I’ve been traveling and working since the 13th of the month and now I am home for the next threee days,  Wednesday evening anyway then I fly back to Mobile, Alabama where the 604 Challenger is located and then work for the next few days flying between Boca Raton, Florida and Teterboro, New Jersey (private airport everyone flies into when going to NYC).  It is a lot of work..even though my work is fun, it’s still work damn it!  HERE’S the thing about traveling for a living and flying - you feel like you’re living your life in a bubble..suddenly the world outside stops.   It’s easy to forget the news, it’s easy to forget our country is trying to elect it’s first female president or it’s first black president…it’s easy for people to forget you when your gone and not around…it’s easy for your friends to stop calling because you’re never home.  I try to schedule dinners with friends when I’m home, I have to - that’s what I’m deduced to.  My true friends…the one’s who will be with me for the rest of my life respond immediately with their schedule as Celeste and Courtney did, “I’m free all week just let me know when you’re in town.”  Those are the friends that love me for who I am and the person I strive to be…the friends who will stay around, pass me my teeth and bring up random bad Walmart panties like, “Who needs Santa when you’ve got credit cards.” those are the friends I adore, I’ve truly wiped shit off their stiletto’s and unraveled their bra staps.  Traveling is wonderful - I’m really getting paid to see the world but without being able to connect with my loved one’s it means nothing. 

Yes, this is a sappy post and not very poetic (two in a row), i’m rather somber as my sister just lost her niece (her brother-in-law’s daughter) to a brain tumor…they only learned of this tumor in September…about the time I made a career change.  Mary Claire and my niece Karenna are the same age.   Carlin, my sister,  and I raised money for The Magic Foundation during the Philadelphia Marathon in November of 2006 **she was born with a rare condition - born w/o a pituitary gland**  Mary-Claire left the physical world Thursday.  I alone can’t imagine what this is doing to Christine and Mike, my sister’s brother and sister in law.  I know the pain I wanted to steal on a daily basis and take it as my own after watcing my sister understand and learn of a rare condition with her own child.  Sometimes the Lord has a twisted way of teaching us lessons…and sometimes…I just don’t understand the WHY.

 NOW LET’S GET BACK TO THE REGULARLY SCHEDULED READING

Saturday March 22nd- Mobile to Cabo - Laredo to Mobile

Fly empty to mobile FBO downtown and pick up 8 passengers, bag of red skittles (yes all other colors had been removed), jolly ranchers, assorted breakfast foods, 2 bottles of Riesling, grape soda, one In Style Magazine, (1) Oprah mag, (1) Ebony mag and 2 breakfast omeletsThe three hour flight was an easy one. My passengers included a man involved in the investment banking world, his beautiful and down to Earth wife, their two daughters (9 and 11), in laws and two Great Aunt’s.I’ve enjoyed flying with Matt and Zach (the pilots) tremendously; we are roughly around the same age.  Both of these pilots are married to great gals but as fun and humor has it we’ve grown to be comfortable with one another and say the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate moments 

In the last five days I’ve played a few jokes on the pilots… like having birthday cake delivered to dinner, placing a booster seat in their chair when they leave the dinner table to use the rest room and faking them out by telling them Kelly Ripa just completely undressed in the back of the plane.  I’m all about an eye for an eye and knew I was I due for a good payback. 

“Accidentally” my garment bag was left outside close to the fusel loge and a small bit of jet fuel leaked on to it.  This truly was an accident; my bag wasn’t the only one to smell of jet fuel as we were concerned of coming back through customs and being tagged by the FAA.  However, it was also an accident when I was talking to Zach and Matt in the cock pit while opening a can of Sprite Zero and watched in slow motion as it exploded it all over the PIC (pilot in command), myself and the ceiling of the cockpit.  Luckily, it did not get on any of the controls or computer run instruments.  After we were sure to wipe the up all the Sprite I returned to the cock pit and unknowingly said a loaded statement,

J: “I’m cold now that I’m all wet,” the moment it left my mouth I saw the smile on both their faces.
M: “Can you say that again but say that you’re warm?”
Z: “Yeah, and do you know any accents.”

This is the type of relationship/friendship I have with most of the pilots I choose to fly with.  We tease and say many inappropriate things all in good fun.

It certainly makes going through customs a lot more fun.

“Mám did you bring anything you need to declare?”

“I wanted to but he wouldn’t come” 

F.Y.I. _ The guy I left in Arizona and met up with yet again in Dubai – is no longer in the picture.  I realized after a few days with him in Dubai that everything was forced…everything just felt off and that is nothing I want.  He lost his temper and I told him to get out and not turn around because I’ll be looking the other direction.

Written Friday March 21, 2008 

In the past week alone I’ve been in three different countries, high fived 12 kids under 10, been drunk off champagne and pina colada’s once in Cancun and once in St. John’s, heard of one marriage that will go the extra mile, heard stories of another one learning the ropes, talked Mr. Willing into coming to visit, spoke to a famous south jersey girl as though we had been life long friends and joked with her mother-in-law then called them cheap to the pilots, worked out so hard I wanted to puke, cried in bed over the loss of my sister’s niece, almost ran over a pack of wild turkey’s in Boston, spent to much money at the mall in mobile, Alabama,  touched down in 9 different states, had birthday cake delivered to a pilot while we were in st. John’s, rode a Hobe sailboat with a native islander (in st. John’s), received a massage that produced bruises on my back at a resort over looking the water, visited st. Lucia where my cab driver almost hit a few goat’s in the road, laughed at a pilot as he and I were watching Entourage on the jet he said, “Man what a life they have!” Then I pointed out  we were on a private jet with the other pilot flying with our feet up and resting comfortably….yeah, what a life since we just got paid to spend a night in Cancun and the next night in St. John’s at lavish resorts. But in the same token, they aren’t MY trips I get to schedule with MY friends – they are someone else’s….as my Mother said, “You get the honeymoon without the man.”
What I’m trying really hard to not do on this trip is feel lonely. I miss my friends and family - I’m home Sunday through Wednesday this week. I have friends I haven’t seen in over four months and others I’ve simply lost touch with - and then there’s friends like my Lindsey in Australia I speak with daily - even though we are continents away from one another she’s always right here with me. I haven’t even seen my boyfriend in a month and now he’s committed to visit for the brief time while I’m home **Cancel that since I wrote this I had to postpone his trip to meet me in Chicago on the 30^th.  I’m trying hard not to think of how I’m going to miss one of my best friends baby shower’s this Saturday or how I’m going to miss my God Father’s funeral service next Sunday by a few hours in Chicago since we have an early charter that morning, but I be there a few hours after and that alone would have meant a lot to him.  AND, I’m trying hard to figure out just how I break the news to Casey that I won’t be able to make her shower - I’m trying even harder not to think about my cat, Jo being tortured by neighbor.I write this all with a heavy heart and deep appreciation for all the things I truly am blessed with in this world, knowing I’ll sit across the table from my sister and parent’s next week and be able to go out with my cousin in Manhattan…cause I’ll be there for work and will make the pilots come with me….ya know since we’re flying a trip to Ireland next month.

In all seriousness though I will, for my own memoirs keep better tabs on my travels and upload photos and the zany things that occur - rest assured there is much craziness - like the time Matt (a pilot) and I were watching a movie while flying back from Colorado and Zach, the other pilot, turned all the lights off and walked into the cabin with an oxygen mask and a fire hood over his face while coming at me like a character from the Blue Lagoon - that’s the good stuff. Luckily, the pilots I choose to fly with are just as witty, wacky and a wee bit off as yours truly.

Okay - wheels up - gotta jet.

All my love,
Jess

I’ve often wondered why the world works in certain ways and why certain people are like balls in a pin ball machine popping up in the most unplanned places. Is it a connection between two people that drawls them together? How is it that within one week you run into someone at the grocery store, dry cleaners and across town at a smashing new restaurant? They aren’t stalking you, nor you them.  So what is it that brings people together over and over? Is it a natural willing of wanting to see the person again or perhaps, the universe’s way of willing fate when human judgment is not to be trusted.  I once ran into a girlfriend at a bar in another state.  Once while texting with my Favorite Ex-boyfriend we both realized he and I had layovers at the Vegas airport and were sitting a mere 50 feet away from one another at the bar.  On a recent trip to NYC my dear friend Kristina literally bumped into a friend who moved there last June in the middle of lounge. 

So, what is it that continually brings two people together?  Gamma Rays?

Thanks to Ambien and my new favorite airline, United Arab Emirates, I arrived on a direct flight from Houston to Dubai in roughly 16 hours.  After making my rounds with T- mobile and gaining full functionality of my phone I hopped in a cab and headed off to the hotel.  Everything in Dubai is bigger – the world is louder and the air is dustier. It’s the type of loud that erupts after an explosion leaving people running for shelter.

The hotel was grand and I do mean grand with windows touching the sky making me realize Texas skies are midgets to the ones in front of me. I was already starting to like the company that flew me out there strictly for their taste in proper amenities. After checking in and unloading my bags I went to ask the front desk about changing foreign currency.  While talking to the clerks a Saudi man dressed in a floor length thwab (sheet) began chatting with me and welcomed me to Dubai.  Now, quite frankly I’m not certain if he desired to trade me for camels (as happened to another flight attendant friend of mine while she was in Egypt) or if he wanted to take me home to Saudi so I could become his sex slave; regardless of his intentions I accepted his offer for a drink. My mother always told me I had more guts than brains but I figured not much harm could come to me in a hotel bar.  One drink into learning of his Saudi customs, “you must cover arms,” and “you American woman sure do… how do you say?” He then pointed to his chest, “You mean cleavage?”  This began a barrage of banter of learning cultural lingo.  He referred to male anatomy as an “elephant” and I asked him where I could find that man because that’s not an American man. He laughed and I sipped my vodka.

An hour later I had left my disparate Saudi friend and was sitting comfortably at “the best steak house in all of Dubai” according to the pamphlets I read with the Pilot in Command (PIC) and we were toasting to the start of a wonderful trip.  Two bottles of wine and a cup of coffee spiced with Bailey’s later I returned to my hotel room when the man I left last October in Arizona walked through the door.

There was a man delegated to the other side of the world I left once on a starry Arizona night back in October.  He was home from Iraq for a “rest and recuperation” from KBR/Halliburton (worst company ever btw).   I had enough, enough of knowing that he’s not what I want and left on a shuttle the morning after a long drawn out night of back and forth going nowhere. In a fit of anger he told me to leave, when he woke the next morning my bags were packed, a shuttle service was booked, paid for and departed in four hours.  Stall tactics were set in place…we had to go get coffee, we had to go to the hardware store, we had to stop at the mall so he could buy cologne and I had to make sure I made the shuttle.

Days later we talked and apologized to one another knowing it would be four more months till we were able to meet again.  He was returning to Iraq and I to Houston, longing set in wishing the days in Arizona had played out differently. “I really want to see you again,” he’d say while sitting pool side at Saddam’s Palace, “I’m sorry the way things turned out and then he’d begin to blame me for causing a stir.  “Well had you not up and left, had we talked about it,” then he’d detail how he would have liked our past to play out.  After all, I had indeed passed the parent test with wings to spare.  “They really liked you,” he said, “and my Dad thinks I should hold on to you…..you’re not like the other girls I’ve dated.”  I’d take that in the literal sense not knowing if that was an insult or a sincere compliment.  We decided to give it another try, go another round, “I care a lot about you, so much it’s hard to be away.”  Plans were set to meet in Australia come February on his next R&R.  My sister of the Heart is there after all and it would be combining the best of both worlds, or so I was hoping.

  October breezed by and November hit hard, we began fighting and not fully understanding one another.  He was quitting smoking and I was making a career change, both proved too much to handle. He said wretched things and I let go. Hadn’t I already dated “the choker” and I wasn’t about to allow an abusive relationship again.  However, in typical stupid female fashion I rationalized his anger and used the displacement theory if only, because he is in a war zone.  I forgave him, in my heart but never forgave in my head.

Fast forward to February when the week arrives we were to travel to Australia together.  It was to be a reunion, me with my wit and wishful thinking and he armed with desire and wanting to right a wrong.  (**Sidenote – KBR flies all contract employees to Dubai as an entrance/exit point for their over sea contracts and he is fire fighter for KBR**).  After he arrived in Dubai, on his way to Australia, he texted, then called and we bantered back and forth yet again…not going anywhere.  I told him briefly of my travels and someone new I have been dating for quite some time now. “If you really cared you wouldn’t have met anyone else,” he said to me through a vodka induced reaction, “I was falling in love with you.”  I fought back laughter in a you don’t even know me sense and counteracted his pleading, “we stopped talking…and we did so for a reason.”   He’d get on the plane to leave for Australia and I’d go for a very  long run knowing he was “hooking up” with a girl in Australia. 

A week later, Wednesday morning, I woke to the below email

“Jessica-   please give me a call when you awake.  i’ll be out of touch from 8am – 1130am eastern, but will be available after.   on a quick note, we’re doing a trip from Dubai to bahrain to london and london to new york.  the trip begins on friday, and you’d have to leave today..  please let me know by email prior to your call.”  

After I accepted the trip a text was sent haphazardly not knowing how it would be percieved.  The universe was indeed playing a cruel joke on me and I was inclined to beat it to the punch line.

“Are you in Australia still, Dubai or on your way back to Iraq?”

“In Sydney, I get to Dubai Friday morning.”

“Really…. I’ll be in Dubai Thursday night through Sunday.”

…To be continued