Aftering running my first half-marathon on Sunday, May 4th, i left on Monday, May 5th, for a vacation w/ my friends Al, Kevin, and Jason B. We were West-bound to Denver first then down to Santa Fe/Albuquerque.
This was a photographic journey as Jason B. is a semi-professional photographer (he makes enough to pay for a very nice/expensive camera - NIKON, of course), Kevin also has a very nice digital SLR camera (Nikon, of course), and Al recently purchased a digital SLR camera (Nikon, of course); while i went old school using my 20-year old 35-mm FILM camera (also Nikon, of course) along with my new digital Coolpix camera (yep, Nikon, of course).
The four of us, particularly those three, were funny to watch walking around w/ our nine.....NINE cameras: 3 - digital SLR's, 1 - old-school 35mm, 1 new digital, and four camera-phones. One of the best scenes was watching Kevin juggle the three SLR's while taking pictures of Jason, Al, and I up in an Indian cave dwelling with each of the three SLR cameras. i actually snapped a good picture of him holding all three cameras trying to take our picture.
The flights on Frontier, our bankruptancy protected airline, were...well, interesting. Having flown often in my life, i liken flying to a huge thrill ride at an amusement park. i even sometimes hold my hands up like one would when going down a major hill on one of those rides - but that could scare those behind me so i did it 'quietly'.
Anyway, on each lift-off and landing i got the feeling the pilots were told to either conserve gas or give the passengers a real thrill! My father worked on jet engines for his entire 25-year career at GE Aircraft Engines. That, coupled w/ my own experience told me that these pilots were not exactly using the entire engines particularly during lift off (or they were Piggly-Wiggly engines - that would be Pratt & Whitney engines for those not familiar w/ the airline engine industry).
The take-offs were slow to the point of my wondering if we were going to actually lift off. Then, the pilots tried to take (particularly the lift-off from Dayton to Denver) a Rocky Mountain slope of a climb to cruising altitude. At one point i simply thought the plane would slide backward we we going so slow. And keep in mind, this is all from someone who LIKES to fly!
Then the touch-downs were like those thrill ride drops and embankments. It was more like being flown by a fighter-pilot than an airline pilot. Fun...but exhausting. At one point on the flight back (from Albuquerue to Denver), during our rapid descent the EXIT lights came on as if we were all going to have to jump out of the plane. In all of my airline travels i have never experienced a plane in a near nose-dive when the lights and EXIT lights come on like that during our descent. Whew! What (now that my feet are squarely on the ground in Cincy) fun!
And that was merely the flights out and back!
Ready to hear about the actual trip?
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