So impressed...

Those that know me very personally, know that I have long been a very strong gay advocate. Throughout the years of growing up LDS, I watched a lot of hurt, loneliness and destruction come from friends that came out to their families and friends. I watched them struggle as they tried to find a balance between having a testimony of the gospel and also feelings of attraction towards the same sex that couldn't be ignored, so they turned to the only way they felt they could deal with it. Lie. To family, friends, church leaders, etc. but most importantly to themselves. I realize how harshly the word "lie" comes across, I mean it to be blunt. Some didn't know how to decipher certain feelings until later in life, I recognize that as well. As I've grown, I've come to believe that lying to yourself is one of the most damaging things you can do to your own sanity.

With that being said, I am no longer a member of the LDS faith, for my own personal reasons. I have no issue, and in fact, highly support those around me that choose to be faithful members! Recently, a dear childhood friend of mine chose a particularly entertaining way to address the issue of being gay and also believing in gospel of the LDS church. This has since prompted some of our other friends and acquaintances to also have the courage to be honest with themselves and others. I have been so touched by their stories and faith in their chosen religion! I feel a strong sense of support and love towards them, I had to repost their stories!

I also hope this continues to raise the awareness that this subject clearly needs within the church. I hope that we can all continue to learn to love unconditionally and without judgement!

James Hales has been one of my friends since we were in the 7th grade. I remember turning to each other through some of our terrible teen years for support. I remember choreographing dances for our show choirs through the years together. I also remember us butting heads and wanting to kill each other through the innate stubbornness we both seem to have been born with. I love James very dearly, I would have been supportive of him had he said he was building a rocket to go to the moon! My own personal thoughts after watching his video were along the lines of, "It's about freaking time!" I was not surprised, and did not find it difficult to wrap my head around at all. His YouTube encompassed a variety of reactions, including that of my own brother-in-law. It also encompasses his love for the gospel and his choice to follow its teachings. He's been interviewed a few times already and has more interviews to come! I'm so proud of him and will continue to be one of his greatest admirers and supporters!

James Hales Blog: http://jimmyleehales.blogspot.com/
James YouTube Video:

Another blog I want to share from a childhood acquaintance, Blaine Hickman
Blaine Hickman Blog: http://somestufftoread17.blogspot.com/


Another great video about love and support on BYU campus:

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!