I woke up this morning at 4:27am. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know at the time it was 4:27am, becase I wouldn’t have answered my telephone had I known.

Angela from crew tracking told me that I needed to go to the airport to sit ready reserve. After I hung up, I realized that it was well before 6am, when I went on duty. I called back to find out why they woke me up at 4:27am. The answer? I went on duty at 4am. I just didn’t realize it, because I’d misread my schedule. My first day of reserve this week started at 0600, and I assumed they all did. After I looked closer, I noticed that only the first day started at 0600, the other days started at 0400.

“Do you know how cold it’s going to be out there?” Tony asked. Tony is an American Eagle pilot at my crashpad who was also woken up by Angela’s phone call. “I don’t want to know.” It was somewhere around 0Ëš. Yay.

I’ve often wondered how the homeless in Chicago survive the winter. Apparently a lot of them do it by sleeping in blue line trains, from one end to the other. There were three of them slumped over, either asleep or dead on my car alone. The stench was overpowering.

The TSA working the crew line at Terminal 2 was particularly incompetent this morning, and it took me 15 minutes to get through security, which is just not acceptable. It looked like a lot of people in the line were going to be late for work.

One of the things that amuses me about airports is that airport restaurant chains look like their non-airport counterparts, but very much aren’t. The quality of the food is always lower, the menu choices fewer and the prices much higher. Places that don’t serve breakfast all do in the airport, presumably to make the most of their lease. And, well, they have a captive audience. For instance, Macaroni Grill serves Fritatas, Chili’s serves Breakfast Taco’s and Quizno’s serves toasted bacon and egg sandwiches.

The nice thing about the ready reserve schedule is that I was originally scheduled to be released at 1330. That was before my phone rang a few minutes ago. Angela called me back and asked how things were on ready reserve. “Just wonderful!” I told her, using a really convincing tone of voice, that should give me serious actor creds. She laughed and told me that I was going to work a round trip to Cedar Rapids, IA. “When does it get back?” was the only question I asked. “You’re going to kill me…” “Uh oh…. when?” “1441.” “Oh, that’s not that bad. I can still go home. Maybe.”

That is if I’m not back late. I think it’ll be okay because the weather doesn’t get bad until tonight. Here’s the English forecast:

Tonight: Snow and sleet, becoming all snow after midnight. The snow could be heavy at times. Temperature rising to around 30 by 2am. East southeast wind between 5 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow and sleet accumulation of 7 to 11 inches possible.

Assuming the weather cooperates and I get back on time, and my flight to Colorado isn’t canceled, I still have to get on the airplane. All the flights to COS and DEN are overbooked today, so I’ll be hoping for a ride on a jumpseat.

I finished reading Subwayland, a book I borrowed from Sydney. It’s a collection of Randy Kennedy’s New York Times Tunnel Vision columns, and I really enjoyed it. You can find most of them on the NY Times site, I think. He doesn’t appear to be writing the column any more, which is sad. If you have more than a passing interest in the NYC Subway, it’s worth reading.

Mesa had a bit of a problem Tuesday when the left main gear of a CRJ-700 collapsed on landing. Whoops. I’m glad it wasn’t me. I did, however, have a minor maintenance incident yesterday that I’ll write about soon…

So, I’m leaving in an hour or so to go to Cedar Rapids. On a CRJ-200. I’ve never flown a CRJ-200 before, so wish me luck!