You may remember my discussion about being in the army and not understanding Great Circle geography. I did not understand that Anchorage Alaska is near the Great Circle Route from most places in the contiguous United States to just about anywhere in the Eastern Pacific Rim. (You need to put a string on 2 places on a globe and see where it goes. You can also see that if you know how to play around with Google Earth.) Anchorage is close enough to midway between all these points in the contiguous US and those in Asia, that it made a good point for UPS to establish a crew base for its airplanes that were doing most of the flying between them. That is why the 747-400 was based there, along with some of the MD-11 crews.
This meant that I would have to commute to work, for the first time since the few months I commuted from Orlando to Louisville, during my first year at UPS. Commuting is a pain in the ass, but I was not going to move to Anchorage for only2 years. I ended up getting in a crash pad with several other guys.
I was planning to drive my car up there. It would have been quite an adventure. I had it all planned out, with hotel reservations and all that. I had a period of time off, that gave me just enough time to do the drive. I was beginning to wonder if I could do the long days of driving back to back, that would have been necessary. My car saved me from doing that. The steering began to make a funny noise and I chickened out. I thought it was going to require replacement of the steering box, but it was no more than bad tie rod ends. I could have made the trip.
Before I got into the crash pad, I stayed at a couple dumpy hotels and spent a few nights staying at the home of a friend. It quickly became obvious that these were not long term solutions. I decided to use taxis as my means of moving between the crash pad and work. I was able to jump seat on UPS airplanes, so they were only 2 places where I needed to be transported. Sometimes one of the crew members or another jumpseater who lived there would offer to drop me off at the crash pad on the way home. There were stores and restaurants within walking distance of the pad.
There were a few things to worry about in this arrangement. One was availability of a jumpseat to and from Anchorage and reliability of the taxi companies to get me to work on time. The jumpseat thing worked out pretty well. I was always able to get back and forth without issues, except for one time, when I had to travel a few days early and spend New Years Eve alone in the crash pad on a very cold and snowy night. No problem. My dad always said he didn't like drinking with the amatuers on New Years Eve.
The flights between Louisville and Anchorage were about 6 hours. I bought a good camping air mattress and used my sleeping bag to get down on the floor in the large area behind the cockpit on the upper deck of the 747. There were bunk rooms, but you couldn't plan on one of them being available. I was able to change into pajamas or sweat clothes to be more comfortable. This way, I could blow up my mattress, crawl into my fart sack and sleep most of the flight. Otherwise, my sleep could be interrupted. I viewed getting to work as more important than getting home after a trip, but I never had problems with either. The toughest part was letting the air out of my mattress and folding it up to fit back in its stuff sack, after just waking up.
The MD 11 did not have quite the space to spread out, but I found a little room near the entry door, to get out of the way of anyone who needed to move around. It was a little cold there, but I have a really good sleeping bag. Just part of the glamorous life of a rich airline pilot.
I loved the trips on the Whale. The only ones I didn't like were from Anchorage to Shanghai and back. That city is extremely polluted. They are burning all the coal over there, that we have stopped burning here in the US. If it really is Global Warming, shouldn't we be trying to reduce pollution all around the globe? Besides, the Chicoms were not as friendly as the Asians in all the Free World cities. Buy a fucking clue. Don't be a Useful Idiot. I guess the realize they can't do shit with the Chicoms, so they are going to destroy our economy and let the bad guys rule the world. OK, that's all I'm going to say about that.
My favorite international layover cities in those days and in my previous 5 years on the older 747s were Cologne Germany and Hong Kong. The company started flying an around the world trip during my year on the Whale. It started in Anchorage, flew to Louisville, then to Cologne. After that it went to Hong Kong. Then it could do one of several variations. The ones I flew went from Hong Kong to Dubai United Arab Emerates, then Cologne, Hong Kong Anchorage. It was all in the norther hemisphere, but it truly circumnavigated the globe. Yep, it's round.
That is the cockpit of a -400, with my old friend, Aaron. He and I flew together back in the day on the -100, during my early years at UPS. We were able to fly together for an 8 week bid period during my time in Anchorage and had a blast. This was when the trips around the globe were introduced. We were actually displaced by management pilots for the very first such trip. That sucked. Some of those guys were barely competent, because they didn't fly as much as we did. Aaron and I stuck together for almost all of the bid period and we had a guest International Relief Officer (IRO) for each trip. One of our IROs took that picture.
We were on a week on week off schedule. We could fly around the world with some back tracking and have some quality time to enjoy our layover cities in one week. With the bunks and inflight breaks, I felt that I was more rested while flying the -400, than at any other time I was employed there.
Aaron was a big NFL fan also, so we found a restaurant in Hong Kong that was open all night during the NFL playoff season. We could go there and watch all the games, while enjoying a couple meals and some beers. Remember that we were halfway around the world, so the games were on at night over there. The restaurant was actually on the basement level of a building and we would come crawling up the steps, after the games, as the sun was coming up and the people of Hong Kong were going to work and opening their shops. No problem for us, it was on our daytime hours.
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