Here’s an example of why I just laugh at those who seek hardships in their virtual lives in the MMOsphere:
It was bad enough they snuck some late-night arrivals into our domicile this month, and I wound up doing it twice. Same trip, back to back. This was the first one and as a result I am not looking forward to next week’s whatsoever.
We arrived in domicile from New York (at least it was a clear night, Manhattan was gorgeous) slightly over an hour after the last flight departs for home, so I’d reserved a hotel room for the night. I try to only bid schedules that are commutable but until this month I’ve only ever had to check the report times. Looks like I’ll have to check completion times from now on. My First Officer also commutes but he has a “crash pad” in domicile and offered to drive me to the hotel. His junker airport car is broken though, but one of his roommates offered to leave the keys to his car for us. The roommate forgot. Without the spare cash to afford a hotel room, my FO is stuck at the airport for the night. I gave the hotel a call and their van is broken. Now we’re both stuck at the airport!
We head up to the crew room and shove some couches together as makeshift beds and take cushions from chairs as pillows and bunk down for the night. Uncomfortable? You bet, but it’s better than nothing. Just under an hour afterwards, we heard a click or pop sound. Hmm… no one had opened the crew room door, no one else was in the airport, so what was that? We finally noticed it was a bit quieter. Uh oh! The heat just quit and it’s in the 20’s at best outside! Sure enough, the room got colder and colder. We grabbed more couch and chair cushions and piled them up on top of us to keep our own heat in. Not that it worked or anything but at least we made the effort. Eventually it was entirely too cold to even sleep, everything just started hurting. At 4:45am the first crews started arriving for the originator flights, making all kinds of noise so even if we had slept it would have come to an abrupt end then.
Starbucks opened at 6am and kept me chemically awake until my flight home at 8:10am where I took a short nap on the hour flight home.
The really sad thing? While this is a rarity for me personally, it’s not so rare in general for flight crews. The “public” thinks we live like rock stars with tons of money, girls and luxury. Yeah, we wish…
Oh, and the travel home was still meaningless. Only the destination matters…
The EQ pretenders can sit in their comfy chairs at their computers in their nice warm offices (or basements, whatever) and revel for virtual hardships all they want. I live it.
You. Are. Not. Hardcore!
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Are you trying to cast Summon Ogre or something?
The fact that travel is part of your job is like sex is to a porn star. You become desensitized to it. It’s what you do. You can get little enjoyment from it. Worse still, you’re responsible for the lives of your passengers and crew - it’s a stress on you. It isn’t a positive experience.
I will be traveling soon and I’m looking forward to it - even though I’ll lose a lot of time traveling. I look forward tol actually being able to read in peace and quiet. I might even catch a movie or two on the way - a movie I might not otherwise have been able to watch.
In the off chance that I have a co-worker seated next to me for the trip (it’s a business trip so there are a lot of co-workers booked), we’ll be able to chat, joke, talk about things and so on. I know for sure that my manager and my brother-in-law will be on the same flights, I’m just not sure where they’ll be seated.
The destination is important, but getting there is what you make of it. Put nothing into it, expect nothing out of it.
Actually I never enjoyed traveling at all. As a kid, I thoroughly enjoyed myself on the annual family vacations but I dreaded the drive to and from.
Becoming a pilot was an accident but I kept with it because I enjoy flying not traveling. I love the freedom and I love being part of a small elite clique of people with these skills. I love having the opportunity to see and do things many never will. But I despise traveling, whether by land, sea or air. I take that back, I suppose going on a cruise is also travel by sea but the ships are loaded with comforts and activities, though the majority of the actual travel is at night so during the day when most people are awake, it’s all about the destination.
Even with family, friends, loved ones… travel is rife with stress. Especially this time of year when everyone is sick and don’t even attempt to cover their mouths when coughing and sneezing all over everyone else. My girlfriend got extremely sick (had to stay home in bed for three days) because of that on her flight home from visiting family in New York.
/cast Summon: Ogre
/cast Ogre Rage (Rank 3)
Haha
Okay, so you’re one of those people that can’t relax and let go. I get like that when traveling with the family. In these cases, yeah, when I arrive, I feel better and relax a lot more.
When I’m on the road with friends (and I’ve done numerous road trips) it is completely different. It’s actually fun.
When I’m alone, yeah, the stress sometimes creeps up, but not nearly as much as when I have the wife and kids along.
p.s. my two year old gets car sick and my 4 year old has the world’s tiniest bladder.
Nah I’m all about relaxation, man! Trust me! My girlfriend will emphatically agree with that (complete with a murderous look in her eyes) haha!
I’ve done the odd road trip or two, and I was actually thinking about this post and our previous discussions on so-called “meaningful travel” this morning. Before my girlfriend and I dated, we were friends and owned a plane together. We used to fly all the time down to Sarasota, FL to visit her parents, or to NYC, Colorado, the Keys… all over the damn place. We had a lot of fun along the way, talking about all kinds of things, enjoying the sights, etc. So I asked myself “was that meaningful travel?” But I still wound up saying no. The meaning was in being with her, or my friends on road trips, not the travel. It was that social connection that contained all the meaning and would have been there whether we were on a road (or air) trip or not. Therefore I stand by my contention that travel contains no inherent meaning; it is a means to an end and we hope that the ends justify the inconvenience of the means.