I still remember the day. I remember the unusually warm and sunny Seattle weather. Not a cloud in the sky and a calm breeze that brought smells of barbeque and flowers. Typical mid-week day off for a junior pilot.

My phone started ringing with a number I didn't recognize. Being that it was my day off, I tend to be very wary about answering the phone. Should the company surprise me with a call on my day off, they could make me come to work unless I could think of a really good excuse. Contrary to my better judgement, in hindsight, I answered the phone.

"Hello?"

It was the then Communications Chairman of my union. I belong to a national union that also has local levels. There is the system wide level called the Master Executive Council, then there is an even more local level called the Local Executive Council. These two councils are comprised of Chairman and Vice Chairman and Secretary/Treasurers and the like. The Master Executive Council (MEC) is like the legislative branch of our union. They have an executive branch at the MEC level that are the MEC leadership. At the Local Executive Council (LEC), there is the same leadership, Chairman and Vice Chairman, etc. The LEC deals with pilots directly in their respective domicile. The MEC is more of a system wide body and they direct the policy and processes for the MEC leadership and the union as a whole for our airline.

Ok, union 101 lesson over. Pop quiz later.

So the Communications Chairman calls me. Says he got my email regarding volunteering and he's interested in giving me some projects right away!

"Oh Boy!" I say.

"Gosh, I'd love to help out. I'm not that great at writing, but I have a little experience with it." I gush.

I play it up like it was naivety or ignorance, and perhaps it was a little bit, but I really did want to volunteer. I wanted to volunteer from day one, but they don't let probationary pilots do much of anything. I don't know what exactly made me so enthusiastic about volunteering. It could be that after I read some books about the union and how it got started that I was motivated to do something. It could be that, only after my grandfather died did I learn that he once gave a presentation to the very same union I now belong to. (He trained pilots and flight attendants at United for 34 years. Back then there was a Steward and Stewardesses division of my union.)

I knew that I wanted to do something, and when I got an email asking for volunteers in communications with experience with writing and web-publishing, I knew that's what it was. It's incredible to me now, because what I do now for the union totally and completely fits for me. It's strange how those things work out. Had you told me 5 years ago that I would be involved in communications, publications, broadcasting, etc, I would have recommended you to a good psych doctor.

So now I was on the hook. I volunteered. I was going to be a writer for the MEC Communications Committee.

"Yea." I thought. "I can do that."

What I didn't know, was that what I signed up for, was not at all what I'd be doing less than 30 days later.

To be continued...again...muahahaha

Lately, I spend more time as a passenger, and much less time as a pilot. I wear my uniform every week, but I’m sitting in 18B instead of the right “right” seat. It’s been a long journey of work and tribulation to get to this point, and yet I wonder how I ended up as an observer more than an operator.

My problem is probably by big mouth. You could trace that a long ways back in my life, straight to my childhood and probably infancy. I just don’t know when to shut up. It got me in trouble with my parents as a young boy fighting with his older sister. It got me beat up by the upper-classmen in junior high and beyond. It’s gotten me fired from jobs where I didn’t quite respect or get along with my boss. It’s ended some of my relationships, and probably will do many terrible things before I learn to stop it.

This time it wasn’t my sarcasm, or dark and dry sense of humor, or complete lack of respect for authority and order. Me and my big mouth volunteered. I saw an opportunity to volunteer in an organization that I knew mostly little about but had a desire to work with. The Airline Pilots Association has been around for almost 100 years now, and has done more for the piloting profession than any other pilot advocacy group. Specifically on behalf of a little more than 50,000 professional pilots around the world.

I remember it well; it was a late summer afternoon in Seattle. I was there visiting with some friends, sitting outside on the patio enjoying the warm sun, sounds of nature, and the smell of a blooming garden. I was flying a regular schedule and picking my trips with almost guaranteed receipt of whatever I wanted. I had several days off in a row and that allowed me to travel as I wished and I rarely spent time at home. In fact I didn’t really have a home at the time. I spent my days off traveling to whichever friend had some free time and an open couch.

I had replied to a union email that was searching for volunteers in the communications department for my airline. I wasn’t exactly sure what I would be doing, but I had replied to the email bashfully. They were looking for anyone with writing experience and technical expertise. I’d like to think I have both, but I’m never satisfied with my writing. That constant search for perfection tends to mar the actual beauty of what your creativity has fostered. I hadn’t really expected a response, assuming there was surely someone else in our group of almost 3000 pilots that had more experience than I.

The calm summer afternoon was breached by a shrill ring of my phone. Party time was over. I had no idea most of my free time was about to be sucked into another dimension where it would be lost forever.

To be continued…