Alrighty then.
The engines are revving up at work. Our field campaign is already starting to unfold, with the planes out in California for the instrument uploading and test flights. I'll take off for Alaska in about 10 days to join them all out there. My co-workers are getting slightly stressed. Today, WB, who is more or less running this whole show, came in to my office to make sure I was ready to run some of the visualization tools during flight planning.
Me: "Do what?"
Him: (stare).
Me: "ok, got it."
Apparently, the approach here is to nod and remain calm and pretend that I knew all along what I was meant to be doing. He apologized later for being harried. "You're not much hairier than usual" I responded. He didn't even flinch. He's stressed.
All was fine until he started describing the report I would draw up for the navigator after each planning meeting (almost daily).
Me: "The navigator, as in a pilot?"
Him: "Yes."
(silence)
Me:"Are you telling me I am going to be responsible for telling the plane where we want it to be FLYING?"
Him: (smile)
Me: (thinking): Holy CR*P!!
My mom and I had a good rip-roaring laugh over this one. When you hear of the international incident where a government research plane blunders over into Russian air space or runs out of fuel over the arctic ice pack, imagine me in all my insecurity putting together a job resume. I knit, remember.
4 comments:
Oh my. :-D
If it were me in your position, I'd be packing some Cabernet for the trip.
Hey, I called you back immediately today and you never answered. You must have been busy filing flight plans.
Oh! Thanks for de-lurking! How else did you expect me to find you? Maybe you could take a detour here and pick me up so I could go with you to Fairbanks? I wouldn't worry too much about that international airspace, Fairbanks is only in the middle of the whole state, well, I suppose it's sort of near Canada, the way Minnesota is near the ocean. Anwyho, I will send you an email about your requests shortly, I just wanted to pop by and say hi!
Hello wayfarer!! Thanks for stopping by...
We're running a DC8 out of Fairbanks all over the arctic up there - it's got a pretty large range (we'll do at least one sorte to Thule, Greenland).
So the possibility of running into Russian airspace is there - theoretically at least.
I'm tongue-in-cheek really, since I pass on our waypoints to the navigator and he refines the flight plan. There won't be an international incident, and my part in the flight planning is very minor. But it makes for a good blog post. :-b
Mostly, I'll be sitting in Fairbanks and doing my chemical modeling to make sure the various measurements make sense together. I'm really hoping I can take at least part of a day to sight-see (no car, though).
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