Since my simulator sessions are scheduled for 10pm-2am (with a 2 hour brief and debrief), I decided that I would make a reasonable effort to start switching my sleep schedule around, and managed to stay up past midnight last night. I must be getting old, since this seemed to be a struggle, whereas in the past it was all I could do to go to bed at a normal time so that I could wake up in the morning. I woke up this morning with Joanna and couldn’t go back to sleep, which resulted in me being tired rather than sleep-shifted. Figures.

I spent the morning fighting with my Creative Nomad and decided that if it ever dies, I’m totally buying an iPod, now that one can get 80GB iPods. (At the time I bought my 30GB nomad, I think the biggest iPod was somewhere around 5GB and much more expensive.)

Since parking at DEN is $5/day, I knew I needed to come up with something a bit more reasonable. I called the company that managed DEN parking and they said that if I got a letter from my employer stating that I’m based somewhere else and live in DEN that I can buy a parking pass for $36/month. I’ll do this one I start working, but since there’s likely to be as much as a month off while I wait for IOE (Initial Operating Experience) after the sims, I don’t want to be paying for parking during that time. Since Jonah didn’t want to drive me to the airport, I decided to park at the old Stapleton airport and take ride RTD to DEN.

Public transportation in this country just isn’t very good. I knew that one could theoretically park for free at Stapleton and ride the bus to DEN, but I couldn’t figure out how. In fact, I probably would never have been able to do it, save the fact that Sydney (who apparently is more in tune with public transit than I am) deciphered the website and told me how to do it.

The parking may be free, but it’s $7 for the 13 mile bus journey. Compared to $5/day parking at the airport, that means that if you’re parking for more than 3 days for a single person, it makes sense. If it’s two of you, then you need to stay for more than 6 days. And so on.

I wasn’t prepared for the fact that the bus was a very nice, modern, bus. The ride was very smooth and quiet and the seats comfortable. I also wasn’t prepared for the fact that the bus was mostly full. I was the only person with luggage; everyone else appeared to employees commuting to work.

By my calculations that’s $280/month to ride the bus to work, which is simply insane. I’m guess monthly passes must offer a substantial discount. I could tell you, if I could work the RTD website.

TSA moved the crew entrance line to security just to mess with me, I think, but I still managed to get the Frontier gate very early. I told the gate agent I was hoping to ride the jumpseat and she printed a boarding pass for me.

As I boarded, I left my luggage in the jetway and went up to the cockpit to ask if I could ride with them. This is, as I understand it, the correct thing to do. There’s some who disagree since the gate agent printed me a boarding pass with an assigned seat, but since my ability to ride in the plane is at the sole discretion of the Captain, I think I owe it to at least ask, and not assume. I introduced myself and asked if I could catch a ride to St. Louis. After discovering I was a Freedom employee, the first officer asked if I’d been with Freedom from the beginning. “Oh no! I just got hired 6 months ago.” He wasn’t convinced, so I pointed out that my date of hire was on my badge. The issue is that union folks branded early Freedom employees as “scabs” because at the time, Freedom was non-union. Freedom was non-union because ALPA asked for some pretty insane pay rates, and the company basically told them to get bent, and created Freedom without a union contract. That was years ago, and the company is now ALPA-represented just like everyone else. Supposedly the early Freedom guys got blacklisted. Some pilots carry around the blacklist, but others just deny the jumpseat to folks with a Freedom badge regardless. I’ll be interested to see how much trouble getting to work with a Freedom badge is in general.

Eventually the FO seemed content and the Captain said I was good to go. The plane was mostly empty, and the gate agent was nice enough to give me one of the two best seats in the cabin: an exit row window with no seat in front of me.

The flight was uneventful, though I was amused that Frontier charges $5 to watch their in-seat TV and $8 to watch a movie. They also will not accept cash as payment for anything, only credit or debit cards. So much for, “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.”

I called the hotel who told me where to meet the shuttle. As I checked in, I asked if my instructor had checked in. I was told there was no reservation for anyone with the name I provided. This should have been a clue.

I sent an email to my instructor asking where I should meet him and when. He replied that apparently the person responsible for emailing me my schedule hadn’t bothered to update me. It turns out that my sim schedule has been pushed back a day, and my first lesson won’t be until Thursday.

Rather than getting too upset about it, I’ll just view it as another day to adapt to the new sleep schedule and get some studying done.

I noticed a bus stop down the street. I’m considering braving the St. Louis public transit tomorrow and looking at an arch or a museum or something. Or maybe I’ll just stay here and study.