It's a Wacky Business

Yesterday was just on of those days where you just have to chalk it up to... What ever! I must frost say that this is not a very photo centric blog post but I home you will find some humor in it eve though it's at my expense.

It started out at 5:30 in the morning when the alarm went off and I had to swap cars at the airport at 7:00. Then there was the two hour drive to meet a crew to do a check ride on the captain. The plan was to go to Pelston MI and get a car and drive to Grand Rapids. I would be home a day early, sweet!

I snapped a couple of shots from the airplane, here is Detroit Metro Airport and one of lake St. Clare.

Here is another from the airplane of one of the many proving grounds in the Detroit area.

Crew did a good job and we are in Pelston when I get a briefing update with the car information. Cool, the plan is coming together. So I go to the Avis counter to get the car and I get a message from our training scheduler asking me if I am on the road yet because she might have something for me tomorrow (read today). Now i could have just replied that I was on the road and that probably would have been the end of it. Thats just not right though. Besides, the Avis lady did not have the reservation. I giver her the number that I had from the brief and she finds it and a goes on to say that it was rejected. They are a franchise and not corporate Avis so they will not rent one ways to Grand Rapids. Nice! I checked with Hertz and they had a car so I called the company to advise and they said to give it ten minutes and I should get a brief update. So I walked around the vast Pelston terminal with my camera over my shoulder. I had already changed cloths for the drive home and was planning on making it a photo experience stopping along the way. So that's where I came up with the picture here of the Canadair RJ getting ready to leave the ramp.

Forty minutes later I finally get the update and it is still for Avis. Whiteout belaboring the point, it took a total of an hour and a half to Finally get a Hertz car that I could have set up in ten minutes. Isn't big business wonderful. The bad thing though was that I was no longer going home but driving to Pontiac MI. So the day ended up being one our in the airplane and six and a half hours of driving. I could have stopped k(and probably should have) on the way to Pontiac for some photos but it was now starting to get later in the day and I was no longer in any mood to enjoy much of anything.

My tomorrow (meaning today) was now going to be a check ride to Teterboro NJ and the airline home to GRR. So rather than getting home a day early, it is going to be a 9:45 pm arrival.

So when am I writing this post? Actually during a Checkride of some distance, I do have a chance to sit down so here you see my iPad out on the table and the headset that I use to monitor what the crew is saying between themselves and air traffic control.

We are currently at 35,000 feet and the WiFi is not on this aircraft so I am using BlogPress which is a very nice tool to work on posts while not online with Blogger. We are starting our descent into Teterboro so I have to go observe the crew I their descent and approach phase.

Just like any other passenger I have to be strapped in for takeoff and landing so here are a couple of shots of the New York area on our approach.

Closer shot of the NYC Skyline

Here is a shot of the Meadowlands

We are on short final for Teterboro here.

Take care... Doug