bepps

No folks, I'm not on vacation. For those who don't know my mom works for an airline. She is currently breaking up with her husband (my dad died 7 years ago and she married shortly afterward to this guy) and doesn't want him and his kids flying on her passes so she made me her travel companion. They don't have like spouse er anything, they have a travel companion so you don't have to be married to fly with someone. It can be a gay boyfriend, lesbian girlfriend, chick you met at the local bar last night, husband, wife, your son, anyone. She put me on as that so now I fly anywhere locally or internationally with no reservation and for free. I wanted to see how well it would work with minimal notice, what problems I would face and how difficult it would be to overcome them if I was ever in a situation where I needed to get somewhere with minimal notice.

I saw that The Aquabats were playing in Austin and decided to fly down tand see if MamaBunny wanted to go along. I thought it was a pretty safe assumption that she would. There was one flight at 1am left and it was pretty full. The downside to being able to fly anywhere on the globe for free is I have to fly standby. If everyone buys tickets to fly on that flight and they all show up I don't get to fly. I can only fly in seats that would have otherwise gone empty. What's more, there's other people who fly places standby too. There's one reason and one reason alone that people (pilots excluded) work for an airline and that's cause they, and their friends get to fly free. You don't get paid very much, but you get LOTS of friends and people willing to do stuff for you.

Had I not made that flight it's doubtful that I would have had enough time to get there, say hi to everyone, get some sleep, and get down to see the show so I figured if I didn't make that flight I'd just cancel it and do what I was gonna do before I decided to embark on these crazy shenanigans.

I did, however, make the flight into Houston no problem(Continental is based in Houston and always files into there or Newark regardless of where you're going). The flight to Austin was also not a problem. Once there I found that Mamabunny had gone to visit her family back in Houston. So, back to Houston it was. By the time I had got into Houston, it was 3pm and I had been up all night and was exhausted. I figured I'd get home and get some riding in to make something of the weekend. After one last futile attempt to call MamaBunny I got some kick ass cajun food and got on the plane back to Ontario. Walked back to work where I left my truck (I work less than a mile from the airport) and drove home and slept like a mad man.

Woke up, went to Beaumont, busted some doubles (meaning rode motorcycles over jumps for those who don't know), and got even more cajun food before going home and doin' a whoooole hell of a lot of sleepin'. All in all a thorough and exhausting, yet most productive weekend.

Next up, tomorrow, head down and get my passport. While I CAN fly anywhere, not without that lil guy. It's an integral part of the international flying process.