Man, what has this site NOT done for me and my career would be an easier and shorter question to answer. Questions as a student pilot? I knew right where to turn. The day after I passed my instrument checkride, I wound up in a Piper Lance with a JC member (which he paid for BTW) flying to Tampa to meet R2F and FlyChicaga and have lunch. And for the doubter, JT/Mr Creepy really is a nice guy in person. Not only did he cover the cost of the plane from Orlando to Tampa, he also bought lunch, even if we thought Stan was really driving us to have our kidneys cut out and left in tubs of ice.
A few weeks later I get this phone call "Hey dude, this John Herreshoff from Jetcareers.com. Yeah, so, me and my girlfriend are gonna be in Orlando for a few days and just wondering if you wanted to meet up." So, met up with John and Emily at Olive Garden, and Stan trooped it over from Tampa to join us. Unfortunately, my wife doesn't remember much since she was working the graveyard shift at the hotel at the time and was borderline narcoleptic at dinner.
Wound up finally attending NJC04 and had a blast. The ONLY people I knew going in were John and Emily from when we met them in Orlando, and we wound up meeting up with them in BNA and flying to LAS on the same flight. Met Seggy when we got there, and he gave us all a ride to the airport. Ran into Doug and Kristie when we decided to hit the strip for a little bit, and met Max for the first time in the hotel lobby when we came back. After the "formal" networking event, everyone was free to hang with whomever, no cliques, just "hey, we're going here. Anyone else want to go." Late night conversations on politics and racism (which BTW are not NEAR as heated in person as on-line due to communication mixups) with Lloyd and what's-her-name-that-screwed-him-over, John, Emily, Montanapilot and a few others, a run to In N Out with a scary homeless guy in line in front of us as well as interesting comments on my wife's footwear from FL270, and drunken karaoke and a late night crawl that included MikeD winning money off a random slot machine, Max falling backwards off a chair and JDFlight and TonyW maybe/maybe not hitting on hookers were the highlight of the evenings. My wife even had a great time as part of the girls night out.
Fast forward a bit to when I'm having a crisis trying to figure out where to finish my training. I wind up talking to John on AIM about what's up, and he mentions he's going to check out Skymates in a couple of weeks and do I want to come with. So, I say yes, hop a SWA flight (eventually after being bumped numerous times outta MSY) and meet him in DAL. We both picked Skymates initial because they're a JC supporter, and they're the real deal. So, that netted me not only where to finish my ratings, but my first aviation job as a CFI, where I met even MORE JC members, including BrettinLJ who turned out to be student, co-worker, friend and no co-worker again here at Pinnacle.
While in DAL, we even had a random NJC Dallas over at Capt Bob's house when Lloyd flew through in the "Millenium Falcon" with Lindsey. Bob cooked the killer food, and John brought the cool Michigan beer. I let Bob tell about his wife's reaction when he told her he'd never met any of is in person before.
When I found out I had an interview at XJT and needed copies of Mexican Jepp charts to study, Bob was at Skymates about 15 minutes later with his flight bag with an offer to let me copy whatever I needed. When I was offered the interview at Pinnacle, I tapped some resources and wound up talking to PeaknuckleCRJ on the phone about the interview and the company. When I was frustrated about guys with less time than me getting interviews and jobs, numerous people from this site told me not to get down and just keeping plugging along. I even got a phone call from Seggy one night giving me a mock Colgan interview to keep me up to speed and prepared.
Two of my instructors from Air Orlando are on here (wheelsup, I count you even though it was only a few sim sessions
) one not as frequent as the other, though. Some of my best friends and roommates are on here, too. Some of the best advice I've ever gotten in both life and career arenas has come from this site.
This has gone WAY longer than I intended already. A lot of the stuff on here might SEEM like "The JC Inner Circle" or a clique, but a lot of it is because we've all met and hung out together at JC events or just impromptu get togethers organized by members. At one time, none of us knew any of the others. We all just stumbled into a room and said "Hi, I'm <insert screenname.>" You have to start somewhere. The one thing I don't want to see happen is the experience we've got here and the networking capabilities go away as people get hired on at regionals/corporate/freight/whatever. I don't want the "new blood" of JC to be robbed of the benefits I've enjoyed so far.
