If you didn't know...

I GOT MARRIED 2 WEEKS AGO!!! YAY!!! ...and I have to admit that I'm now really scared that my "slacking off" in rudimentary fitness training and triathlon "getting-ready-ness" has all but succumbed to a horrid tantrum of binge drinking, food gorging and a desire to imitate and be the best human wasteland I could be. Here's a quick clip of the Mr. and Mrs. Nicolas!

Pulling up the map of the TriRock San Diego yesterday actually made me feel a little comfortable. I say that only because it doesn't look as daunting as I originally made it out to be. Granted, I know that it's only a sprint, but once again I'll admit that I am not where I'm suppose to be. Well, I could have prepared like a champ but at least this baseline will be an accurate sample of what I'm capable of. Like I said before, I'm just hoping for a finish. I'll be updating the work out calendar when I get back to San Diego on Friday night and as I'm typing this out, I just realized I forgot my Garmin.

Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!!!

Nothing, except this video, can show you how I'm feeling right now! Please watch through 1:40 and just revel in this man's simple joy as I am doing so right this very moment! Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!

Keeping up with my fitness workouts, since last Wednesday's NiteMovesSD 5K, I've run / trained on three more on some hotel treadmill goodness. Doing well, going steady and finding my stride!

Fitness is the new Goal

I've always been into some kind of staying in shape activity but lately, I've definitely felt the need and desire to take it to a different level. I'm feeling more competitive, energetic and just want to do a lot!  It started with the Mud Run a couple of weeks back with my good friend and groomsman Bobby Nourani.  I've also done a 10K with Matty P in Northport, Long Island New York and the St. Patty's 10K in San Diego, all three which I didn't train for.  I'm not proud, but I think that I need to get a little more serious. I'm sure you've noticed that I've also been cycling quite a bit over the last year but because of my erratic work schedule, I haven't been able to keep a constant build.  Even my friend Ryan Espiritu has passed me up in cycling accomplishments and we started around the same time!  Bottom line, I'm going to try harder.  You can check out the past 20 or so days since the Mud Run below.  You'll see my stats and everything that I'm logging on Garmin Connect.  You can also track me on my Garmin Connect Identity here: irija Fun times!!!

adellelijah.com

If you aren't aware yet, and you probably aren't, I decided to venture off yet once again ultimately resulting in a split of stories you might find on elijahnicolas.com.  You can find the story by navigating to the first post of the new blog and I would love to invite you read it.  Just to make it even easier, you can find it here. adellelijah: Part 1 of the Softlaunch. Since blogging, podcasting and doing a whole lot of surfing the internet, biking the coast, flying for your friendly skies, I've been in and out of happiness, bewilderment and just 'being.'  Ideas coming and going, never executed well or at all, etc., etc.  But...I do think that I have finally found a medium that will combine what I really seek in life and what I really want to do on my downtime at the random cities and hotels that I end layover-ing.

It's not that I thoroughly enjoy camping in front of a computer nestled away in my hotel room, but sometimes, there is really only so much you can do in a city that you've been to more than 10 times.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to world class visitor cities with attractions galore, but for instance, I'll be overnight in Bloomington, Illinois tomorrow night followed by an 18 hour stint in Killeen, Texas!  The hotel pool is nice, but that's about all the excitement there is.  I might have even posted a posterous pic or qik video on how creepy the hotel is in Bloomington with the little lady girl painting haunting my room!  Maybe I'll camp out in the lobby this time, but I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be safe!

So, from now on, I'll definitely be concentrating most of my efforts on the new company / venture, and I want to invite you along for the ride.  I'll still be hanging around here from time to time posting things that aren't aligned with adellelijah.com e.g. my flying stories and such, from everything else....adellelijah.com is where it's at!

Okay, it might have not been that creepy watching it all over again, but seriously, there are worst ones sprinkled throughout the hotel premises!

Situational Awareness...I GET IT!!! (I Think?)

I can clearly remember back to what my sky diving instructor told me on my first jump, "Elijah...you're going to gain more situational experience as we continue this."  I was like,"Sure," not knowing what the heck he meant.  That first jump rocked!  Weeks later, I jumped a second time scaring every ounce of courage I had left in me.  The entire time, I was wishing I was on the ground and scared for life.  I thought I would never do it again!  It was only then that my body told me what I was really doing.  The third jump took away those nerves and I enjoyed ever minute of it.  I can't proudly say that I ever finished the course to jump #10 but it's something that I still want to do later in life.   Back to the story...situational awareness. During the first few months of flight training back in 2005, we were taught and embedded within our minds an idea about the ever expanding "situational awareness" that we as young aviators would develop along with the accumulation of hours.  Flying in and out of clouds, new airports, different scenarios, terminology, aspects of flying and meteorology, even history began to paint the larger picture that our instructors kept on talking about.  I started to slowly understand, specifically within the confines of aviation, leaving all together life as a whole.  It was rather easy to tell you the truth since I was comfortably placed enabling me to focus on training.  My first actual line experience in April of 2007, after seeing a myriad of moves and learning experiences at a failed cargo airline, brought together the "end picture."  At least what I thought was the end picture.

Three years have gone by, rather too quickly, and things in my aviation career couldn't have been brighter (looking at the brighter side of life not from a 3.5 year first officer with upgrade a long ways away). Of course, not to mention the things back in my personal life have been rather exciting as well.  First off, I'm engaged, planning a wedding that is taking me a little out of my element, contemplating life's stresses which include the money factor, housing factor, where to live for the next few years factor, work, commuting, taking care of an additional home body (hi babe!) and dealing with LIFE.  The most stresses have come from these past few months because it feels like I'm not in control of things or certain aspects which I swore I use to pwn (master).  My tech life is still going strong with one project on standstill and yet another about the launch.  Slowly but surely, I'll find my niche, and of course everything else will fall into place?!

Yesterday after mass...I yet again realized I have gained more SITUATIONAL AWARENESS points.  Count me in at a level 4 geek of life!  There are certain times in life where it seems like everything is automatic and then when it slows down, one curls up into fetal position and "wishes" it keep on going.  I found those times the hardest because it wasn't how I operated normally.  Things were accomplished, taken care of and *poof* onto the next thing.  Now, knowing that I'm making the personal choices in EVERYTHING that I do, I have to learn to CRUSH IT EVERYDAY!!!

I use to call it "the Funk" or "tele-porting"  but now I know, it's just the growing inside my head that is distinguishing certain moments or pinnacles in my life.  Don't let your body control your spirit, have your spirit control your life!  I love it!

more on tele-porting: it's like when you think you're somewhere one moment then the next, you're somewhere else and your mind isn't keeping up with your body.

We're Tourists in SD...Whale Watching...

Once again, the last two two weeks have come and gone a little too fast. Starting with a bit of fun, Adelle and I celebrated good times on a San Diego Whale Watching trip on the 17th after a failed attempt on the 16th. We initially thought we were going to just cruise around the bay but found out that our tickets, that were so graciously gifted to us by Adelle's brother and sister-in-law, were also valid for the Hornblower Adventure Whale Watching Cruise. This forced us to postpone for a day which worked out just right after eating an awesomely large hamburger from a local place called Waterfront Bar and Grill. Waterfront Bar & Grill. The meal was perfectly awesome. I was pretty much dreading the boat after that burger! The next morning, we headed out early for some Jamba Juice Oatmeal, and even had pops come along with us! I haven't been Whale Watching since the third or fifth grade and the day was forecasted to be awesome. The sun was out, the weather was beautiful, the seas were calm and we saw whales! Here are some pics!

Funking it up...#WTF?

My new WTF = What the Funk!!!  Over the past few months, tasks after tasks, lists upon more lists, items to check off but yet more to add...it really just piles up and I curl up into a ball.  It's really not necessarily just that but I feel like it is detrimental to my health...mental health.  After long bouts of random work schedules, 4 days on with a late duty out causing me to hang out in Atlanta for 3 days in a row followed by an early duty in for a 3 day, then a 2 day  followed by a day line then onto San Diego???  I just freaking veg'd out once again being a complete waste of humanity.  To mention it, the homily last Sunday the 7th of March, was all about being useful with an emphasis on not useless.  I took a dive into the other direction.  When it comes down to it, I decompress HARD!  How do I just keep it going? I'm finally back to being the tech addict, insomniac, laptop internet hungry person, ideas floating around my head...etc.  it's good to be back once again strong, but how they hell do I keep on going?  Maybe it's my diet?

goodnight from Omaha

4 on, two off, 4 on – part 2 / my printed schedule after the fact

When I say after the fact, the schedules below depict the times that the aircraft recorded once meeting certain parameters e.g. brakes released or set & passenger door open or close.  These were not the original scheduled departure and arrival times but in fact, the true record of my legs or "flight time."  I guess you can say that the times in bold represent the time that I actually "fly."  The difference between the "Block" and "Credit" is that we get paid for credit while "Block" is the time I'm recorded to be in the aircraft.  It doesn't represent the time I spend in the cockpit in between flights or before flights (which is actually represented in the another bold header "Turn"), or the time I'm at the airport on a layover.  I'll further explain these "pairings" below in this blog post but for now, here is a picture of a 4-day typical schedule.  It's not like there is much to figure out.  It's pretty much cut and dry.  Following along the on the first line: The first line on my pairing "OSA A7470C" is Flight number 5548/ Originating from ATL (Atlanta-Hartsfield) / Destined to DAY (Dayton, Ohio) / Departed at 14:58 local airport time / Arrived at 16:16local airport time / TailN761ND <-- which is the registration number of the specific aircraft / A/C type being a CR7 (Canadair Regional Jet 700 Series) / Block1:18 (1 hour & 18 minutes flight time) / Credited 1:33 (in other words paid for 1 hour & 33 minutes) / Pax(passengers) on board 70 / Miles from ATL-DAY432 / BurnAv4423 (average fuel burned enroute measured in pounds / Turn 0:44 (time on ground to have the passengers get off, clean the aircraft, cross seatbelts, stock the galley, clean the bathrooms, refuel, input preflight measures, walk around the aircraft for a visual inspection, remove bags, add bags and passengers and close the door) 42 minutes.  That's line 1 in my pairing.  Pretty much going down through the day, I end up at Little Rock, Arkansas for a layover of 14:26 (14 hours & 26 minutes) where it includes the van ride from the airport to the hotel, the ride back to the airport in the morning, and any sleep that I get in between.

Screen shot 2009-12-24 at 07.04.33 AM

If you take a look on Friday the 18th, I was lucky to actually have a 28 hour overnight in Portland, Maine where I enjoyed some of the world's best known Clam Chowder from Gilbert's Chowder House. (yelp review here)

Everyday, I have a Report time which, and depending on how long the ride is to the airport from the hotel, we leave usually around 15 minutes prior to duty in to ensure ample time to get to the aircraft.  Of course, the means I also usually wake up about 1 hour prior to the Report time giving me enough minutes to accomplish the morning routine, throw the uniform together, pack up, eat breakfast and board the airport shuttle or taxi.

There isn't much more to explain really except for the Totals: line telling me that my initial Report time that I have to duty in at the company computers in Atlanta is at 14:00 on the 17th / and I'm Released at 16:46 on the 20th.  For those three days, I will be able to log 18 hours & 47 minutes of flight time, get paid for 20 hours and 48 minutes plus my per diem which is calculated by the TAFB(Time Away From Base) 74:46 74 hours & 46 minutes multiplied by our current rate of $1.65 / hr.

At my current rate of 3rd year pay $39.55 /hr * 20.8 --> I pull in around $822.64 + my per diem ($123.36) giving me a total of $946 for this entire pairing.  Granted I was away from my family the entire time, it didn't include the time I fly back and forth from San Diego to Atlanta and whatever else you want to add in.  I'm not whining really, but this is a sample of just a week in the life of a pilot.  Now, the missing link in this bigger picture is the amount of duty time that I put in between flights that I didn't get paid for.  In other words, I was actually working or at work whatever, for about 32 hours and 2 minutes total during these three days; in my uniform, and not resting.  Keyword being resting.  That's clearly a deficiency of 12 hours just hanging around the various airports.  <-- Not fun.  (Add up the Duty on the bottom ride side of each day to get the total figure)  Now, why is that pilots are only paid for block / credit time, it started long long ago during the birth of the industry and hasn't changed since.  It's a mixture of corporate greed (if that's what you want to call it) and FAA regulations governing flight time in a given period for pilots.

I usually have 4 of these trips a month, sometimes only 3.  Hope you enjoyed the explanation.  Any questions?  Please leave a comment below.

(if you are interested any further, many if not all US airlines' payscales are available to the public listed under each airline profile at http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/airlines/)

LogTenProBanner2008

4 on, two off, 4 on - part 1

and "we're back!" All in all, twelve days total of “work” transpire. If you wonder why twelve instead of ten, it’s the added day of commuting and getting reacquainted with Atlanta the days prior to my 4 day trip that kicks things off. This is without mentioning the quick trip to Las Vegas the three days prior which included driving in the rain and snow along the CA 15 Freeway.

Back on December 9th, I boarded a red eye flight from San Diego at 10:50pm to Atlanta, arrived almost an hour early around 5:00am, and was lucky to get to my apartment around 6:30am. I shut my eyes and got as much horizontal rest as possible. During this short journey, I was accompanied by another fellow employee on a similar schedule, who also happens to be my flatmate therefore, I have to admit that my plight is shared amongst others and am in need of no singular sympathy. Just listen, err, “sit back and relax and enjoy the flight”, err, read the blog.

Because of my unfortunate mistake a couple of weeks back (link), I was forced to get a ride back to the Atlanta Airport and pick up my other roommate’s VW Jetta that he so kindly lent me enabling my accomplishing of errands. Once completed, I rested at the apartment in preparation for what would be a freezing schedule.

Back to back overnights in Toronto followed by another in Akron, Ohio, two nights in Atlanta, one in Little Rock, Arkansas and then two more in Portland, Maine was what laid ahead of me and thinking of it all just made me tune out. Sometimes I refer to this as teleporting, but only a handful know what I’m talking about. If you care to chime in, let’s do it over coffee and an open mind. ^_^

I found myself, once again, lost in my mind, so to speak. It’s been a rather difficult last couple of days only because the blur that is my life feels less and less controllable, but then again, I can reason that it is otherwise.

A few of my closest friends recognize the misty eyes or absence of me, but the character that I normally am temporarily disappeared. Slowly drifting back into the calm, I find myself in desperate need of my comfy bed at home in San Diego, the lively bodies that inhabit my house on Classique and the warmth of the season. I can’t wait to get home.

If you can't tell here in this photo, my captain took this of me when I was "chilling" on the ground in Little Rock.

Pound FAIL / #FAIL!

Leaving work today, I failed...miserable. I thought that my E39 5.28iT could talk on a pole, but I was rudely awakened by the feint reality. This is of course after the fact. Tomorrow, I'll know more about the costly damage as it ruined / totaled my hood, left-front fender, bumper and headlight.

I'm alright thank God but my pocket is going to be severely drained either directly or monthly via my increase in insurance premium. Stay tuned

Los Cardones EcoLodge and Surf Resort, Nicaragua

After a few weeks of postponement, I hopped on an American Airlines 737 aircraft from ATL to MIA, arrived and satisfied my breakfast hunger with Cuban sandwich along with Cuban coffee. After being delayed for 2 hours for mechanical issues, I finally took off to MGA in an American Airlines 767 (paid $80 for my ZED fare because I cannot jumpseat on American Airlines internationally unlike other domestic carriers), rode a KIA branded taxi for 1.5 hours and arrived at Los Cardones.  Granted this was another solo adventure but the purpose was to scout out the place and more importantly hang out with great company.

A few weeks back, I recently found out that one of my high school gal-friends, took up a 6 month gig to work as managers for the "resort." Whatever the cost, I had to go visit and hang out.   As most of you may know (or not know), I'm always down for anything.  Upon arriving at the resort dressed inappropriately in business attire, I was greeted by her, taken to my cabana and changed.  I was steaming and my wool pants had to come off!

Thoughts of picking up a surfboard and hitting the beach right away were lingering especially after watching Chris hit the waves, but I was feeling more of a mellow tone.   After a while, I decided that it was going to be just a day of rest. The night simply concluded with a wonderfully prepared dinner by Adam and chatter of what the next morning would bring.  It was a long day for me and this is exactly what I needed.

Through the next few days, I would eat 3 meals a day which were prepared VERY well, surf in the morning then just hang out the rest of the day. I didn't do that much except for the random hike around the facility, sleep in an awesome hammock for a few hours, talk it up with friends and just pass the time. It's been a while since I actually got to feel the second hand tick as the minutes at the resort lagged on by. Being "unplugged" was a great feeling, but sometimes I felt like I was missing things. Time was therefore just standing still at certain times but it was a good thing.

Some of you may not realize, but I've been minimal-izing my life as of late. Coming down from an awesome high, I'm loving it more and more. Sometimes I'm tempted here and there, but simplicity and happiness is where it's at. This vacation made me realize it once again that with an ocean, good friends and food, life can be truly gratifying.

Videos and more pictures after the jump!

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I uploaded little tours of the resort to my youtube account: http://www.youtube.com/enicolas and you can watch the videos there or right here down below! The first one is of the resort and the second is of my living quarters. Check them out and leave a comment here or on my youtube page!

Web 2.0 and the Posterous New Blog

Intro:

I recently signed up for a posterous site, http://adellelijah.posterous.com, to host both Adelle and I together in one cloud space and in doing so, I actually ended up creating two more different posterous sites, http://adellelisa.posterous.com and http://elijahnicolas.posterous.com so that we can post on an individual basis.  Adelle actually didn't like me posting my stuff to "our" site so I decided that we each needed a separate one for self preservation.  I'll just admit it already: I am a posting whore.

Over the last few months, I've been using the Thesis Wordpress Theme in order to help with Search Engine Optimization on elijahnicolas.com.  I love the simplistic layout of the Thesis Theme so much that I even ended up buying the commercial license to use on Peak Interest (www.whatspyi.com) as well as my fiance's blog (www.adellelisa.com) which she is very hesitant to update but at least it's there.  Over the years, I have graduated from the Blogger platform hosting a multitude of different sites, to trying out joomla for a hot second to finally settling down on wordpress as my choice for a content management system.  Of course, twitter came around along with friendfeed and now posterous all within the last year or so and I indulged.  All the while, I was only looking for that singular reasonable mean to have all my personalities talk to each other and reflect each other's status'.  With posterous, I think I may have found the perfect solution!

Body 1:

The basic idea of Web 2.0 was to forge a design template that allowed for an easy GUI interface for those that weren't code savvy.  It was to provide a simpler means to update ones' online mediums / personality sites and in doing so, collaborate with others in the virtual arena.  That's my personal spin in layman's terms.  If you want the "real deal," here's Wikipedia's here.

Posterous has done just that.  They simplified the entire process.  They have taken out the horrific means of uploading to an FTP site or Content Management System and instead substituted it with the easy medium we use everyday: e-mailing.  You can "attach photos, videos, MP3s and files" to your e-mails, send it off to space and boom...it's that simple!  You could always do that on Blogger.com with text and photos and use a not so great plug-in with WordPress, but with one touch, I can upload a picture with a small post to my posterous account directly from my email address, it detects where I want it to go and publishes instantly without a hitch not only to posterous, but to anywhere else that I'm connected to be it my facebook, blogger, wordpress or even twitter account.

I was thinking of having it update my actual wordpress blog, but that's when things started to come together in my head.  I finally drew somewhat distinct lines.  I have come to the definite conclusion that my posterous and mobile blog are one in the same.  That's almost a no brainer, with a slight difference that the blogger site has a black background and posterous has a white one.  Posterous and my trelijah mobile blog are just quick snippets of my life.  Twitpic and twitter are just even quicker moments that I deem "3rd class" per say.  Of course the hierarchy of it all would be a long post, such as this one, on elijahnicolas.com, a picture accompanied by a posterous moment then a tweet.

Conclusion:

It is however convenient to have one place to update every personality, but duplication starts to become rampant and I don't want that to happen.  For now, I guess I'll keep trelijah going along with elijahnicolas.posterous.com and maybe with time, just end trelijah.  But as I always keep on saying, you can always count on me for some type of update.  That's enough.

p.s.  I had to edit the template of trelijah to fit the new format of pictures.  I like them in the full form.  Nice stuff!

Starcross'd Creative and the Johnson Wedding

With the technology that's been trickling down over the last decade, same-day edits have become more and more popular among various wedding reception activities. Finding the right videographer who can produce a video in such a short turn around time is not too difficult, but finding the right one that can amaze, and shock and awe the entire reception is a whole different story. Over the past weekend, a couple that I've known since their inception back during our  second year in high school finally tied the knot at the Immaculata Catholic Church in San Diego.  I had the honor of being a groomsman for Mr. Gregory Johnson and enjoyed the entire day hanging out with the couple, the bridal party and everyone else later that night.  Following their ceremony, we ended up taking pictures for a couple of hours around various San Diego sites, then headed to the reception where we danced the night away.  My job was simple and now complete but back in a corner of the reception hall was a video editor hacking, cutting, cropping, splicing and post producing various little snippets of film at a rabid pace transforming them into another masterpiece.  His name, Christoffer Dumlao from Starcross'd Creative.

Running around throughout the entire day capturing various shots of the event with his creative eye and Canon EOS 5D Mark II, he created yet another Starcross'd Creative Same-Day Edit exhibiting the entire day of the Johnson Wedding.  You can always visit their website, peep their other amazing films from full on scripted wedding videos to other multiple same-day edits as well as their new animated film // a true love's story or better yet, sign up to have their exclusive touch grace your important day.

Here is their final product which was shown at the wedding that night from Starcross'd Creative: you fill my heart \\ melanie + gregory’s same-day edit

Melanie & Gregory \\ Same-Day Edit from Starcross'd Creative on Vimeo.