October Trip Home Part 2

In October I was able to come home for a week. It was a great trip but not enough time to deal with the 2-day travel time on each end. It was still worth making the journey, though!  So here is part two of what I did at home while I was here!

I got to the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (XNA) Friday night at about 7 p.m. and got home about an hour later.  Dana and I had a lovely visit and then got 8 hours of sleep and woke up ready to go.  It just happened that my trip occurred on a weekend that we had a wedding booked, so Saturday afternoon we geared up and went to shoot a wedding at Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers.

It was a lovely, pleasant day, although mostly cloudy. The sky cleared up right at sunset for some beautiful portraits of the couple in the most beautiful light of the day. All in all I had a great time and it was wonderful to work with a camera in my hands again! (I've added a few wedding shots here!)

We took Sunday off, mostly just taking it easy and resting up.  The rest of the week was spent in errands, getting the cars worked on, doctor appointments, shopping, and so forth. Essentially stuff I hoped to get out of the way so when I got home at Christmas I wouldn't have to mess with any of it then. I got a lot done, but as always my list was longer than the time available.

 Where my flights home were relaxed with generous layover times, the return flights were crazy tight. The XNA to Chicago flight was 35 min late (why is this flight always late??). We made up a bit of time en route, but literally taxied in circles after landing for 20 minutes before turning into the gate area, then ten more before getting off the jet. Boarding for my flight to Doha, Qatar started about the time we touched down, and I had to hustle to get out of terminal 2, take the tram to terminal 3 (NOT the international terminal as you might expect glad I was paying attention!), and run to my gate -  getting there two minutes before boarding closed.

The changeover at Doha was nearly the same. We landed and taxied to what seemed like the furthest corner of the ramp, then waited nearly ten min to open the doors, go down the stairs and get on a bus. It took nearly 15 minutes on the bus to reach the transfer terminal. I ran in there, went through security, through immigration, then up a set of stairs to the gate (which was actually right across from the stairs) to check in, down a set of stairs and onto a nearly full bus to go to the next plane.  Wow!

It is only a very short flight from Doha to Bahrain, like 25 minutes. It is 89 miles in a straight line from takeoff to landing. Late at night at the end of a long trip it feels much longer though, and I actually dozed through most of it. We landed in Bahrain at 2020 (8:20 p.m. for you non-military, non-international types). It only took about 10 minutes to go through immigration, but 20 minutes to wait for my bag to come off the airliner!

I found my taxi driver in the arrival hall, holding a sign with my name on it - "Mr. Mark." My last name seems to be beyond this culture!  It took 20 minutes to get out of the airport parking lot - traffic engineering doesn't seem to be much of a priority in the Middle East, and a traffic jam after the arrival of a large jet full of travelers is nothing out of the ordinary.  Crossing the causeway back into Saudi Arabia was pretty painless - traffic was surprisingly light. I got back to the Aramco camp at 11 p.m. Total travel time was about 36 hours, with catnaps along the way.

Have I mentioned that I don't sleep on airplanes? Ironic, I know, for a professional pilot, but never have. I hope I will get the knack of it someday, as I'll have more of these flights ahead of me. The next one, though, will most likely be business class, which is a whole 'nother story!

Happy New Year to all!!