Grueling Night

On Saturday, I received a crew notification that my deadhead trip for Sunday had been cancelled...they put a 727 on Tallahassee instead of the 757. When this happens, the affected crew goes into "substitution" where the company can assign a different trip. I was pretty sure they would not have anything for me b/c it would have to be a deadhead, and they're usually held pretty tightly by pilots. So, I maintained my availability (by having a phone with me) and got paid for the trip that they cancelled. Cool, but there's always the piper to pay. Monday, I was notified that my trip for Tuesday morning (02:00 showtime in Memphis) was "revised." Trip revisions are usually bad news, and this was no exception. We were supposed to have a nice easy one-legger to Tallahassee, but no; we flew to Tallahassee, offloaded the freight, took the empty plane to Cecil Field in Jacksonville, swapped airplanes to one that had just come out of heavy maintenance (it took three test flights to get it flightworthy last week), then flew that plane back to Tallahassee, landing at about 10:00 in the morning. Ugh, the sun was up and it was very hard to get to sleep. The plane acted a little strangely as well, and we'll have to try and do some more extensive troubleshooting tonight on our way to Memphis when we're a little more awake. I did get a glimpse of the Jacksonville Customs air branch (now Homeland Security), and some of their P-3s like I used to fly, which are stationed there. Sorry, no pictures, or they'd have to shoot me. At least it's warm in my birth state of Florida!