Memory lane

Avery and Shalyn had a piano recital tonight. They were told they could dress up in their halloween costumes. Avery is going to be a dalmation for halloween. Shalyn is going to be out of town at a band competition this year so she wasn't planning on dressing up. For the recital, she pulled out the box with my old Flight Attendant uniform. Just seeing the uniform brought back so many memories for me.

I was a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines for nearly 2 years 1998-1999. When I was 15 I flew from San Francisco to Paris. On that flight I decided I wanted to be a flight attendant when I was older. When Shalyn was 2 I began the application process. I interviewed with United, American, and Northwest and was ultimately hired by NWA.

I had attended a 5 week intensive training in Minneapolis MN (during January nonetheless). After training I was assigned to the Detroit, MI base. We moved from CA to Michigan and I began working full time as a flight attendant. I to say I loved my job was an understatement. I spent my time as a flight attendant on what is called 'reserve.' In layman's terms, I was on call 24-7 (except for on the 11 days a month I was guaranteed to be off). I would be assigned to flights that other flight attendants had been assigned to, but couldn't fulfill their duties because of sickness or other issues (namely FAA legality issues). Most of the time I would find out the day before where I was going and how long I would be gone. But that wasn't always the case. Once I had less than two hours notice for a 3 day trip to Osaka, Japan. I had the opportunity to travel all over the US, and to several Canadian, European, and Asian cities (London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Bangkok, Osaka, etc.)

One of the hardest decisions I had to make was when I quit my job. I had recently gone through a divorce from Shalyn's father. Because of the craziness of my job, Shalyn was living in CA with my parents while I was in Michigan during my on call days and in CA on my days off. I had a transfer request to San Francisco but after several months of waiting it wasn't going through. I finally decided I couldn't live across the county from my daughter and made the difficult decision to quit.


Christmas Eve 1998 LAX-DTW hanging out in the cockpit of a DC-10
My last flight-Orlando-Detroit (on a DC-10)

Shalyn in my uniform!