January Overnights of Extreme Awesomeness

I don't even know where yo start.

This month J and I buddy-bid with our great friend and fellow flight attendant, Stefan. This allowed us to work all of our regularly scheduled trips together. Oh what fun!

We spent a lot of our Sundays watching the Broncos in the playoffs, and a lot of other days messing around. Here are some select pictures to tell the stories of the overnights.

BHM: In Birmingham J and I met up with a friend we'd made on a cruise years ago. We'd been wanting to catch up and meet his partner ever since and we could never make it happen. In January, we did!

TPA: I have a love to Tampa overnights. At the hotel where we currently stay we can walk to quite a few places including this beach park. Here a SWA plane flies just overhead. :)

TPA: I also found the tiniest shell in the world (J's thumb nail for a relative size)

TPA: Seashells. <3 br="">

TPA: J and his quest to dig the deepest hole on the beach. Just because. Why not?

TPA: J, myself, and Stefan

TPA: Time to watch the Broncos play. One bottle for ever quarter. That's good luck, right?

TPA: Spanish moss in the oak trees, takes me back.

Anywhere-bound: Sunset as we departed DEN.

The DIA train that takes you from the terminal to the concourses. Totally quiet.

IND: And early morning in Indianapolis. This was the only other window I could see from our room where someone else was awake. I always feel a pleasant sense of camaraderie with fellow human beings who are conscious at the hour of 3:30AM.

IND-RSW: Off to Fort Myers, but unfortunately not to stay. This may have been the coldest flight I've ever been on, but it was a quiet morning and still enjoyable.

TPA: Skipping back to our TPA overnight. A small plane flies in the sky.  I love looking at this picture along with the following...

TPA: A gull flies in the sky over the beach grass.

TPA: A lost ladybug makes it's way over the sand.

FLL: Another gorgeous picture from Florida, sunset in Fort Lauderdale.

40,000 FT: Me being a smart ass. A letter to our Seahawk-loving pilots.

And now on to the overnight that can't really be explained. Well it can. It would just be a paragraph full of stream-of-consciousness narrative and inexplicable amounts of good fortune and new friends.

The three of us had two OMA (Omaha) overnights on our boards. The first time we visited we spent it watching the Broncos game, eating at the hotel, and generally celebrating the fact that we were going to the Super Bowl.

The second time we were going to go out on the town, something I'd been trying to do since we drove from CO to IL in 2011 after I was based in Chicago. I ended up ill, with a fever, unable to leave the hotel. The wait was worth it though. Or was it?

With the winter weather, flights to Chicago started being canceled, including ours. We were in Philly the first night of the trip and Omaha the second. With our first flight (PHL-MDW) cancelled the solution was for us to take a later flight, through MDW to OMA, effectively reducing our nice 16 hour overnight to 11 hours. We called scheduling back and asked if we could go to OMA through St. Louis on a much earlier flight that still left us with enough rest. They granted our wish and we were back up to 15 hours in OMA!

What happened after we landed was best summed up in J's Facebook Post of Wordage: "

If days are rated from a 1-10, today has been an 11. Our day was cancelled and we deadheaded all the way from Philly to Omaha, where we went for Moscow mules, where the owners of the tavern let us in even though they were not open, where they comped us jukebox credits then recommended us to a local restaurant for dinner where we ran into said tavern owners who proceeded to buy our dinner, where DURING DINNER scheduling calls to say we didn't have to report until 4 hrs later than originally planned, and now here we sit having a cocktail that is infused with a cigar smoke before meeting our new tavern owner friends at the local drag queen show. — with Tamara Jackson."

Note: We also had tried out a local brewery before the tavern where all the fun went down. There are not many pictures from this day but there should have been. Let me start with the four that I have and we will take it from there.

Tobacco smoke infused cocktail. That is a stopper, keeping the smoke in the glass. No joke. That ball of ice in the glass. Totally solid and see-through...that thing will take five years to melt.

My blueberry and rye whiskey cocktail. Don't get me started on how much I love rye whiskey.

The Tavern (and one of the owners, Dave) This place is a blast and when you meet the owners, you'll know why! They have totally put themselves into the space. They pointed out so many details from the bar counter (a solid piece of wood which was once the bar top at a famous hotel where presidents stayed - I can't recall the name but Teddy Roosevelt had stayed there, which means he may have drank there, which means J was having a bro-moment just sitting at the bar).

Myself, Stefan and J with our Moscow Mules.

Okay, so here is my mini tour of the section of Omaha we visited:
Where we started: Upstream Brewing Company Good beers. We started here because we went to the tavern when we believed it was open and then found out they didn't open for another hour. So we had some time to kill.
Next up: The Tavern only they still weren't open! As we went to walk away Dave, one of the owners, opened the door and let us in an hour early. From there we met David, the other owner and over drinks and loud jukebox music we talked about tasty beverages, decorating an establishment, and buying pews. They gave us lots of good recommendations and we decided to take one of them, for M's Pub, and try it out for dinner.
That's when things got awesome: M's Pub was described to us by Dave and David as the place to go for Omaha fare. We are SO glad we did. We each ordered a Lavosh, which I believe is like an Armenian flat bread pizza with Havarti. But wait, back up just a moment, Guess who was also at M's? Dave and David! They had left The Tavern before we had in order to find some chairs for the bar. We all sat together and then ordered the Lavosh and something else that had to be tried. The Carrot Dog. This was a marinated and then grilled carrot, in a hot dog bun, with all the toppings. My biggest regret is not taking a picture of this thing because it was colossal. The waitress said it was the second largest Carrot Dog she had seen. The carrot (at the top) was the width of a soda can. I have been craving another bite ever since. This is also when scheduling called to inform us that, once again, our first flight we were to work the next morning would be cancelled. We now did not have to report for another four hours. That is when the drag queen show became our end goal for the evening. But we still had some time to kill...so our gracious (and generous - they paid for our meal) hosts suggested a few more spots to try.
The first: The Berry and Rye. This establishment reminded me of The Arvada Tavern, our favorite place in our neighborhood, where the cocktails are inventive, enjoyable, and unique. This is the place where we ordered the tobacco smoke infused cocktail. This is when I started thinking I was living the movie The World's End and I was going to use the loo and start fighting aliens. Hammered.
The second: Sake Bombers Lounge. Because at this point two servings of hot sake and sangria are a splendid idea.
The finale: The Max. This is where the Miss Max drag queen pageant was. We once again met up with Dave and David. I so wish we could have stayed longer! But duty calls, and we are dutiful flight attendants. We said our goodbyes to our new friends already wanting to come back.

The walk back to the hotel was rough. It was more of a run with -26 degree wind chill and 40 MPH gusts. The next morning when I looked in the mirror J and I both had some kind of rash on our faces, only mine ended at mid-forehead. What the heck? Allergic to the hotel's detergent? What in the world that didn't happen last week? Oh, that's right, total windburn. I had been wearing my hat.

The end to a great month of flying together with two of my favorite people. I can't wait to do it again. :)

Flying over the Rockies. Bumpy, but such a beautiful view. :)