October 22, 2023 -- A Day In the Life of...

A Day in the Life of Carrie Keiser

Beep Beep Beep, it’s 5:30 AM, time to get up and moving for the day. It is Monday morning and it begins like this: , crack myself out of the nice warm covers, get dressed, first check the weather to see how I should begin the day. Long pants, t-shirt and a hoodie should do the trick.  Stumble down the steps, while wiping the sleep from my bleary eyes. Swallow, some allergy pills, some headache meds and take my vitamins. Now to find some food for my grumbling tummy. Open the fridge and stare for several minutes, grab the milk and whatever juice is hiding inside. Open the pantry, let’s see cereal? Maybe or a toasted bagel with cream cheese? Hummmm Bagel it is. Once the bagel is heated up and spread generously with cream cheese and the liquid has been portioned out into cups, I set it all on the table for future consuming. Prayers first, then open my scripture app and read a chapter, share with Scott via Messenger what I read/learned from that chapter, all while eating breakfast.  Once that is done, then I do my language studies with Duo Lingo; a little German and a little Irish.  Now it time to brush my teeth and hop into the pickup.

Once I make my like 8 min (if I hit all the light red Haha) commute to the bus barn, its now about 7 AM. I grab my tire thumper and check all the tires, then the fluids, the lights and blinkers are next followed by the check sheet and finally get the key a turn and open the door.  I back out of the barn and park along the side of the road, take a morning selfie and post it with a weather report (For some silly reason people look forward to that.) Make sure all the windows are closed and turn the heat on.  I pull away at 7;09 AM and head to my first stop to begin loading up with kids to drop at the various schools. I have about 9 pick ups before I begin to drop off at the schools; High School , Middle School, upper grade (3-5) school, one more pick up and our final drop off and the K-2 school by 8:00 AM. Do a quick walk through looking for sleepers, then head back the barn. I sweep and clean up the bus and park her inside to await my afternoon return.

I head home and its time to turn on the reminder alarms…. Because sleep is my friend and I enjoy a morning nap. Probably several people will text and or call me but it’s all good. I make lunch and occasionally Troy calls and we meet for lunch somewhere.  

Head back to the barn around 2:30 PM. Do a quick walk around and read my book until time to pull out and line up at the grade school by 3;05PM.  

I like to greet the little kids at the door and say hi to them calling most by name.  Help one little guy put on his watch, sort out the kids to lessen the fights and then choose a book from my pile to quickly read by this time we have about 5 mins before we leave, so the book has to be fast. I proceed to drop kids off before stopping at the next school for pick up. We have a few minutes to visit and rearrange the kids to make sufficient room for the next grades.  There is sometimes a little more reading and books being passed around.  Loaded by about 3:35 and head to the middle school, A few kids get off here and we rearrange again for loading. Some more chatting until the bell rings and we settle back into our seats and put the music on. Leave that school at 3:50 PM and go to the high school. Several kids get off here and a few jump on and we are off agin to drop the kids off at the next 6-7 stops.

Finally return to the bus barn around 4:25 PM, park along side of the road and sweep the bus for the morning.  Often I have one or more grandkid with my, ao they head inside the bus barn to go potty and visit with Charles, the bus boss.  Once bus one has arrived I pull in to the barn behind him and shut ‘er off. Head to fill out my time sheet and collect the grands.  We take a picture to send to grandpa and usually Shantel to warn them we are getting ready to drop off Zo off and then Ill be home.  

If I’m lucky, Troy has come up with dinner, if not well I figure it out. Now Tuesday thru Thursday Troy for sure makes dinner because I don’t have a lot of time between arriving home about 5 PM and heading to the grocery story by 6PM. After dinner and dishes, it’s chill time. Some TV is being watched or listened to, some reading, maybe some crocheting is happening and sometimes a bit of video game playing happens between 6;30 and whenever I get tired enough to head to bed after my shower. I usually go to bed around 11 PM and do some more reading til I drop my phone on my face, set it on the charger and sleep til that alarm goes off again.  

Tuesday thru Thursday I’m at the grocery store working as a cashier and trying to keep busy sweeping and cleaning the check stands until 10 PM. After I return hime, I usually shower and then go to bed to read as previously stated.

There it is the exciting Day in the Life of Carrie!

A Day in My Life at Work 

Flynn Family Story Slingers

22 October 2023

by Cary Holmquist

This is how pitiful things can get.

At the Missoula airport, we agents at Horizon Air do all the various jobs associated with the aircraft when it is on the ground, except mechanical maintenance.  We bring the aircraft in to the gate, attach electrical ground power, help people get off and then on the aircraft, unload inbound baggage and get it to the carousel and load baggage and cargo going outbound and a whole bunch of paperwork for safety and reporting.  

And, for most of the year in Missoula, we provide the deicing that often needs to be done to remove any frost, snow or ice that might accumulate on the aircraft wings.  We are all trained to do this using a big truck that goes around with big tanks of deice fluids and a person in a cherry-picker bucket hoisted above the aircraft, who sprays the fluids on the aircraft surfaces.  The spray is strong and so it takes some muscles to hold it, point it and get it on evenly.

The idea is to remove, by melting and pushing off any frost, snow or ice from the aircraft with a heated fluid called Type I.  Then, if there is active precipitation, such as falling snow or freezing rain, we spray on Type IV fluid, which is very thick and prevents the moisture from freezing onto the aircraft before the flight can take off.  

These measures are needed so the frost or snow cannot cause too much drag on the wings while the aircraft is taking off.  The fluids sheer off while the aircraft is in flight further reducing drag and different measures help reduce ice forming while the aircraft is in flight—usually a heating system within the wings.

Meanwhile, we agents are doing this deicing process under any kind of weather conditions—day or night, windy or below zero or what have you.  Deice season in Missoula usually starts as early as September, depending on frost conditions and continues as late as April or May.  A few times in June, even.  So most of the year.

This one day for deicing I will never forget.  Most of the sessions just blur into one another after 29 years of doing it seven to nine months of the year.  But this one day stands out as a doozy.

So, it started off fairly routine.  I was driving the truck and a newer agent was up in the bucket of the deicer.  This woman was young, maybe 21 years old at the time and was very particular about her clothing, hair and make up.  

Yolanda had not deiced very many times as it was kind of early in the season, as I recall, but she was confident that she would do just fine, even though snow had started to fall by the time the aircraft was ready.  That is, all the people were on board, the doors were closed and the flight checklist by the cockpit crew was completed and we were signaled to begin.

At that time, we could do our deicing in Missoula at the gate, right where the plane was unloaded and loaded.  So, we got one engine and propeller of the Bombardier Q-400, 76-seat plane started, on the first-officer’s side of the aircraft, to provide the aircraft with electrical power during the process. Then we disconnected the electrical ground power, so we could move around the aircraft without running over the power cords that had connected the ground-power unit to the aircraft.  

While we were doing that, the snow started falling much heavier and it was that really sloppy, wet kind of huge flakes that are barely frozen and, oh, so pretty to watch.  But sloppy wet.

That kind of snow is difficult to remove because it sticks to the wing surfaces and we have to remove all of it with Type I fluid before we can apply Type IV to prevent any more snow from adhering to the wing—the Type IV dilutes the water in the snow and that keeps it from freezing onto the wing for an extended period.

Yolanda was having a tough time getting all of that new falling snow off the wings.  We started with the wing on the captain’s side of the aircraft, and she was spraying a huge amount of Type I fluid on it, trying to melt and shove off the snow that was falling heavier all the time and a little wind was working against her, pushing the snow along and mist from the heated fluid back into her face.  

The puddle of melted snow and pinkish deice fluid was growing huge under the wing.  Usually there are only a few drips.   This normally takes two to four minutes, but Yolanda worked at it so long that it was almost nine minutes and counting.

Finally, Yolanda got all the snow off that wing and was able to quickly switch fluid hoses and dosed the wing with the bright green Type IV anti-ice fluid.  I moved the truck around the wing and up to the horizontal stabilizer of the tail section, because that surface needed to be deiced and anti-iced as well.  That hoists the deice agent even higher into the air to be over the tail.  The wind was still working against us as the heavy snow was not letting up.  It took a long while.  

We moved around to the first-officer’s side of the aircraft, to the tail section first and as she moved the bucket around, I could see Yolanda was getting soaked from all the wet snow.  Her hair was bedraggled and her coat was dripping wet.  We communicated through radio headsets with each other, so she could give me directions as needed and so I asked her how it was going and she was determined to get it all done.

It was nearly 20 minutes since we started by the time we got to the first-officer’s wing, when we had to wait a little bit while the engine and propeller on the captain’s side was started up and the engine on the first-officer’s side was shut down so we could get close to the wing without the propeller interfering.  And so we started on that wing and 10 minutes later we were still working on it with Type I.

I could see that Yolanda was suffering.  At least that is how it looked, with her hair and coat dripping and her face was out of a cartoon!  Her make-up was running and she looked like a comic-book character with black mascara streaks running across her rosy cheeks that were running down her chin and neck.  She was a mess.  I don’t know how she could see anything that she was doing.  I don’t think people in the aircraft could see her, and did not witness how much she was putting into the process to get them in the air and on their way to Seattle.

And then we ran out of Type I de-ice fluid, just as we were finished with the wing and just about to start with the final application of Type IV.  

That was when captain radioed us, saying it was all taking too long and that we should just quit and wait out the snow flurries and start again in about half an hour or so, when he would be confident about getting the plane into the air.

Sure.  We were nearly done and could have finished with the final fluid.  But the captain—after all that—decided to postpone the whole operation!  And we would have to start all over again, after we got more Type I fluid pumped into the truck and heated.  

All of that, more than 30 minutes of deicing, and Yolanda was a shivering drowned rat with a cartoon’s horror face.  She was a total mess and even her boots had filled with snow and it had melted so that when she got out of the bucket, she was sloshing everywhere. 

I have never seen it worse since then, though many times it has been much, much colder and darker or the wind blew harder against us.  And I don’t recall that we ever ran out of fluid again like that, using a whole tank of more than 600 gallons on a single aircraft.   

You can imagine that Yolanda was excused from deicing for the rest of the day and she just went home to dry out and warm up more.  She had been a real trooper.   When we started again, it would be my turn in the bucket.  And I sailed through it just fine as the snow had completely stopped falling by then and the wings were mostly clean from all of Yolanda’s anti-icing.  

But we waited several days before we told Yolanda how the final deicing session went.

Story Slingers

Myrna Flynn

October 22, 2023

3 Day one Day

As many of you know, I drove bus for People for People several years ago. I had a few trips that were not my favorites. Today, I am going to combine 3 of those into 1. My days usually started around 9 am and went to around 4 or 5 pm.

The first !/3 of this was a passenger who was in a wheel chair and weighed about 275 pounds. I had to help her I not her chair and negotiate my way out of her small apartment. Then move her chair through the snow into the bus. After I had secured her in the restraints, I headed to the Quincy CXlinic, got her out of the bus onto the sidewalk and pushed her up the ramp. When the appointment was over, I had to reverse my trip back to her apartment. 

The second 1/3 was to take a lady to a destination past Lind and over highway 395. I got there and let her out. The trip had been OK up to then. 

I started back to Moses Lake. Suddenly, it turned into a dark and stormy night. I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. I decided to take the freeway back. With a sigh of relief, I saw the lights at the turn off into Moses. I still had to drive the rest of the way home to Ephrata, luckily the rain had tapered off. 

The last 1/3 of this one day in 3 was to take a patient to dialysis in Wenatchee. I got to his residence. He was also in a wheelchair, bu there were 2 of his brothers there to bring him down off the porch and to help me get him into the bus. I secured his chair and started to drive away and got stuck in the snow in the driveway. They pushed me out.

I let them know that I would have him back from Wenatchee by 4 pm. When I got there, there was no one home. I had no way to get him onto his porch which was about 4 feet high from the ground, and into the house. He was a big man, probably weighed around 215.

There was no real ramp, just a piece of flimsy plywood on the ground leaning against the porch. I called my dispatcher and explained my dilemma, to let him know that I would be late getting in.

Finally, an hour later, they showed up. I told them that I had explained to my dispatcher that there was no ramp and he said, "let them know that until a real ramp is installed, People for People would not be able to pick up their brother and take him to his dialysis appointments." I expressed how inconsiderate and uncomfortable it was for their brother to be sitting, waiting and wondering when they would come.

And that ended my 3 day in One!!

From the journal of Daren Flynn

29 Jan '85 - Tuesday

Mission accomplished, Delivered my coils in Eminence, Ky.My load of wheels to go to Billings is ready for me to pick up tomorrow in Henderson, Ky. I'm now about an hour from Henderson, so I'll up early and go load and head for the Big Sky Country.

30 Jan '85

I got my wheels loaded and still have room for a couple more pallets so I'm going to load 2 pallets of springs in the morning in Chicago to go to the same place in Billings that the wheels go to -- Beals Inc.

It's snowing lightly now and the last I heard there could be from 1-3 inches by morning. I'm about 40 miles south of Chicago and that's close enough for me for tonight, I'll go on in tomorrow. Chicago is not really a nice place to spend the night. The truck stops there are bad and it's not too safe to park in other places in town so about 40 miles out in any direction is usually a good idea.I've just finished studying "The Light of Christ" lesson in this years priesthood personal study guide.

It has helped me understand a little more about the Savior and the great role he has played and continues to play in my life and everyones lives and everything else. It is by the light of Christ that everything that had been created is governed. Without the light of Christ there would be no sunlight nor any other light. There would be no plants. We, if we existed, would have no way of determining right from wrong. 

I am determined to study at least one lesson from the manual each week this year, and to keep up with the reading assignments for Sunday School, which is the Doctrine and Covenants.

31 Jan '85 -- Thursday

Today I drove into Chicago, loaded four bundles of springs and headed west. I stopped and fueled, showered, shaved and ate at Hampshire, Il and then drove to Hasty, Mn. Here I will sleep a little. I am running the truck at 1500 RPM while I sleep. The weather is bitterly cold, about 10 below zero and will be colder before morning.

1 & 2 Feb '85 -- Friday and Saturday

I combine the two because to me they were just one long - long bad day. I drove from Hasty to Miles City, Mt without any real problems. I have been constantly, it seems, tightening load straps and re-doing them since I loaded the wheels in Henderson. I I continued to do that on Friday until I got to Wibaux, Mt when I checked the load and everything seemed to be in order. By then, of course, it was quite dark. I guess it was about 9:30 pm or so. Anyway, I got to Miles City about 11:30pm Friday. A guy who had been running along behind me all day noticed sparks just half a mile before I turned off the interstate at Miles city, so he stopped and found one of the wheels from my load in the ditch by the road.

I had lost 4 of them in the hundred miles between Wibaux and Miles City. The guy took me back in his truck to get the wheel he had found, then I took off in my truck in search of the other three wheels. I looked in the median of the highway going back toward Wibaux, and in I went the whole 100 miles. I found one just before I got to Glendive and loaded it back on. I didn't find any more before getting to Wibaux where I turned around and started looking in the ditch.

By then the temperature was about 27° below zeroed the antifreeze in the truck's cooling system just was not strong enough. The lower hose and pipe froze up while I was driving along the shoulder. The water temperature gauge would go up to the red and I would stop and wait for it to go back down to 160° or so and then go again. But I couldn't go very far before it would go back up to 200° and I'd have to stop. This process was taking up a lot of time and I wasn't finding any more wheels. I was really getting frustrated and sleepy and a little bit nervous too. It was awfully cold and the traffic was non-existent at that time of the morning. 

Finally, I got so tired and so sleepy that I just pulled over, turned on the 4 way flashers and crashed across the dog house. That was about 4 am. It wasn't very long before I was cold enough that it woke me up. I kicked off my boots and crawled into my sleeping bag and stayed there until 7 am

About every 20 minutes or so I would wake up and check all the gauges to see if the truck was ok. 

At 7 o'clock it was light enough to see along the ditch pretty good and I wanted to be sure I was the first to see those other two wheels, so off I went again. The radiator hose still frozen, so I didn't make very good time.

After a while I got worried about running out of fuel. I checked and sure enough I was about to run out. I still had half a tank on the right side but the crossover line was frozen and then feeder tank had about an inch of fuel in it. 

About then, I found another wheeled loaded it on. It was 8 miles west of the last one. 

I finally got to Terry and bought $51worth of #2 fuel and a propane torch I figured if I got the lower end of the radiator thawed with the torch I could get on into Miles City before #2 fuel would jell up.

Well I was wrong. In the first place, I could only partially thaw radiator and it would freeze up again very soon. I did that about three times before the fuel began to jell. It plugged up the fuel filter, so I had to put in a new one and went like a house on fire for about a mile. It jelled up again. Then I began transferring fuel from the right tank to the left because the one on the right had mostly #1 fuel and additive in it. I figured 2 or 3 gallons of that in the feeder tank  would solve the problem. 

It didn't.

Then I hitched a ride into Miles City with a bull hauler , bought 4 1/2 gallons of #1 and a quart of anti-gel fuel additive. that took the last of my money. 

I got a ride back to the truck with a Dallas Texas flat bedder. I poured the fuel & additive in the tank, started the engine and let it run for half an hour and drove on in to Miles City. 

The sun had evidently thawed the water because I had no problem with it into Miles City, but when I there I drained 2 gallons out and put in 2 gallons of the antifreeze, bought 50 gallons of #1 fuel, showered, shaved, ate and re-did the load straps -- then drove to Billings. I got here at about 8:30 pm Saturday.

It's about zero here according to my little thermometer, so I'm afraid to shut the truck off for very long. It may not start again if I do.

I'm at Rick and Donna's place now, washing and drying clothes. They are not here. I just came in and made myself at home, as they have told me to do in the past.

3 Feb '85 - Sunday

I figured to ride to church with Rick and Donna today, but haven't yet gotten home. It is 2:30 pm now and church is over. Ive spent the day reading the Feb Ensign. 

The temperature is 0°. I shut the truck off for three hours from 11:30 to now. The temp at 11:30 was 10°. Probably won't turn it off again today.