ZapBrannigan
If it ain’t a Boeing, I’m not going. No choice.
Hard to believe it's been ten years.
Ten years ago this week I married my girlfriend on the Gateway River Belle in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many friends and family couldn't be there because they feared travel in the wake of 9/11. In fact, much of the event became a goodbye party as this would be the last time that I saw many friends. Days later the furloughs began and our close knit group of US Airways friends scattered throughout the country seeking new employment.
A few months later I joined their search. I commuted to Dayton to fly a Dornier 328, and later to Cincinnati to fly a CRJ. My wife, our Golden Retriever Furlough, and I moved to Northern Kentucky and bought our first house. I wrote magazine articles for Career Pilot magazine before Kit went bust. Just 2 years later we were on the move again, this time to Arkansas where I was hired as a corporate pilot.
10 years later we're still in Arkansas. We still have Furlough and also a 5 year-old whirling dervish who is in his third year of Montessori school. He can already read, knows all of the continents, can name all 50 states in alphabetical order (set to song), and speaks more Spanish than I do. Crazy.
Tomorrow we're heading on vacation to celebrate this tumultuous, crazy, wonderful decade of our lives aboard a Disney cruise ship. I have a lot less hair now than I did then. Put on a few pounds too. Still, she put up with it all with only a modest amount of nagging and drama. Guess as it turns out I'm pretty lucky. Hope she feels like she is.
See you guys in a week or so. Gotta go give Mickey a few more dollars, take another hundred photos, and try to remember the look in my little boy's eyes as he takes it all in.
Ten years ago this week I married my girlfriend on the Gateway River Belle in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many friends and family couldn't be there because they feared travel in the wake of 9/11. In fact, much of the event became a goodbye party as this would be the last time that I saw many friends. Days later the furloughs began and our close knit group of US Airways friends scattered throughout the country seeking new employment.
A few months later I joined their search. I commuted to Dayton to fly a Dornier 328, and later to Cincinnati to fly a CRJ. My wife, our Golden Retriever Furlough, and I moved to Northern Kentucky and bought our first house. I wrote magazine articles for Career Pilot magazine before Kit went bust. Just 2 years later we were on the move again, this time to Arkansas where I was hired as a corporate pilot.
10 years later we're still in Arkansas. We still have Furlough and also a 5 year-old whirling dervish who is in his third year of Montessori school. He can already read, knows all of the continents, can name all 50 states in alphabetical order (set to song), and speaks more Spanish than I do. Crazy.
Tomorrow we're heading on vacation to celebrate this tumultuous, crazy, wonderful decade of our lives aboard a Disney cruise ship. I have a lot less hair now than I did then. Put on a few pounds too. Still, she put up with it all with only a modest amount of nagging and drama. Guess as it turns out I'm pretty lucky. Hope she feels like she is.
See you guys in a week or so. Gotta go give Mickey a few more dollars, take another hundred photos, and try to remember the look in my little boy's eyes as he takes it all in.
