There are two things that routinely happen in my life that would probably be considered unhealthy in anyone else's life.

First off, I get text (sms) messages at all hours of the night. I got a message this morning at 3:30am, "hey dude, wut r u doing? where r u? i hope your CA isnt a douche. fly safe. l8r." Which roughly translates into, "Jack, I'm stuck in Memphis and I am getting on the van to the airport. The hotel here sucks. I know you're working standups and likely you're up to read this. Where are you? Salt Lake City right? I hope the Captain you are flying with isn't a douchebag. I've flown with that guy. Watch him like a hawk. Later." How did I get all that from one message with 125 characters? Some were appointed to work miracles, some given the gift of healing, still others speak in tongues, not me, I read text messages like a mo-fo.

Yeah, yeah, blasphemy. My other gift. It's delicious.

“Blashphempy, It's Delicious”
Colbert/Ensor 2008 campaign slogan

Anyway, the other thing that I can pull off is having a beer at 0645. There's nothing quite like the having a Bud Light at watching the sun come up. It's the perfect way to go to bed really: a Yoplait and a Bud Light. I prefer the apple turnover flavor (yogurt not the beer). It's funny because, just as I'm polishing off that beer, Katie's alarm goes off and she has to get up and fly to Edmonton or something like that. Not me, I'm not going anywhere. I've been up for the last twenty-seven hours. I'm going to bed. That is after I send a text to my BFF CA Dave who got roped into a standup in Eugene last night. He's probably just finishing his beer too. Bottoms up.

Typing a blog entry on a BlackBerry is really a pain in the ass. But here at 34,000 feet I felt the need to get some things down.

I often get asked questions about what it's like to do what I do for a living. Honestly, I enjoy talking to people about what I do, not just because I want to talk about flying, but rather to hear people's pre-concieved notions about I do. To me it's very entertaining.

For the month of June I elected to bid stand-up overnight shifts; standups for short. Now standups are the bain of every pilot's existence. In fact, I have yet to find a flight attendant who really cares for them either. Basically, how a standup shift works is that the crew shows up for work usually sometime around supper and works a continuous-duty shift until just after dawn. We can usually manage about three or four legs in that time. There is usually also a two- or three-hour break in there somewhere. Because the break is so short, we do not get a hotelroom, so we all end up sleeping in the back of the plane while it sits at the gate. It's really glamorous.

Tonight, that break was supposed to happen in Eugene, Oregon. But due to some bad luck involving an MIA fuel truck in San Luis Obispo, our break was eaten up by a delay. That's ok with me though, I had a great time on my San Luis Obispo delay. Most guys just sit around pouting on delays; not me. I meet people. I was very fortunate to meet two ramper-girls who could be blamed for our delay, but were far too charming to blame. They said they were from North Carolina and they claim that's part of the South, but I'm just not convinced. Just because your state doesn't enunciate, does not make it The South. What about Maine? I rest my case. Ok, in fairness, they do deepfry pickles and love Nascar, so it's probably actually The South.

Anyway, back to the standups.

Even though we sleep during the day, and work all night, it becomes very tiring towards the end of the shift. It's difficult to see the sun come up knowing that you watched it go down. Heads become droopy towards the end of the last flight, responses become slower and everything becomes either funnier or more irritating. There are some tricks of the trade when it comes to standups.

1) Don't take anything personally. If someone said something that could be taken two or more ways, and one thing of those ways is going to hurt your feelings, just ignore it. He or she probably didn't mean anything by it.

2) If your head is droopy, don't read. Don't read a newspaper, a book, or anything else. If you can, listen to some loud music. I stop listening to my George Strait, skip the classic rock, and go straight to something VERY loud. Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails or Linkin Park keeps me up. Music that assails your ears will keep you up, but not for long. NKOTB will make your head explode so don't do that.

3) Engage in conversation. I played hangman with the fight attendant last night. I won. If you do play hangman, use the word Egypt. No one ever gets that one.

4) Get up often. Even if it means leaving the cockpit and doing the walk of shame to the lavatory, having your blood circulating will make you alert.

5) DON'T BID STANDUPS EVER.

So that's a brief rundown on how standups work. By the way, speaking of New Kids on the Block, what the hell is going on in the world when that becomes headline news? They were big when I was in like third grade. Aren't they like forty now? That's all I want to see, five middle-aged men, dancing around, half clothed, reliving the glory days of the early ninetys. I wonder if Vanilla Ice is going to open for them. I hope so.

Not much is new this week; aside from the fact that it has gone from warm to stupid friggen hot in Phoenix. But complaining about the heat in Phoenix really is a stupid thing to do. I mean, we're in the middle of the damned desert! What do you expect?

Honestly though, I think that the bitching actually cools the body off. Really, when people are complaining about how hot it is, they tend to forget how friggen hot it is. Now you might be asking, "how hot is hot?" Well yesterday, when we were flying back into Phoenix from Des Moines, we received the weather. The little robot that reads the data said, "temperature four-one, dewpoint negative six." That means the temperature was 41'C! With the American exchange rate, that's 106'F. It's the middle of May!

But you know, the locals would say that it doesn't really matter. "It's a dry heat," they say. Apparently, the fact that it feels like it's the inside of an oven instead of inside a stew-pot makes it better. Right, even though kids are melting into puddles of goo on the street, the fact that the heat is dry makes it all better. Well, I'm not convinced.

Anyway, the flight deck is cool most of the time. That is, unless we're starting the engines. The air conditioning packs turn off when we start engines. Aside from that, we keep it nice and cool. For me, the best time in Phoenix, is when I'm in the plane!

Here it is. It has now been two-and-a-half months since I have updated. That's a big gap for a guy who was posting upwards of ten blogs per month. I'm sure there are a lot of questions. Then again, chances are that many people have stopped visiting because no one expects there to be anything new. In that case, there are likely no questions as to my whereabouts. My bad.

But in the off chance that anyone still checks Moose Jockey, I have been in Phoenix. I have been working a lot. Flying to and fro. Over the last two months a handful of things have happened. I went back to Canada for a brief trip to see my mom and dad and a few friends. I was there a total of three days. I rented a car and checked out my home town. I hadn't been there in a little over four years, so much had changed there. I saw people I hadn't seen since I had graduated almost a decade ago. It was surreal. My worst suspicions were confirmed when I drove into Sylvan Lake. It was not the town that I had remembered. It had doubled in size since I left, and I didn't know everybody who walked down the street. Buildings that once existed were replaced with new, cooler, and less charming buildings than those of my childhood. Sigh. My home town is no longer my home town.

Another thing that has happened since I last made an entry is that I have lost a lot of weight. Since December, when I first stepped on the scale and decided to make a conscious effort to do something about my portly exterior, I have lost fifty, count 'em, FIVE ZERO pounds. I still have about fifteen more pounds that I'd like to lose, but so far I'll count the fifty mark as a victory. I stopped buying food at work. I bring protein bars and dried fruit and tuna in a cooler, and that is all that I eat. I also run a lot. Up until the middle of March I had been running a lot more, but late in the month, I came up lame with an iliotibial band strain (ITBS), and I have been struggling ever since. I was running about 10K three times a week, but now, I'm lucky if I can make it 2.5 miles without crying from the pain. Why not take up swimming? Because I LOVE running. I love it. My doc offered a localized steroid injection; I declined, but I was tempted. Anyway, the injury has forced me into strength training in order to continue to burn calories. To me this was not favorable because I have a muscular build, and I don't want to bulk up. I'm bulky already. But it has brought some balance to my routine.

Anyway, the ITBS caused me to be quite lazy. Also when I went home to Canada I had a few cigars with some friends. Which immediately launched me into buying cigarettes when I returned to Arizona. After smoking several packs over the period of several weeks I realized that I was being stupid. So I went from a nicotine-free person, back to a 4mg nicotine gum chewer again. It's a setback. Battered but not beaten. I expect to be gum-free buy the end of the summer. The lesson? If you've nixed something. Don't even walk near it again.

Unfortunately, work has kept me from getting home more than it ever did when I was out in Washington DC. Now it seems that I only get home once or twice a month, and only ever for one or two days. This is taking its toll on me, and I must say that I have lost a lot of my inspiration because of it. I think this might explain why Moose Jockey has been suffering so badly. Poor website. I guess, the thing is I haven't been learning much. Putting my new realizations in writing makes me happy.

So, here I am. I want to say thank you to all of you who over the last few months who have asked me to take some laxative. Apparently, the title to my last entry was very appropriate.

I must sincerely apologize for my lack of posting. There are several reasons why I have not posted anything in the last week, but you know what they say about excuses. So I'll spare you.

Anyway, I have been working out of Phoenix all week. The Phoenix assignment has been something that I have been looking forward to quite some time now. Now that I finally have it, I'm not sure that I like it all that well. As it turns out, I am the most junior guy in the base. Being "junior" has all sorts of perks. For example, you're always the first guy the company calls if they can't find another guy to take a flight. Even if you're rounding your fourteenth hour of being at work, you're their go-to guy. Somehow I'm not honoured.

One of the other great perks of being the most junior guy in the base, is that everyone calls you Junior. "Hey Junior, slow it down." "Come on Junior, lets get going." "Junior, can you get me a coffee?" "Junior, get that walk-around." "Run the checklist Junior." Junior, Junior, Junior. Ah! I have dreams in the night about it. They are the kind of creepy montage dreams where peoples faces fade in and out and they are all calling me junior and they sound like ghosts.

Another benefit of being the FNG (I wont spell it out, but the last two letters stand for New Guy). All the flight attendants take it upon themselves to make sure they remind you that you're new. The Captain can have a super hard landing, and no one says a word. If I have a mildly rough landing, I have two girls in my ears, "Wow, did you break the plane?" "Did we get shot down?" Blah, blah, blah.

There is one other thing that really makes me happy. It's the great overnights that I get as "Junior." I always tend to get eleven-hour overnights. Which may sound like a decent amount of time, but when you think about it, we have to clean up the plane after we're done, and then check it out to make sure it's not broken. Then we have to find our way outside the airport. Then a van ride to the hotel. Then check in. Then at least an hour to go and get some dinner. Then getting settled in the hotel room. Then iron my uniform of the next day. Then get to sleep. Then wake up an hour and a half before the ride to the airport. It works out to about five to six hours of sleep.

So last night, when I was flying back into Phoenix from Oakland I was rounding my fourteenth hour of being at work (another perk). I got a little behind the ball on the approach, and I got a little too slow. Not a lot too slow, but a little. Obviously tired, and fighting with the plane a bit, the Captain looks at me and says, "Hey Junior, you're a little slow." Yeah, thanks.