Category: Air travel

Friday mornin’ comin’ down

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Leaving on a jet plane. Not Herself, but it will do
for purposes of illustration.

Herself is out of town, and Miss Mia and I are out of sorts.

Ours is a fragile ecosystem, especially Miss Mia’s little corner of it. You give her output, she’ll give you input, and plenty of it, especially if she catches you napping on the job.

“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwww!”

“Hold my calls, stand by, and await further instructions.”

As Nick Nolte told Frank McRae in “48 Hrs,” “Yeah, I hear you, your voice carries.”

When we’re fully staffed, Herself takes the early shift. She gets up at stupid-thirty, feeds and waters and amuses Her Majesty, and then goes about her business while Miss Mia takes a nap.

I get the second shift, which starts a couple hours later. I feed and water and amuse Her Majesty, and then go about my business while Miss Mia takes a nap.

Then we tag team the rest of the day, which is mostly a breeze because hey, she’s a cat. Miss Mia requires about 20 hours of beauty sleep per diem.

But if one of us goes somewhere for a few days, it’s Katie bar the door. Double shifts, weird hours, and negative performance reviews. My first writeup came around 3 this morning.

“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwww!”

It’s gonna be a long shift in the barrel. “Yeah, I hear you, your voice carries.”

Bogey over ’Burque

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Coloring between the lines.

This dude did not get shot down by the Pentagon, though his flight path took him dangerously close to the super-secret Mad Dog Media Institute for Gratuitous Bloggery.

• Saturday update: Jeebus. Now the Blue Zoomies have shot down another floater, this time over Canada. This is a slightly more expensive version of the old flaming bag of dogshit on the stoop. Whoever wants one is getting an up-close-and-personal look at a U.S. fighter aircraft that entered service about the same time as my Subaru.

The devil you say

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
“Thank you for calling Satan. Your call is important to the Dark Lord.
Please continue to hold.”

The photo above is probably not of Hell rising, but rather a reflection of the heat boiling up from the unwashed brows of the uncounted hordes of angry travelers camped out in airports nationwide, watching through reddening eyes as flights are canceled faster than mouthy white guys, enduring the endless repetition of tinny holiday tunes while on perma-hold with customer service, and wondering if their gastrointestinal systems can survive another Happy Meal that is anything but.

So, yeah. Maybe Hell rising after all.

Above it all

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Now that’s what I call getting some big air.
The view from the Candelaria Bench Trail is pretty spectacular. I can only imagine what it’s like a few hundred feet above it.

Herself and I were slouched on the back patio at El Rancho Pendejo, airing the cat, birdwatching, and enjoying our respective tasty beverages when I spotted a rara avis over the Sandias.

We haven’t seen many aeronauts this year, not since The Bug® came to town. This one was definitely not making a maiden voyage — he or she stayed aloft for the better part of quite some time, cutting didos above the Candelaria Bench Trail.

Apologies for the poor image quality. I sold my Canon DSLR a while back and the point-and-shoot I grabbed just can’t bring ’em back alive from a distance.

 

One more for the road

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Anybody up for a cold one?

I hope the hummingbirds like their sugar water on the rocks.

The last couple days must’ve been an unpleasant surprise for the little buzzbombs.

“Goddamn it, Rufous, I told you we should’ve split for Acapulco last week! I’m freezing my tailfeathers off!”

Could be worse. Could be in Bibleburg, where Thursday’s low tied a 122-year-old record. Up there the hummers are wearing merino-wool longjohns and watch caps.