That's All Folks.

 So, my last trip was one of my best, except that I never did get the hang of landing the Airbus as well as I had all the Boeing Airplanes and the BAC.  If I managed to get a good one, it was just blind luck.  The last one was on Runway 13 at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW).

I documented many of the lasts of this trip.

 

This was the last drive on the Watterson Expressway for a rare daylight departure.

 Last time parking in the "secure" parking lot.

Last time going through security.

Last van ride to work.

Last time going in the NASC (the building where we reported and did our flight planning.  I never did learn what the acronym meant.  Didn't care either.)

Last checkin.

Last envelope of Jeppesen approach plate revisions.  I didn't put them in the manuals, just checked to see if any applied to the airports I would be flying to.

First flight plan and release of my last trip.

First Bus of last trip.

First preflight of last trip.

We really had the best job in the world.

Salt Lake City, the first destination of the last trip.

My rig.

One of the layover hotels on my last trip.

One of the competition's Airbus A-300s.

The following is what I wrote when I added this photo to an album on Google Photos.

We had several broken airplane issues with the Airbus (Eurojunk) during this trip.  The only other plane I had this much trouble with was the BAC 1-11 (another European plane), but I was an authenticated systems expert on that plane.  At least the Airbus's engines did not give me any trouble.  I can say that now that I won't be jinxing myself by saying it.  All of the guys I flew with on the Bus got to see it do something they had never seen before.  The Boeing 747-100 has the distinction of the most engine shutdowns (3) and the only fire warning in 42 years of flying.  The BAC was next, with 2 shutdowns.  I flew my last leg from Ontario CA to Dallas TX and I am about to board a UPS MD 11 to jumpseat home.  This is my last official duty with UPS.  By the way, while working in General Aviation, flying "those little airplanes" for 5 years and 5,000 hours I never experienced an engine failure.

Jumpseating home.  Trying not to feel too sad.

My pal Lou Berdoll, who was in my new hire class, happened to be at the NASC when I arrived.  He would be retiring soon after I did.  I always liked standing next to him, because I looked so much better by comparison.

Last van ride off the property.

 Last time passing through the guard shack on the way home.

 Finding the Denbomobile in the dark.  It is not easy to remember where it was parked a week ago.

go

Being greeted by the puppies when I got home.

Wow!  Lots of pictures.  At 1000 per, I save a lot of words.

Penultimate Trip And Ultimate Trip

 I was finally beginning to feel comfortable on the Bus.  It had been almost a year and I had adjusted to the differences from the Boeings I had flown.  As retirement drew nearer, I began to feel a little sad.  The airline pilot career I had been working to achieve since 1968 was about to end on my birthday in August of 2010.  

With 2 more trips and less than a month to go, I was informed I would be getting a line check ride on my next to last trip.  (That's what penultimate means, if you are from Pittsburgh.)  Of course, the question in my mind was WTF?  Why would this be necessary, if I would only have one more trip to go?  

The trip was to Burbank California and when I asked the management pilot why I was getting a check ride under these circumstances, it was revealed that one of his kids was doing something that day in Los Angeles and he was merely using my flight as a means of transportation.  If you have been following this blog from the beginning, you know I am not intimidated by check rides, whether from company check airmen or FAA inspectors.  That was not the problem.  It was just WTF, over?

My penultimate FO on the left and the guy who needed a ride to SoCal on the right.  No problemo.

For my last trip, I tried to get one of the first officers who had become a good friend to join me, but it didn't work out.  However, the guy who did join me was about as perfect as he could be.  

We both showed up for this trip with almost identical plans for the Portland weekend layover that began after an unusual daytime leg to Salt Lake City and then on to Portland Oregon.  We would arrive on a Friday afternoon and didn't have to fly again until Monday night.

 

Rare photo of the Flexible Flyer going to work in the daylight.  Nice arrangement on the tie.

Better.

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His name was Matt and he had brought a camera and backpack and reserved a rental car, planning to explore the area and take lots of photos.  Ditto for me. We canceled my reservation and picked up his car.  

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The next day, we ate breakfast and drove to the Columbia River Gorge.

First stop was Multnomah Falls.

Then we hiked to the top of the falls, via this trail system.

If you like to see and photograph water falls, this is your place.

That was in a visitor center.

Next day, we headed for Mount Saint Helens.

Mountains can create their own weather.

The destruction is incredible.

 

On Monday morning, we drove to the Evergreen Aviation Museum.

That is the home of the famous Howard Hughes airplane, The Spruce Goose.

Driving The Bus

 I was lucky with my commute to Anchorage.  I never missed a trip because of the commute.  I was able to get home very quickly at the end of a trip.  The planes I flew into Anchorage from Asia were soon going to be moving on to Louisville.  I could book a jumpseat on one of them and often just stay on the same plane I had brought in.  I had to travel to Anchorage a few days early only once, because of congestion on the jumpseats.  I had to spend one very cold New Years Eve alone in the crashpad.  No biggy.  My dad always said he didn't like going out drinking with the amateurs on New Years Eve.  Good philosophy.  

It was after about a year of commuting, when there was a system bid in which I could see I could hold a captain seat again.  There were 2 possibilities, I could remain on the 747-400 in Anchorage or I could change to the Airbus A-300 and be based in Louisville again.  Believe it or not, that was a tough choice.  I like all the Boeing airplanes I had flown and really like the -400.  It had the kind of trips I liked and I would even be reasonably senior on it.  The only question was whether the commute would continue to be doable.  As a captain, I could afford to buy a ticket on a passenger airline to get there once in a while, but I had flown there on pax airlines before and it was a major pain in the ass.  From Louisville, it would usually take at least 3 legs and many hours to do, so a full day of airline agony.  The commute on UPS was one leg of about 6 hours and I could sleep on the floor in my sleeping bag.

I had heard things about the Bus that made me think I would not like it.  The technology was a step back compared to the Boeings.  It was slow.  Everyone made fun of it (I could handle that.  They used to make fun of the 757, until all the steam gauge airplanes went away and everyone was flying glass cockpit planes.).  It was made by the French😂.  The upside was that the cockpit was huge and comfortable.  Believe it or not, the cockpits in all the 747s are kind of small in width compared to the other wide body airplanes.  It is up there on a second deck, where the shape of the plane it thinner.  The Bus, 767 and MD 11 cockpits are huge.  Anyway, after thinking about it and discussing it with Doreen, I decided to come back to the Louisville domicile.

This is the A300 panel.  The left side is as it was when I flew it and the right is an update that occurred after I retired.

 Training on the Bus went pretty well, until the simulator.  I had an instructor who was actually being trained to be an instructor and he seemed to like to keep the crew overloaded all the time.  He gave us multiple problems at the same time and then kept interrupting as the air traffic controller while we were trying to run the multiple checklists.  (I had only seen that once before and it was a guy who the FAA did not approve as a check airman, because of that same scenario.  He was giving a sim. session to me and another check airman to get his approval and the FAA inspector pointed out that he had created an unrealistic profile that 2 check airman were having trouble performing.  We worked our asses off to try to get him through, but the inspector could see that many ordinary pilots would have been challenged to the extreme. ) Anyway, I passed all Airbus tests and check rides and maintained my perfect career record to the very end.

It's normal to feel like a fish out of water for some time after checking out on a new airplane type.  I was very fortunate to be a senior captain and be flying with senior first officers.  They were very helpful in keeping me out of trouble and reminding me what I was supposed to be doing.  However, I never did get to likin' the Bus and it didn't seem to be likin' me.  Strange things would happen.  When they did, the first officer would usually say something like, "Gee, Denny, I've never seen it do that before".  After which I would say, "It does shit like that to me all the time".  To which they would respond, "I don't think I want to fly with you anymore".

The Bus flew to Mexico City and Guadalajara Mexico.  I always hated flying to Mexico and tried to avoid it like the plague.  The company started sneaking trips to Mexico into lines that were mostly to other places.  It was hard to find a line that did not have at least one trip to Mexico on it.  I did my best, but got stuck with one such trip during my one year on the Bus.  I gave the first leg down there to the first officer, a guy I had never flown with before.  As we approached the border, we were gradually beginning to lose parts of our glass cockpit display and eventually the autopilot.  We still had all the basic stuff and could fly the plane, but all the computer magic was gone.  I knew there was a complex arrival and approach to Mexico City's airport and although the weather was reported as very good, I offered to divert to an airport in the good ol' USofA to the first officer.  He said, "Well, we have 90,000 pounds of stuff back there and I don't mind hand flying it, so let's press on" or something to the effect.  So, we pressed on to Mexico City.  On the arrival, there were all kinds of altitude and speed restrictions we had to make and without all the magic, we had to use parts of our brains that had become dormant.  We managed, but my difficulty understand the accents of the controllers speaking English didn't help.  I sent a message to the company there, that I wanted a mechanic to meet me when I opened the door.  As I opened the door, I saw the smiling face of a mechanic who had a Pittsburgh Steeler lanyard holding his ID.  I thought that was a good omen. I was worried about getting stuck there with a broken airplane and all this weird stuff happening to it.  The Mexican Honorary Burgh Boy Steeler Fan assured me all would be right when we returned from the hotel to fly back to America.

He was right.  He told me he just turned everything off and then turned it back on and it all worked normally, just like computers do all the time.  However, I was worried that the problem could recur, so I held my breath until after we lifted off.  Once we got that far, we could press on to Louisville and write it up again there.  I just wanted to get out of there.  We made it home, without another problem, but the FO said he had never seen it do that before and he didn't think he wanted to fly with me again.

Three Years Of Plumbing

When I reached age 60, in 2005, that was the retirement age.  I decided to become a DC-8 flight engineer again.  There was no maximum age for FEs.  The retirement we had at the time sucked and I decided to work at least to age 65 or until UPS parked all the DC-8s.

My 60th birthday was August 16.  My Mom's 81st birthday would have been August 20th, but she died on the 18th.  I was in ground school at the time, so I had to take some time off to travel to Pittsburgh for the funeral.  

We celebrated Mom's 80th birthday the year before.  My mom had survived a heart attack and a stroke.  She was tough.  As she was walking to the building where the surprise party was to be held with her sister, Aunt Marion, friends and family were waiting inside.  My brother Kevin said, "Don't make this surprise too big.  Remember, she is 80."

It was a really nice event and she was very happy.  I was already in Pittsburgh the day before and called her to wish her a happy birthday.  I sensed that she was a little disappointed I would not be there for her birthday, but did not want to ruin the surprise.  She learned she had lung cancer about 4 months later.

For the rest of the time before her death, I was still a 757/767 captain.  I was senior enough that I could hold good schedules and was able to travel to Pittsburgh to hang out with Mom.  She lived in a condo with Aunt Marion and I remember one time I was hanging out with them playing games at which they were kicking my butt and I was accusing them of cheating.  Fun.

Doreen and I attended the meeting with the oncologist, when they discussed the fact that her cancer was incurable and whether she wanted to go through cemotherapy or not.  She decided not to.  As the pain got worse, she was asking people to pray for her to die.  She never said that to me.

Doreen, Caitlin, Mike and I drove up there.  Mike drove his own car, because he had to leave immediately after the funeral mass.  He was very upset that he could not stay longer.

When I returned to Louisville, I had to make up the time missed in ground school on the DC 8.  It wasn't too hard, because of my previous time plumbing on the plane, even though it had been more than 20 years prior.

There is not too much that is interesting to talk about of my 3 years as a DC 8 flight engineer.  I was becoming more and more junior every month, because there were people who were senior to me on the list, but younger in age.  As they retired and became flight engineers on the 8, they pushed me down on the list.  I was flying trips to San Juan, Puerto Rico, New Orleans and Memphis, hot places, in the summer and cities near the Great Lakes in the winter.  I remember one night in Toronto, as I was doing the walk around, with deicing fluid dripping on my overcoat.  The wind was blowing across the ramp and the temperature was very cold.  I thought about retiring as soon as I got home.  I wised up and kept working.  I didn't like the Great Lakes cities in winter, but the other places in summer weren't that bad.  It was in the best interests of my family, that I work to 65.  I did not want to reverse the direction of the cash flow into my retirement accounts.

One of the fun bid periods on the 8, was when I flew with a guy who was an instructor for Initial Operating Experience (IOE).  That is the final stage of training for pilots and engineers before being released to the line, training in the airplane on line trips.  This guy was training a new first officer (copilot) during each trip.  I would fly 4 trips with this guy, with a new FO on each trip.  He liked to make sure the FOs knew he had flown F-16s.   Sometime on the first leg we flew together, he would tell them.  On the fourth trip, after hearing this shit 3 previous time, I just could not control my big mouth.  I knew it was coming and when he did it I said, "Hey, I did not know you flew F-16s," in a really surprised tone.  He just looked at me and smiled, because he knew I was just a smart ass.  We really had a great time hanging out, going to good restaurants and busting balls.

I spent 3 years plumbing on the 8.  The company and the union settled the new contract at about 2 years or so.  This was the one that had a reasonably good retirement plan, so I could have left, but decided to stay.  

It wasn't long before there was talk about changing the retirement age for pilots to 65. At the time, it was not clear if UPS would allow geezers like me to upgrade, if still younger than 65.  I was around 62 or 63 when the change occurred.  UPS decide to allow us to upgrade.  The first system bid occurred when I was 63 and my seniority only allowed an upgrade to the 747-400, based in Anchorage. 

North To Alaska And Beyond

 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 Western 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.

The Dom, the cathedral in Cologne

 

Hong Kong Harbor from Kowloon

  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.

Back To The Whale

 I spent 3 years as a DC 8 flight engineer.  It was not too bad, but it was not great.  I had some fun, because it was always transportation from one party to another for me.

I kept getting more junior, because people who were senior to me, but younger, kept retiring and going back to the panel and popping in on the flight engineer seniority list, senior to me.  I was only able to hold trips to the Great Lakes area in the winter and to places like San Juan, Puerto Rico, Memphis and New Orleans in the summer.  There was one really shitty winter night in Toronto, when the weather was cold and windy, with deicing fluid dripping off the wings onto my overcoat, that I considered retirement.  However, I calmed down and realized I had to keep the cash flowing in the right direction.

There wasn't much that was interesting during that time, until the talk that the retirement age was going to change to 65.  This started a big fight among UPS pilots and there was also a fight about our contract, between those who were closer to retirement and those who were younger in age and seniority.  Having been hired by UPS at age 44, my retirement situation there was not good. While I was plumbing on the DC 8, there was a contract agreement between UPS and our union, the Independent Pilots Association (IPA), that literally tripled the amount of my pension income.  Shortly after that, the retirement age change happened.  My thoughts toward those who were pissed off about that, were that I was as concerned about their financial situation as they were about mine.  I thought they were acting like inconsiderate little assholes, since people like me, who had come to work at UPS when the situation was shitty, had created the good paying situation that they were going to enjoy for the rest of their careers.  We had a chance to try to make some money for a few years and pile up some wealth for our retirements.  There was also a fight on the contract, between the senior and junior pilots. that revolved around retirement versus pay rates.  It was a dark time for the pilots of the IPA.

I knew that the change of the retirement age would occur whether we wanted it or not and it was futile to argue about it.  When it did happen, the next issue was whether those of us on the seniority list as flight engineers, would be allowed to bid to return to a window seat, as pilots.  The answer was yes, we would,  I just had to wait for a system bid to upgrade.  The first such bid only allowed me to upgrade to a first officer position on the  Boeing 747-400, based in Anchorage Alaska.  I had about 2 years to go until age 65 retirement and the company allowed me to upgrade.  I would have to commute from Louisville to Anchorage.  I talked it over with Doreen and she said, "We can tolerate anything for 2 years".  I bid the Whale.

 

I remembered seeing the 747-400, taxi by when I was preflighting a DC 8 on the ramp in Louisville and thinking I would never have a chance to fly it.  Now it was going to be a reality.

In the past, when I had not flown for a period as long as 3 years, I had trouble getting back up to speed.  That was not the case this time.  The flight management system was very similar to the 757 and 767 systems I had flown for many years.  I had flown the 747-100, so I was familiar with the size, weight and sight picture from the cockpit.  

The -400 was actually a much better flying machine than the -100.  There was more thrust from the engines and the wings were much better.   For example, I always kept the power set a little above idle, into the touchdown, when landing on the -100s.  On the -400, I had to go to idle, or the plane would float down the runway.  Other than that difference, the planes landed similarly.  (In fact, I thought the 747,757 and 767 could be landed with the same techniques.  The only difference was the sight picture from the cockpit, because of the difference in height. I learned to listen to the radio altimeter call outs.)  The -400 flew better at cruise altitudes also.  This was mostly wing related.  On the -100, you had to always pay attention to speed and not let a downdraft get you slowed down too much.  It was a dog.  The -400, with its flight management system, more engine thrust, auto throttle and improved wing, flew very well, regardless of vertical wind conditions.

My training partner (we called them sim partners) was a guy about my age, who had only flown DC 8s and steam gauge 747s at UPS.  Now, he was trying to learn the modern planes, with flight management systems (FMS).  I had made that transition at about age 50.  That was tough.  Doing it at age 63 or so was excruciating.  I felt sorry for him.  Fortunately, I picked things up quickly, so the instructor could spend more time with my partner.  One day the instructor said to me, "You are a very patient man, Denny Cleary".  I could sympathize, because I saw him struggling the way I had, so many years before.

My partner in the airplane for Initial Operating Experience (IOE), was a completely different story.  He had picked it all up quickly and was a very good stick.  A natural pilot.  I had served as a flight engineer for one of his DC 8 simulator check rides, before he reached age 60 and he was the only guy I ever saw, who could land the DC 8 well on every attempt.  We had a good instructor, who enjoyed expanding the training envelope a little when he saw he had students who could handle it and we learned some good stuff about the 400.  As big as it is, the plane could be flown in a fashion that was almost as sporty as some of the smaller planes. 

I loved this airplane.  I felt bullet proof flying it.  It had 4 of everything.  There is nothing like redundancy.  I was going to revisit my favorite international layover cities, Cologne Germany and Hong Kong. This was 2008, the Chicoms had taken over Hong Kong, but it was still nearly as free and open as it had been before the United Kingdom had turned it over.  It was a 2 pilot airplane, but on really long flights, a second first officer was required.  The plane had two bunk rooms behind the cockpit.  When we flew with an additional crew member (International Relief Officer), when we got to top of climb, we would see how much time we had to top of descent, divide it by 3 and ask who wanted to take the first break and go back to the bunk rooms for a nap or just to relax.  Most guys didn't like going back first, but I did.  It was just like my days in the Army.  I would volunteer for the first break and everyone thought that was cool.  You may remember that I went against the conventional wisdom and began volunteering for everything after basic training and it always worked out as a good deal for me. 

I flew with several good guys during this time.  I was a fairly senior first officer on the Whale in Anchorage.  I remember one flight from Honolulu to Hong Kong, which was probably just a repositioning flight, to get a plane in position to carry rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, because we were empty, except for empty "cans",  the large containers that were loaded with packages to facilitate the quick loading and unloading of the airplanes.  There was a lot of time when we were not talking to controllers on the radio, just via data link and so we were listening to the tunes on my iTunes app to pass the time.  We passed Midway, Guam, the Philippines and places like that.  

This was the first time at UPS, where I felt up to speed upon first making the transition, except that I needed to get used to the international flying stuff and relearn how to understand the foreign controllers and their accents while speaking English.  We could fly over Russia now and understanding them when they were drunk on Vodka took a while.  The plane was no problem at all.  I really loved flying that plane.  

    

First Retirement

 At the time I reached age 60, in August 2005, the FAA retirement age for airline pilots was 60.  UPS had a lousy retirement at that time, especially if a pilot was retiring with only 16 years of service, as I was.  Fortunately, UPS was still flying Boeing 747s and DC-8s, which required flight engineers.  There is no retirement age for engineers, so  I was able to continue working, by accepting a demotion to Second Officer, along with a pay cut.  I don't remember why, but I chose the DC-8, perhaps because of my previous experience as an engineer on that plane during my probationary year.

My last flight on the B-767, as a captain, was pretty cool.  I tried to get one of the guys I had flown with before to join me, but no one could work it into their schedules.  I flew with the son of a former chief pilot, with whom I had flown as an FO on the 747 many years before.  The flight was from Ontario CA to Louisville, was in the daytime and my wife and daughter were able to greet us as we parked the plane.  

Air traffic controllers were congratulating me on my last flight as we crossed the country.  UPS was pretty good at things like that.  As we entered the parking ramp, the airport fire department had pumper trucks on either side of the entrance, squirting water across the plane.  

I hadn't been very emotional during the entire flight, but as I walked down the stairs from the plane, I could see that Doreen and Caitlin were a little teary eyed.  I got a little choked up for a few seconds and my eyes got a little misty.  It wasn't like I was really done with flying, I just would not be at the controls of an airliner again, or at least that is what I thought at the time.