Stage Check (part deux)

I didn’t fly last week after Monday. We went to Chicago. (There are more tales from Chicago, but I think Joanna should tell about them, because people will think I’m making fun of her if I point out the silly ways in which she tried to keep us from coming home.) We came back from Chicago.

On Monday, I couldn’t get Mike on the phone. I drove to the flight school, but there weren’t very many people there. I thought maybe the school was closed. On Tuesday, Mike asked if I’d heard from Will about my recheck. I hadn’t. He went and talked to Will and decided that we should review landings again since it had been over a week since I’d flown. We did.

On Wednesday, there was a message on my phone from C. C. is another check airman. He wanted to schedule me for the afternoon. Unfortunately, he didn’t return my call until about 4pm, at which point, “it was too late.” He wanted to fly at 6:30am on Thursday. I told him I’d rather fly in the afternoon. “There aren’t any planes.” I figure if I’m paying them $26,000 I should be able to fly when it’s convenient for me. But in the interest of getting this done as soon as possible, since he seemed unwilling to schedule me for the afternoon, I reluctantly agreed.

I would write about it, but it wasn’t very interesting, and I barely remember it since I think I slept through most of it. He had me do a few landings, then signed my logbook.

I called Mike and asked him if he could schedule me for one of the 7 remaining lessons later in the day. No, it has to be tomorrow, there aren’t any planes until after 4pm, and he’s going to be working dispatch.

So I’m scheduled at 10am tomorrow morning.

The Windy City

We’re in Chicago.

We drove from Norman Friday morning. It’s pretty easy… you take
Interstate 44 until you get to St. Louis, then I-55 till Chicago. I-44
passes through Springfield, MO, the first house Berck remembers living
in. We got lunch at Arby’s, and with Berck’s description of the
neighborhood to his mom, and his mom’s description of the house, we were
able to find it. We would have taken a picture, if we had a camera.

We got to Sydney’s apartment in Wicker Park after ten p.m. After
walking many blocks in search of food, we settled for a tasty taqueria
(where, unfortunately, I left my hat). Then we bought some beer and
headed back to Sydney’s roof (carrying a case of beer up an extension
ladder is tricky), which had a great view of the moon, the Sears Tower,
and some premature fireworks. Sydney’s roommates returned one by
one and shared our beer and stories. I finally petered out at three in
the morning, but everyone else apparently stayed up until dawn, when
Berck came to bed, happy to have had conversation with people other than
fellow pilots in so long.

Saturday we slept till noon despite the oppressive urban heat. We got
ready to head out to get breakfast (lunch), and the heavens opened,
pouring rain into the street. But a minute later, it had trickled to a
drizzle, and we walked the few blocks to the L station and caught a
train down to the Loop. Then we trekked through the intense humidity in
the general direction of Greek Town and picked a random gyro joint.

Tonight we ventured near the Loop to eat pizza at a place one of Syd’s
roommates works at. It was nice to have Chicago deep dish pizza. We
got a pitcher of beer on the house.

We walked back to and from the L in the rain, getting fairly wet, but
it’s nice and cool

Berck prepared some listening material for us before leaving Norman. He
stole some free stuff (that allows one to rip free RealAudio feeds to
wave files) and burned them to CD’s. We could have just put them on the
MP3 player, but then only one of us would have been able to listen to
them on the way home, since we’ve got two cars going back. We also got
a great deal on some audio books from Audible.com. Both of them are regulars on
This American Life. Sarah Vowell’s Partly Cloudy Patriot and David
Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day, which we listened to on the way up
here. We were laughing so hard during some of his stories. He’s been
described as a gay Mark Twain. Most of his stories are about his
idiosyncratic family or trying to learn French after moving to France with
his boyfriend. If anyone wants to borrow the CD’s after we’ve listened
to them, maybe we’ll loan them to you. They’re pretty good driving
material. All for driving to the town where WBEZ is located, home of
This American Life.

Chicago

I have tomorrow off. Happy 4th on the 2nd! That meant that we were
supposed to get off every day this week at 4:30. Ha! We did on Monday
and Tuesday. Then we were hit by some humongous orders. Yesterday we
got off at 6. Today we finally got to leave at 6:45…and that was just
us new people. Everyone else had to help fill pink cards (which we
haven’t been trained to do), so I don’t know when they got to go home.

So what are we doing on our three-day weekend? We’re driving to
Chicago! Berck’s sister Sydney just moved there with the AmeriCorps
VISTA program, and she can ride the L around. With a car more of a
liability than an asset, she offered it to us to babysit until she
finishes her term in January. An extra car! Woohoo!

Berck is working on making CD’s of our favorite radio show This American Life
so we can listen to them on the 11 to 12 hour drive.

Alarum III

Our upstairs neighbor came downstairs today.

She was extremely apologetic. She had just gotten back from the
airport, had been out of town all week. (So we didn’t hear her upstairs
after all. Berck thinks I’m hearing things. I think her boyfriend came
every evening to feed the cat.)

So when Berck woke me up on Monday morning, wondering if our neighbor
was dead, my sleepy answer was apparently accurate. “No, she had to get
up early on Sunday to catch a plane. She’ll be gone all week, and the
alarm will wake us up each morning.” Then I drifted back to sleep,
dreaming about how our neighbor wasn’t dead…she was just foster
parenting the klepto-pepper kid because his real parents had disappeared.

Hopefully, this morning will be the last wake-up call. Berck didn’t
wake up at all this morning. I did after half an hour of the insistent
buzzing. It just drives your brain crazy.

Alarum II

The alarm went off again this morning. It’s not loud enough to wake you up immediately. Your brain just starts being overloaded by the constant repetition. We kept earplugs by the bed, but the pillow over my bad ear worked again for me, and I think Berck was too out of it to care, though he did mumble something about it.

The note was still on the little clip by our neighbor’s door today…along with a business card for the U.S. Census Service, a representative of which knocked on our door sometime last week and asked if we had any idea where our neighbor was.

So this evening I taped the note to the doorknob. But I haven’t heard her come home. I guess we’ll be waking up again this morning.