Dima’s Corner

I have been meaning to visit California for a long time now and finally all the stars have aligned - I found cheap tickets, Doug was going to be in town that weekend, and I could use the trip to get out of the Iowa cold and earn my last segment to get the Skyteam Medallion status with Delta for next year.

I spent  first night with Andrew in Newport Beach, just south of Los Angeles. We used to play soccer together in high school and have not really been in touch since then so it was nice to finally catch up. We started off the evening by riding a tandem bike to Fuji Yama for some sushi. Afterward we were joined by some of his friends for a glorious night of bar hopping next to the Newport Pier. Needless to say, the bike ride back was quite a challenge!

Next day I met up with my friend Doug and his girlfriend to drive down to San Diego. Since it was Doug’s birthday earlier that week, we decided to celebrate by going sushi bar hopping. We first got some dinner at Hive Sushi Lounge and it was some of the best sushi I have ever had, and cheap too during their happy hour (seaweed salad - $2.99, sushi pieces - $0.99, sushi rolls - $2.99 and so on) - our bill for three people was $34 . That included multiple appetizers, sake, and dessert! The only thing I was not impressed with was the white tuna - it tasted somewhat different from what I am used to, but oh well. Next, we made stops at RA Sushi, Sushi Deli, Wonder Sushi Plus, Katsu Sushi, and finally made it to the Gasslamp (party) Quarter. To be honest, we were not very impressed with our choices there. We walked around for a bit, then checked out Jimmy Love’s and rounded the night up at the Shout House piano lounge It was raining pretty hard on the way back to our hotel so we were all soaked and cold by the time we got back to our Days Inn.

Next day the weather finally cleared up and spent most of the day at the famous San Diego zoo (supposedly the best in the country). I did like it and there were a lot of animals. The layout of the park was kind of confusing thou. I still think the themed exhibits at the Omaha zoo were the best when we visited a couple years ago.

Once it got darker, we went to the Harbor Island to watch the Christmas boat parade of lights. It was actually really cool to see how some of the people decked out their powerboats, yachts, sailboats, and even a giant clipper. On top of that, many had music blazing and people dressed up in Christmas outfits causing spectators on shore to break out in cheers.

Afterward Doug had to drive back up to Ventura so I went to get my rental car and was pleasantly surprised to see that I was upgraded to a convertible Mustang, just in time for better weather. I went back to Hive Sushi Lounge to take advantage of their happy hour all day Sunday deal and then crashed at my hotel room for the night.

I spent the last half a day by driving around San Diego with my top down basking in the sunshine. First, I had some breakfast at Mimi’s cafe, which I was lead to believe would be a french pastry cafe, but instead turned out to be more of an IHOP with no pastry for desert. Oh well, I will know better next time. After breakfast, I drove around the harbor, the downtown, and crossed over to the Coronado island. It kind of reminded me of southern Florida - sunshine, palm trees, sky high gas prices… I definitely miss that (minus the gas prices).

I could not make it out for the Air and Water Show in Chicago last year so I made sure to go and check it out this weekend. I met up with a few couchsurfers at the restaurant at the top of Hancock Tower to grab some food and watch the show. Unfortunately we were seated on the other side of the building, away from all the action. After we were finished with our way overpriced buffet, we strolled along the Lakeshore Drive past the North Avenue beach to the Linkoln park. There we finally settled down and watched the rest of the show with some more people. We got to see performances by and Aeroshell and Lima Lima aerobatic teams, the Leap Frogs and the Golden Knights parachuting teams, Air Force’s F15, F16, and A-10 and of course the Thunderbirds.

Once the show was over I walked back to the Navy Pier, had some ice cream and rode a bus back to the Millenium Park. From there I walked over to Exchequer to have some pizza. Since I still had an hour to burn, I decide to ride the L - the famous elevated subway system in downtown Chicago which I saw in the movies while growing up. It was not anything too special, more of sentimental value I guess.

On Sunday Tommy and Justin drove over and we hit up Six Flags Great America theme park. Right away we got in line for the Superman ride where you are riding facing down as if you are flying, similar to Mantra we rode at Seaworld. The ride was good but it took us an hour and a half in line so once we were done we went out and got ourselves a flash pass so we can skip the lines for the rest of the day. Right away we jumped on the Iron Wolf, a stand up coaster, followed by a 200 foot drop on the appropriately named Giant Drop. Next it was time do go for a few loops on the Demon.

Unfortunately, our luck ran out at that point and it started to rain, shutting down the coasters one after another so we spent the next half hour wondering from one end of the park to another in a fruitless search for a ride. We ended up riding the American Eagle wooden coaster and finished up with the indoor Dark Knight Coaster, neither of which I liked very much. On the way home our GPS decided to take us on a more scenic route across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin which was a thrill ride of its own, especially after the sunset.

Lessons Learned:

• Metra has an all-you-can-ride weekend pass for $5.
• All day CTA pass good for subway and buses is $5.75, available at CVS around town.
• Bus 124 goes from Union Station to the Navy Pier
• Bus 121 goes from Union Station up Michigan Avenue past Hancock tower to the North Ave Beach.
• Flash pass is the way to go. Otherwise you can spend all day waiting in lines.

As a Christmas present to myself, I signed up for the Airline Training Orientation Program (ATOP). In a nutshell, it is a quick one day crash course covering the Boeing 737-800 systems followed by some hands on practice on a flight training device and the Level D flight simulator at the Continental Airlines training center in Houston. Due to its popularity, I did not get a slot until the end of July when I signed up in December. Finally, this was the weekend to do it!

There were eight of us in the class, some current pilots, some that have not flown in a long time, and a dad/son pair from Puerto Rico that were not pilots, but have built a full Boeing 727 simulator basically in their garage, complete with either original or Boeing manufactured parts. We spent the entire day in the classroom going through each system on the airplane including normal and emergency operations, flight deck flows and checklists. It trully felt like we were drinking getting hosed from a fire hose - even during the lunch we were going over the ATOP flight profile we would be executing later in the simulator.

After we were done with the theory part, half of us jumped on a wooden replica of the flight deck with a few switches and leverels and pictures in place of the rest of the instruments and buttons. We used the Wooden Indian to practice the flight profile we would be doing in the simulator later. The purpose of the device is for the crew to get used to the location of the equipment and go through the appropriate call outs. The flight profile essentially was a takeoff from San Francicso runway 28R, climb up to 4,000 feet, turn downwind and shoot an ILS approach back to 28R executing a touch-and-go on the runway, followed by another ILS approach. This would give each one of us a chance to fly as the captain and as a first officer - trully two different experiences.

After an hour we switched with the other group and jumped on the flight training device that had the real flight deck setup but no outside or motion simulation. We used the FTD to practice our preflight and start up sequence flows. As we were taught, 80% of getting the aircraft ready is setting all the switches and knobs that could be set to AUTO to that setting. The other 20% comes from fiddling with the rest of the switches until all the amber lights extinguish on the flight deck. Pretty simple, eh?

Next day it was time to get down and dirty and log some time in the Level D sim. It is a full motion aircraft simulator that also provides video simulation of the environment outside the airplane. It is so real that the pilots can be (and most are) type rated to fly the airplane without ever flying the actual thing. The saying goes that the first time a Continental pilot flies a real 737 is when there are 150 people strapped in behind him. At $800 per hour it is not cheap, but still is much, much cheaper than flying the real thing.

My training partner Darrel was the first one to fly as a captain from the left seat. I was the first officer manning the right seat. There is a simple division of responsibilities between the pilot flying and pilot monitoring - PF flies the airplane, PM does everything else including taking care of the majority of tasks when there is an anomaly or an emergency. Right off the bat, on climb out, I had to deal with a failure of the right engine driven hydraulic pump. That was followed by a wheel well fire.

Once Darrel’s time was up, we switched seats and now I was the pilot in command of the 150,000 pounds of parts and people rushing down the runway. As we accelerated past eighty knots, the engine fire alarm went off. Since we were below V1, I called for aborted takeoff, cut the power and got on the brakes while trying to keep the aircraft moving down the centerline. At the same time, first officer Darrel was busy contacting the air traffic control and extinguishing the engine fire while being hustled by the instructor. Here is the video of this ordeal taking from the back of the simulator:

After we changed into a set of dry underwear and reset the simulator, we were on a climb out when the right engine decided to quit. Those 150,000 pounds do some funky things when there aint no more power on one of the sides. However, thanks to the auto restart technology, we had the bad boy back up and running momentarily. My landings were nothing to write home about. The picture from the 737 filght deck sure looks different than when I fly a Skyhawk resulting in a late flare and associated jumping down the runway. My session finished off with an ILS category III auto landing with 50 feet visibility. At least that one was right on the needles

While in Houston, I met up with two groups of couchsurfers and their friends. First, we got together at Beaver’s on Friday with Marsha, Ana, John, and many more people. It was a good time spent talking about traveling, salsa dancing, tasting some Texas BBQ and just having a good laugh. On Sunday after the sim I met up with Maria, Frank, Liz and their friends for a tour of the Beer Can House and a quick burrito lunch at the Freebirds before I had to get on my way back to the airport.

Allegiant Air was running another promo for flights to Florida and there was a Thursday flight down to Orlando for $29 and returning flight on Sunday for $69. That indeed was the perfect excuse so I rounded up a couple of my friends and off we went. We got there late Thursday night and went to Daytona Beach to stay with my friend Aleksey at a house across the road from the beach.

On Friday we went to the beach for a bit and then I took my friends on a grand tour of Daytona and my school. Afterwards we got back together with Aleksey and his roommate to go down to Ponce Inlet for some grilling, swimming, and volleyball action. As usual, I got eaten alive by the bugs down there and next morning was covered in red bite marks all over. Talking about next morning, we walk up early on Saturday and drove down to Orlando to visit Aquatica and SeaWorld.

Aquatica turned out to be somewhat of a disapointment. It is hyped up to be a great park, built by none else but SeaWorld; however, there are very few rides and some of the park design is seriously flawed. The road leading to the entry gates splits at one point and even though the signs say that all lanes are open for all cars, most people get confused and go to the right of the split creating a traffic jam while the three or four lanes to the left of the split are completely empty. Another cool idea turned into a horrible experience is the entrance to the funnel slides (Tassie’s Twisters). To get in line, one must first get into the lazy river, get the tube, and then float down to the ride entrance. By the time we got there, the queue was overflowing into the lazy river and there was such a scramble for tubes at the entrance to the lazy river that we just turned around and left. We did ride the rest of the rides and there were not that impressive either. I guess the most fun one was the Wahanau Way. It also helped that there were four slides there so the queue was moving along quite fast.

Afterwards we went to Seaworld and were able to catch most of the shows starting with the new A’lure, then Believe, Clyde and Seamore, and Sea lions Tonight. In-between the shows we explored the Shark Encounter, Wild Arctic, Penguin Encounter, and the Pacific Pointe Reserve with sea lions and harbor seals. We finished up by riding the Kraken, getting wet at the Journey to Atlantis ride and followed it up by the new Mantra ride. Even though it took us an hour to get on Mantra, it was awesome. The twists and turns felt like we were flying in a jet fighter. And to top it off, the fireworks started going off just when we were going through the last loops. It was an amazing sight!

Afterwards we stopped by at the Margaritaville at Universal City Walk for some dinner and drinks. Next day we did not have much time before our flight back so we just hit up the beach for the last time and then Aleksey’s roommate Kenny drove us back to the airport. Another good weekend in Florida! Unfortunately, none of us remembered to bring our cameras so no cool pictures this time around…

The rainy weather on Saturday caused us to cancel the paintball outing, but the rain did not last long so we decided to take another road trip. This was a quick one to the nearby Amana colonies trying to find the giant chair.  We finally spotted it in West Amana and it was trully giant so we wasted no time taking some pictures and then checking out the crafts store next to it. On the way back we stopped at the main colony and I got some good cheese and a bottle of super sweet plum wine at the Heritage Wine and Cheese store as well as some fudge from the Chocolate Haus. Too bad the meat shop and the bakery were already closed :(.

 Before the Giant Chair hunt, Trevor, Chris, and myself stopped by at a gun show. I wanted to check out some pistols while they were more insterested in rifles so at some point we lost each other but it was all good. I have seen many recommendations on the net for Springfield Armory’s XD subcompact as a decent choice for concealed carry that also allows for a bigger magazine with better grip for big hands. I did get to check one out and it was not bad, but aparently you must have a really, really good reason to get a concealed carry permit in Iowa. Since that is not an option for me, I figured I might as well just get a normal size gun. Out of all the guns, I really liked the feel of XDm 9mm gun and I think that’s the one I will end up going with. I am still considering Sig Sauer P226 (the choice of the SAS and many other law enforment agencies), but it cost twice as much as the XD so that would be a tough one.