Holidays....finally!

Posted by Kevin......

After a 2 hour delay Friday due to snow and fog in the Twin Cities, I was rewarded with this view from the flight deck as I broke free of the clouds into the early morning sun.

The rest of the day was spent on the ground in Pierre, SD, counting the minutes until I departed again for St. Paul.

Just before lunch, I saw a local pilot I know tinkering with a pair of cockpit earphones in our shop hangar. He told me about his new job as a co-pilot for another airline, and was trying to design a cord to plug his iPod into the aircraft's intercom system. I told him I could help him with that (after all, I did major in "Communications" in college).

After a few minutes, I was completely in charge of the complicated fabrication of this "intra-comm alternate source intergrated input adapter and modulator" thingy. In other words, it was a $1000 pair of BOSE headphones, a $200 iPod, a 99 cent part from Radio Shack, an old broken airplane micrphone, and lots of solder and electrical tape.

It worked when we tested it, but I warned him: I disavow ALL KNOWLEDGE of this device ever being built and, if asked in the future, have never heard of him or the airline for which he flys.

When I finally landed back in the Twin Cities, I hurried over to our friends Karin and Andrew's holiday party. Even though I arrived around 9:30 pm, Stace and the other guest were still chatting and laughing as I sat down at the chocolate fondue pot (which I had all to myself now).

After eating way to much GREAT food dipped in chocolate, it was on to the Nintendo Wii game console connected to Andrew's wall size projection TV.

This is a full body movement game, and you must move just like you want the little person on the TV to move. After I got pommeled by Andrew in the boxing game, Stace stepped up and finished my virtual boxing career, beating my little animated boxer unconscious for the second time in one night!

With Stace yelling, "BOOM! YAAAA! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" a desire to vomit chocolate fondue all over her almost got the best of me.

It was then I realized: the Holidays are FINNALY here!