I will start training in Hong Kong for Cathay Pacific on July 7th, 2008. I am very excited, but a little nervous, too. It is going to be stressful, taxing, involve lots of studying, and I’ll be under the microscope. The whole training adventure will last between four and five months!

That’s a long time to be gone, however, Laura was able to get two months of time off from work (unpaid, unfortunately!) so she will be able to go with me for the first couple months. We are headed out the week prior, leaving from New York on June 29th. I wanted to get there a little early, to help with the 12 hour time difference from the East Coast of the U.S. I don’t want to start training groggy and exhausted.

Let me digress here, for one moment. I have had at least four or five different friends tell me that 12 hours of time difference is nothing: they’ve been to Australia, parts of Asia, and elsewhere, where the difference in time zone was 17 hours, or 14 hours, or 19 hours, or some other craziness. Nonsense.

How many time zones are there in the world? Asked another way, how many hours in a day? 24. There are 24 time zones on our wonderful planet. So, the worst time zone change can be 12 hours of difference, like traveling to Hong Kong from New York, because that is half of 24. If someone tells you that they experienced 16 hours of time zone change, they might still be suffering from jet-lag! Think of it this way: When someone travels from New York to Chicago, do they suffer from that huge and amazing 23 hour difference in time? No! It’s a one hour change. How about NYC-LA? Is that a 21 hour change or a three hour change? It’s three! Because the world has 24 time zones, then the worst shift can only be up to 12 hours, before it starts getting better again. Crossing the International dateline, out in the Pacific, means the date changes, but our bodies don’t care about what day it is, they care about what time it is. So, 12 hours stinks, but beyond that, it only gets easier . . .

Anyway, during that week of acclimation, we hope to go see some of the sights of Hong Kong, including Victoria Harbor and ride on a ferry across the water. I will be sure to update this site with pictures and tales of our adventures.

Also, our home number will stay the same, and you can call us at our regular number. That magic is brought to you in part by Vonage. Read about their benefits here. We will bring our Vonage router with us, so you can call us locally, we get free incoming calls, and we can call out for free. Good stuff.

More good stuff? God is good. Did you know that? Trust me, He is simply amazing and I’m glad He’s on my side. Really, He’s on all our sides, if we let Him.

Cathay Pacific is flying me over for free, but they won’t pay for Laura yet, because officially, when I go over there, I won’t be employed yet. Her ticket is going to put us back quite a bit. Just the round trip from Columbus to NYC, where we’ll depart for Hong Kong, will be around $900 dollars. Now, I’m a pilot, but $900 bucks is outrageous! We found a much cheaper deal on the internet, but it would mean that she wouldn’t be able to travel with me; she’d be on another airline. Laura is brave, adventurous, and willing to do a lot of things on her own, at least more than anyone else in her family (many of which are too scared to even get on a plane), but that was probably asking too much of her at this juncture. She would do it to save money but she wouldn’t want to.

We were discussing it over a video iChat while I was in Toronto on an overnight trip for work. We knew what we needed to do to be prudent with our money, but our hearts wanted to go together. We ended our conversation with me saying, “I won’t buy the tickets tonight, I’ll wait until the morning.”

The next morning, the conversation came up between me and my flight attendant that we were going to have to buy tickets for Laura to get to NYC. She immediately offered to give us two of her buddy passes so that Laura could go, and go for FREE. That way, we’d only have to buy the ticket from NYC to Hong Kong! Isn’t God good? We could have bought those tickets the night before and been out over $900 bucks, but He knew our plight, situation, and financial situation.

It’s almost like God toys with us a little bit to see what we’re going to do. Are we going to trust Him? Are we going to go our own way? Are we going to give Him a chance to act in our lives? Are we going to march on in our own plans or are we going to allow Him space to maneuver us? He wants to help us, but we have to let Him.

Thank you God for getting us through this one, yet again!

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