Chris​Hubbs​.com

Got home last night from a quick business trip to Salt Lake City. I haven’t been to SLC since a family trip many years ago. It’s a beautiful place, and the weather was fresh and warming to spring. My co-worker and I spent 2 days in meetings before flying home. All in all, a good, worthwhile trip, uneventful flights, not bad at all. It was sure good to be home and see Becky and the girls again.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be heading out for Wisconsin to see my folks over Easter weekend. It will be good to see them again - it’s only been a few weeks, I guess, but still… the girls change so much in just a few weeks, I’m sure they’ll be amazed.

That’s the basic update from the home front. I’m debating pre-buying (and then downloading) the new Derek Webb album (on Amazon or check it out at www.theringingbell.com) so I can take it along on our drive tomorrow. I’m listening to it streaming right now and it sounds really good. I’m also shopping around for a Digital SLR camera. At the moment I have my eye on a Nikon D70s. I’m hoping in the next few weeks I’ll be able to put in the order.

Well, enough for now.

This week is time for my first business trip in a while, and yesterday found me heading out of Cedar Rapids for Washington, DC.  While here I’ll be participating on an industry committee that will be developing guidance for Synthetic Vision and Enhanced Vision Systems for aircraft.   While I’m not in meetings, I’m hoping to do some sightseeing, since this is my first visit to Washington.  Most of the museums and stuff are closed after 5 pm, but at least I’ll be able to walk the Mall and see the memorials and such.

My flight made it in to Reagan National airport on time and I rode the Metro up to my hotel.  As I was nearing the hotel, I was thinking it looked a little dark…  when I reached the hotel lobby, I found out that the power was out for this and a few nearby blocks, and would be out until midnight.  Sigh.  They checked me in with pencil and paper, and sent me with a couple of glowsticks to my room.   I dropped off my stuff and then went down and asked for directions to a restaurant that would still have power.  I ended up at Pizzeria Paradiso, where I had a very tasty “Atomica” pizza and read a book for a while.  Then I walked back to the hotel, sat in my room in the dark, and had just enough laptop battery left to watch a couple of hours of Battlestar Galactica.  As BSG was wrapping up, the lights came back on, so I was able to really check out the room (very nice!), iron some clothes, and head for bed.

The combination of a late night and an unfamiliar bed made this morning come a little bit too soon, but the complimentary breakfast was tasty.  In a few minutes I’ll be headed out to walk the five blocks over to RTCA for the meeting.  It’s supposed to be up to 50 here today, so it should be nice for walking after we’re done today.  I’ll take lots of pictures, but won’t have any way to upload them until I get home…  so keep coming back here and eventually you’ll see some!

Well, it’s off to Seattle, actually, in about 30 minutes. Headed up there again for work, catching the little yucky turboprop from CID to MSP and then a 757 to SEA… Hopefully there won’t be as much excitement as last time…

I’ve got a new book to read on the way that I’m quite looking forward to: N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian. Hopefully I can digest it and give a little report when I get back.

Tuesday through Thursday of this week took my on my first trip ever to Seattle, WA. Several of us from work were headed out to talk to the big airplane manufacturer from that area. And hey, Seattle was nice. Very nice. The trip there, however… well, it was an adventure.

I departed the Eastern Iowa Airport at 6:55 am and took a little turboprop up to Minneapolis. From there, we had a connection on Northwest Airlines to get to Seattle. At this point in our little drama, I"ll let the pilot handle our narration.

9:25 am

“Hi folks, this is your captain here from the flight deck. We have to wait just a couple of minutes for air traffic control spacing, then we’ll be on our way.”

9:35 am

“Hi folks, your captain here again. The ATC spacing wasn’t going to take this long… but while we were sitting here, the self-test on one of our electronic devices indicated a fault with a battery… so we’re going to have to turn back to the terminal and get maintenance to look at it.”

9:45 am

“Hi folks, your captain again. To do this repair, we’re going to have to ask that you all deplane while the maintenance crew works on the plane. You can leave your personal items here on the plane, but we’ll need to ask you to deplane for a little while. Thanks.”

10:30 am

“For those of you on Northwest Airlines Flight 171 to Seattle, we have some good news, the battery has been replaced and everything seems to check out, so we’re going to get ready to reboard the plane at this time…”

11:30 am

The airplane takes off en route to Seattle.

12:03 pm

“Hello folks, your captain here again… we’ve had a minor hydraulics issue, really nothing to worry about, it’s just a redundant system, but we’re going to have to turn back and land at Minneapolis.”

“I’d apologize, but that would infer that we did something wrong up here… so we’re going to have to fly around an hour or so to burn off some fuel so we can land. So sit tight and I’ll get back to you in a little while.”

1:37 pm

“Hi folks, your captain here again… it took us a little longer to burn off fuel than we thought. But now we’re headed back in to land at Minneapolis. When we land, you’ll probably see some fire and rescue units on the runway there waiting for us. It’s just a precaution. They’re very cautious there at Minneapolis and the trucks aren’t really needed but they’re going to have them out anyway, haha.”

“Now, one of the few things that was affected by this hydraulics issue was the steering on the nose wheel. That means that we won’t be able to taxi off of the runway, so they’ll have to bring a tug out to pull us in. So, it’s not a big deal, but it’ll take a little while. So sit tight, and thank you for your patience.”

At this point the plane comes in and lands, and it’s a very tough landing. Well, the landing is OK, but the thrust reversers don’t kick in on landing, and the pilots have to stand on the brakes to get the plane to stop. Finally the plane pulls to a stop and yep, there are the fire trucks.

1:53 pm

“Hi folks, about this little delay… one of the things that happens when we land like that is that we used our brakes quite a bit and so they got kind of warm. And it’s nothing to worry about, not a big deal, but the folks here at Minneapolis are very cautious, ha ha, and they want to watch them for a few minutes as they cool down. So sit back and relax, and they’ll have us to the terminal in just a few minutes. Thanks.”

2:02 pm

The tug attaches to the plane, and slowly and jerkily pulls it around to a gate on the far end of the Northwest Airlines terminal. Finally it slows to a stop.

“Flight attendants, disarm doors and prepare for arrival.”

2:07 pm

“Flight attendants, re-arm the doors!”

2:11 pm

“Hi folks… Those of you on the left side of the aircraft may be seeing a little bit of smoke out your windows. It’s OK, it’s not a big deal. The plane is fine. But it appears that the tug that pulled us in got a little warm and caught fire, so the emergency guys appear to have that under control, and we should be deplaning shortly.”

“Flight attendants, disarm doors and prepare for arrival.”

2:20 pm

“Hi folks, we’re about ready to get you off the plane here. If you’re a first-class passenger, when you get off, head to gate F7 for your courtesy package. The rest of you, we’ll have a courtesy package with some meal vouchers here at the gate. We are planning on having another plane ready for you to depart again here shortly, our current scheduled departure time is now 3:40 pm.”

At this point, the story becomes less eventful. A new plane is found, and we make it to Seattle at 5:30 pm Seattle time, only about 5 hours later than originally planned.

One of my co-workers on the plane was formerly a Delta airlines pilot and has thousands of hours in 757s. He spoke to our pilot afterward and found out that the main hydraulic system had totally failed shortly after takeoff. That means that in addition to not having nose-wheel steering, we only had electrical power for the flaps (allowing only 20 degrees of flaps instead of the usual 30 degrees), we didn’t have much in the way of thrust reversers, and there was an assortment of other pieces that were disabled. My co-worker said that there are about six pages of checklists that the pilots have to go through before landing in that condition. Yikes.

Here’s to hoping that our next trip to Seattle (scheduled for the first week of August) is slightly less eventful.

This is the first time I’ve ever visited Atlanta. I’ve driven through a few times, but that doesn’t count. I’ve driven around the north end of Atlanta for a while the past few days, and there are things that stick out. There are churches everywhere. I didn’t think that Iowa was that godless, but I can’t believe how many more churches it seems like there are here. And BIG churches. Wowza. There’s also a lot of Chick-fil-a restaurants. We have one in Cedar Rapids, but I think there’s one on every corner here in Atlanta. But all the signs still say “Closed Sunday”, though, so that’s cool.

I have a theory that not all of Atlanta is under construction, but I’ve yet to see too much evidence to back that theory up. I’ve seen construction everywhere. There’s construction at the airport. There’s construction at the hotel/convention center where I’m at. I’ve been to two shopping malls, there is construction at both of them. I’ve been through road construction on every trip so far. Sheesh people, get things fixed already!

I am a bit surprised that the accents I’ve heard so far aren’t that thick; certainly not near so much as the ones I heard in Tennessee and Kentucky last week. Maybe I just haven’t talked to the right people. My waitress last night had a German accent; the guy I’m listening to at the conference right now has an Indian accent so think I can’t even understand him. Maybe I’ll get a better reading on accent tonight when I have dinner with Jeff and Adriene.

All in all, Atlanta has been A-OK so far. That being said, there’s no place like home.