It started all too early. I woke up at 4am, even though my alarm wasn’t set until 4:45. I tossed and turned until 4:40, then gave up and took a shower. I didn’t have to co-ordinate with my roommate, because he still hadn’t shown up. I tossed the required things into my laptop bag, including the FAR/FC book I’d driven to Denver to buy on last-minute notice. I headed down to the lobby at 5:20am hoping to catch a ride to the training center.

Mesa quite clearly said that the hotel would be responsible for transportation. The hotel insisted that they would only transport us to and from the Airport, and that the Mesa training center was next door, which it wasn’t. (The Mesa headquarters were, but not the training center.) In any case, there wasn’t going to be any transport. I’d resigned myself for paying for a cab (since I certainly couldn’t get anyone on the phone at Mesa on a Sunday), when a guy checked in at the front desk mentioning Mesa Pilot Training. And had a car. He offered to give me a ride.

He wasn’t there, but several other people were asking the guy at the front desk who repeated the hotel’s stance that there would be absolutely no transportation. I told him to call a cab, but he said it would take half an hour. One of the guys had a car and could take us. So we rode with him.

We got there at about 5:40am, and the place was completely locked. 20 of us gathered in the parking lot mingling a bit. Finally, I noticed enough people inside that I decided to go demand they let us in. Everyone else followed me, and someone let us in and pointed us to a classroom.

Inside were several CRJ-200 posters with the main display, overhead panel, throttle cluster, etc. A guy walked in and gave us a quick overview of what we were going to be doing all day, which mostly consisted of paperwork and drug tests. After it got quiet while he was waiting until 6am, in case there were any stragglers, I asked if he knew that there was no hotel transportation. “So how’d you all get here?” “Ingenuity!” responded one of my cohorts.

He scribbled down the information about our hotel and said he’d look into it. A parade of complaints emanated from a guy behind me, about how there was no restaurants in walking distance, and how completely wrong it was that we were denied breakfast. Training starts at 6am, and breakfast isn’t available until 6:30am at the hotel. He scribbled a bit more, and said he’d see about that.

We put our names on endless lists of paper, our phone numbers, our flight time, our addresses. As we were being instructed on the various forms, a well-groomed woman with gray hair walked in carrying a stack of paperwork, and walked right behind the guy talking and mentioned she was ready to fingerprint. The instructor glared his meanest glare in her direction, shooed her out the door, then closed it after her, returned to the center of the classroom and sighed. “Any of you guys ever worked with a flight attendant?” Some chuckles in response.

A little bit later she was allowed back in, and gave us a little spiel about how we were going to be fingerprinted. Three folks at the front of the classroom were sent off to have their fingers scanned and the rest of us sat there awhile, until we were told that the drug testing guys had set up shop in the basement, and some of us could head down there. We took turns donating urine downstairs and having our fingers scanned upstairs, and signing away any rights we might have to our finger scans, the records which might be obtained with said finger scans, signed consents to let them probe our urine and so on.

The class turned out to be fairly small– 23 of us. Amazingly diverse for a pilot class. Only 2 girls, but lots multinationals, plenty of foreign accents and folks from all over the country. Lots of varied backgrounds. Some folks are straight out of school with only 260 hours total time, and about 25 multi-engine, but had some sort of CRJ training. Plenty of flight instructors, most with less time than me, but a few with more. I was at the top end in terms of total time, but I think the next-lowest multi-engine time is about 25 hours, which makes my 14 hours just crazy. With any luck, I’ll have 100 hours multi-engine by the end of the year:)

As we sat there I noticed that everyone had logbooks sitting on top of their FAR/FC, when I suddenly remembered that I’d left my logbooks in Colorado Springs. D’oh! Fortunately, Jonah will be able to FedEx them to me. And the FAR/FC? “Oh, you guys didn’t need those. We really should take that out of that email.” Everyone had a brand-new, never-opened FAR/FC which we’d all wasted $25 or so on. Ahhh, the airlines.

After we all finished having our biometric and biological samples taken, it was about 8:30am. We sat around for an hour and a half at which point it was 10:00am, which was lunch time. They said there was a lunch cart, but I hopped in a car with some cohorts who drove to Quizno’s. We returned to be presented with… paperwork from Human Resources!

Which demanded we sign away any last remaining rights we might have thought we had about anything. We signed more documents, forms, submitted copies of documents. I have, in my hotel room now every important original document. My passport, pilot certificates, medical certificate, birth certificate and copies of all them. Turns out they didn’t want originals of most of them, just copies, despite the email on the contrary. The email also stated that I needed a social security card, which I haven’t had for years. I spent an hour last week standing in line in order to acquire a piece of paper that said they would mail me one, but it turns out they didn’t even ask for it.

We got our photos taken for badges and had our 40 pages of paperwork individually examined by the HR lady. Then a benefits lady came in and talked to us. She covered everything as quickly as possible. The run down: Benefits exist, but suck hard and are expensive. Except, of course, the travel benefits. Which won’t start for Mom and Dad and Jonah for 60 days, but I’ll get mine in a couple weeks.

After that was all done, the guy from the beginning of the day came in and informed us we’d be able to get breakfast in the morning. And Lunch. In fact, so we could get breakfast, they were switching our training from 6am-3pm to… 3pm-midnight. That’s right, 3pm-midnight. Which, all things considered, is probably just as fine by me. More sleep, but less time to study since I’ll sleep in. The unspoken message? “You wanna bitch? Go ahead, we can #@%& you up.”

As we headed out the door, we got a copy of the General Operations Manual. Which is, uhh, I have no idea because I haven’t opened that yet. Probably wise to do so now…