SkyBust

If you have looked at my site before you'll notice I like airplanes. Living in the Columbus Ohio area means you better like regional Jets (RJ) as our airport does not get much more than the Boeing 737 except on rare occasions. For the last few years we had been hearing about the new "Low Cost" airline coming to town called SkyBus. Many local businesses and the state and city invested heavily in this startup. They assembled a good pot of cash and took flight last May. Things were OK until there were problems at Christmas. Now the problems are over as SkyBus has shut down. I feel awful about this on so many fronts. I think about all the people that are away from home with no chance to fly back. I had something similar happen last month and I was only 75 miles from home. I feel bad for the employees that are now out of work. As a plane watcher I feel bad as a fleet of jets is gone from the skies and I have less opportunities to spot. But maybe what bugs me most is all the self proclaimed experts that "knew this was coming" yet never said so before....

The internet is filled with anonymous faces and on a day like today the negatives certainly outweigh the positives toward this airline. I know that it will now cost a great deal more to fly from CMH. JetBlue left a few months ago. Midwest Airlines pulled back as did Delta. There are no flights to California now. There are only a couple to Las Vegas and Phoenix and most of those are on Southwest. I despise Southwest. I want to know where I am sitting and that I have a seat. I've had the opportunity to travel all over the globe. From New Zealand to England and all over Europe. I love flying. I just wonder if I'll be able to do much anymore.

I went ahead and bought tickets to Denver last night fearing an increase is coming. I booked on Delta where I have alot of miles in their frequent flyer program. Please let them stay in business.

Days of Our Lives

When I was a kid my mom would watch a couple Soaps. Days of Our Lives and Another World. NBC soaps it was. I kinda paid attention thru the early 80's in the summers and occasionally after school as they were moved around. I watched Days until the early 90's and by then Another World had been killed off followed by Santa Barbara. Days however lost its charm and I quit watching until a couple years ago I left the noon news on after it was over and Days was on. It had been many years since I had watched, yet there were several old cast members back on the show. I watched. 2 years or so later I'm still watching. In the meantime I found a website that had spoilers and other stuff about the show that I really liked. When I missed an episode or two I could quickly get the update. Last week that site did not update. I knew something was up. Today I read that the owner sold his site and he's moved on. Now today I just skipped the show. Have I moved on again? Time will surely tell.

Call Centers

I hate call centers. I really hate the ones that are offshore (aren't they all?) that try and pretend to be in the US. The coached voices and muted accents. Like we really don't know where you are. Next time you have one talk a little slang. They have no idea what you are saying as they learn correct english. I had the pleasure of trying to understand 2 different folks today. No Habla.

Bury The Flag

The CBJ instituted a new slogan for this season. Carry The Flag. They have people come out and skate around the ice before games with a large CBJ flag and then they plant it at center ice to get the fans "going". I've not been a fan of it, but whatever... the marketing people are trying to sell the team. Maybe they should try putting a team on the ice that is a legitimate NHL caliber group. In any case My father took myself and my 2 kids to the Detroit Red Wings game Saturday night and we were treated to one of the most lopsided games I've ever been to. Awful sorta covers it from the CBJ side. My dad has gone to 7 games now over the 7 seasons and has yet to see a CBJ win. How pathetic is that? About as pathetic as this franchise has sunk. I'm watching tonight's game against Nashville and once again nobody showed up. Oh they are starting fights and trying to hit, but its a bit late to do that in the last 7 minutes down by 3 goals.

I put the pics of my kids up as it is the best part of the game. Eek once again got on the jumbo screen and she was the last person of the evening to be on. She tried so hard dancing every time there was any break in the action. Frudoch on the other hand was pissed as he never gets on the screen. In any case its another season of watching the playoffs from afar. Word to the CBJ ticket folks: Save you time and money this year as I'm not buying. Maybe a few games here and there but until this organization shows that they can compete on a nightly basis I'm not interested. I don't need all wins (would be nice though). I want to see the team not quit.

Life Comes at You Fast

Its been a few days since my last update and my days have been much like how the Nationwide Insurance saying goes... Life Comes at You Fast. Its been a fast week that included going back to get my truck in Wooster (on my anniversary) and getting the official results on my shoulder as well as 3 inches of rain and today the start of March Madness and spring break for the kids. Its been so crazy that I did not fill out a bracket for the NCAA tournament for the first time since I was about 11. Its been hard to take it all in, but as the saying goes... So are the Days of our Lives....

There have been good things of course and I am thankful for the small glimpses of the end of the tunnel. My Dr. gave me the official news that I had been expecting since getting the test results. I need a shoulder replacement. Its not as common a surgery as other joint replacements and its fairly uncommon for someone to need one at 40, but thats what I face. Trying to find the correct surgeon is my next step. I have had problems in the past getting things fixed on the first try and this has lead to a couple of extra surgeries that I really would have rather not had. My shoulder is just a basket case and there is only one way to fix it. I really don't want more surgery, but if I want to have a working arm its going to be absolutely necessary. Now the fight will be with the insurance company to get it paid for. I have appointments with 2 surgeons that do a lot of these procedures. One is about 20 miles away and the other is about 100 miles away. Both do the surgery daily. I have no idea when I'll actually get it done. At this point I just want to meet these guys and see what vibes I get. In the meantime I will just continue to suffer.

The Day After... or Thereabouts

I made it home from Wooster. Unfortunately it was sans car. We were able to get rides back and forth from the hotel and rink from one of my sons teammates father on Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately he was leaving after Saturdays game so we were able to get rides from the other regular team members father. Since this was a tournament the team consisted of kids from several teams and we only knew a few of them. I had my truck towed to a Chevy dealer and they just called to tell me its done. Of course it cost a boatload. I suspected it was the fuel pump and indeed it was. Not a fun job on the GM large SUV's. Its also a common repair on these and my truck with more than 120K miles was overdue. Oh well. I'll get the truck back first thing in the morning. The trip did have its highlights though as 3 games gave 3 more opportunities to play hockey for my son.

The games however were not so good. The silly thing is the bracket we were in had all 4 teams from the columbus area. The other 3 teams were from the Easton program. Lets just say those teams were loaded and made our group of kids playing together for the first time look pretty outclassed. The highlight for me was the last game on Sunday morning when my son put a puck in goal on a rebound and got the team on the board. Goals had been pretty light as they were outscored 22-6 in all the games. He was very happy and his teammates mobbed him. Needless to say the ride home was better. I sure wish it had been a drive home though.

Take this truck and shove it

Yesterday afternoon I picked my son up from school and we headed north 75 miles for a hockey tournament. Everything went well until we passed the rink and went to turn around in a parking lot. My truck just died. In a driving rainstorm about half mile from the rink. We walked to the rink-in the rain. The car--well lets just say it won't start. One of the teammates father drove us to the hotel and this morning I called every shop in town. Nothing. No chance of getting it fixed. We are in Wooster Ohio if anybody has any thoughts. I guess its call Enterprise and get a rental and try and have my truck towed to a shop. Oh what fun.

The Kind of News That You Never Expect

Since 1997 my health would not be what anyone would call great. In that time I've had 6 major surgeries and an additional 13 smaller surgical procedures. Its not been fun. Not even the drugs. About a month ago my shoulder which has been the recipient of most of those surgeries started to hurt much more than "normal". Typically I rate my pain as a 4 or 5 out of 10 on a daily basis and keep it under control with medication. As I said about a month ago the pain level went up dramatically. I had not done anything to cause this so after a week or two I made an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon who has been treating me. His exam did not show anything obvious although I could barely speak afterwards from the intense pain from the pulling and twisting. He ordered an MRI and an Arthrogram to look for any issues.

The tests themselves were not pleasant as I love being inside a 10000 pound magnetic tube with my arm twisted up in a very uncomfortable position. The Arthrogram was not much better as the Radiologist had trouble getting his catheter of die into what is left of my shoulder. Immediately after that we looked at the monitor and he remarked that several areas of my labrum appeared to be out of position or missing altogether. Then it was back for another MRI with the dye now inside my shoulder. Now I knew my labrum was bad as I have had both and arthroscopic and open labral repair done in the past. The labrum is the piece that cushions the shoulder joint and its the piece that is often torn by pitchers and quarterbacks as well as hockey players after a big hit in the shoulder. So in any case the test were done which caused even more pain, but I was happy that I'd at least soon hopefully know what was going on. In fact my wife was trying to prepare me for the likely results of nothing wrong beyond my past problems. For a day I even started to think that was true. Yesterday we got the report back.

Rather than calling me the Dr. came down to talk to my wife. Its not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Without going into too much medical detail I have 6 different serious problems. 5 of which will require surgical repair at some point. When my wife relayed the news to me it was like the old Batman TV show. KABLAM, POW, BOOM. I had years ago decided I could live with what I have. The chronic pain and reduced function of my arm was bad, but in my mind it was not worth going under the knife for a few degrees more movement or a possible reduction in pain. I was content, but somehow things changed. I don't know how or why, but they changed. So now I am at that point where I need to go back and revisit a surgical possibility on my shoulder. I lost the last 2.5 years to surgeries on my foot and was really looking forward to getting back up and around again. Now I'm facing having 2 separate tears of my rotator cuff fixed and having a shoulder replacement at a minimum. The report said the level of arthritis in my shoulder was fairly marked which in layman's terms means very advanced. Bone on bone every time I move my arm. Think about that for awhile.