In the face of a 13 hour work-day, three hours of sleep is just as useless as two.
No matter how tired I am, or what aids I've ingested (save Ambien, which I haven't had a prescription for in years, and quite frankly I'm scared to take alone on a layover) my body refuses to sleep before 1am, and the very latest I could possibly have slept was 4:30.
I figured since I was going to be exhausted anyway, better not to feel exhausted and fat. Thus I was up at three to workout.
The combination of exercise-induced endorphins and nourishment from the kind hotel breakfast mistress, who set out a few items for bleary eyed crews working before 5, had me feeling pretty good until about 10am.
We got out of Miami a few minutes early, and the passenger loads were mercifully light. As we approached storm-wracked Texas however, the ride got bumpier and bumpier.
The real turbulence hit when we landed in Houston and got out into the terminal.
The departure boards blinked with delays and cancellations. The lines at the service center wrapped back and forth like a pack of disgruntled Ramen noodles. Hurricane Dolly was getter revenge for being downgraded to "Tropical Storm" by backing up our entire route map.
We were among the luckier crews, and only delayed two hours.
Our plane, ironically enough, was late coming in from Washington DC, where I hoped to be headed tonight.
Once we got out of Houston, it was a quick 27 min flight to Austin (yet we still pulled out the barcart and did a full service). Then it was an even quicker turnaround, where we somehow managed to load up a full 737 and get out one minute before our scheduled wheels-up time, which if we had missed Air Traffic Control would have moved us to the end of the line.
By now I was running strictly on our mediocre coffee and a protien bar I bought yesterday.
We landed, waited for a gate, and eventually made it off by 6:25pm. I scurried to the board and saw that the 4:14 to Baltimore was delayed until 6:30. I was tempted to run for it, but I really wanted to go to my car and switch out my trip stuff for going home stuff and it looked like the 7:15 to Washington was on time.
So, waiting for the bus to employee lot I called scheduling to block in from my trip and be released to my days off.
I'm usually on hold for some time waiting to speak to a scheduler, but once you get through, he or she is usually pretty brisk. Today however, it was taking a suspiciously long time and an awful lot of computer key clicking to just let me go home.
Because they didn't.
They rolled my day off (yes that's legal), and I have an Orlando turn tomorrow.
So now, instead of Friday through Monday off, I've got Saturday through Tuesday. I'm supposed to be cohosting a Murder-Mystery party on Saturday, I'm not at all prepared, and now I'm not even sure I'll be in town until Saturday afternoon!
My trip tomorrow is scheduled to be over at 7:18. So that leaves me the (mostly likely delayed) 7:15 to DCA, an 8:30 to BWI and the questionable 9:30 to DCA on a little Regional Jets operated by our ezxpress carrier and that gets cancelled if someone sneezes too hard.
Still, I'm just glad I hadn't run for the Baltimore flight and got this news out on the runway.
So I made the best of being grounded for the night, and went for a bike ride.
According to my calculations, with gas averaging $4 a gallon, and my car getting about 21 miles per gallon in stop-and-go-then -stop local driving, to recoup my expenditure, I would need to bike instead of drive approximately 709 miles.
If you consider the defrayed wear and tear on the car and the cost of routine upkeep (and what better time to consider such costs than when justifying luxury spending), the necessary milage could even drop into the 690s.
On my layover, I had Googled the distances to my "Holy Trinity" (the bookstore, the gym and the grocery) as well as Peggy's house and Church, and discovered thatSunday alone I had biked, not driven, over 7 miles.
I think I'll keep a record of my driving diet for encouragement.
I also researched some alternative routes to the avoid the busy Garden State Parkway traffic circles and test rode them tonight to Target.
Riding at night convinced me I needed a headlight for safety. So I picked one up and then found a little bell that I thought would be good to avoid sneaking up on pedestrians. I also came across a handy stopwatch-like object that computes speed and trip distance, which I thought would be terribly useful to maintain my cycling journal and see how quickly I paid myself back for the cost of the bike.....which is now about $32 more than it was yesterday.
Oh well, I'm getting killer quads.....and that's priceless.
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