Sleeping on the floor in PSC

So I started this blog at the urging of a fellow pilot and friend who was laughing at my tale of sleeping on the floor in the hotel. He said I should start a blog about the pilot's life and how it's really not all the glam that people think it is.

I'm flying the same trip for five weeks in a row. Start on Tuesday morning at 9:00, fly seven legs, nine hours on the ground in OTH (North Bend/Coos Bay, OR). Five legs Wednesday, arrive in PSC (Pasco, WA) 3:00 p.m. Up at 4:30 Thursday, fly five legs, get into RDM (Redmond, OR) 4:00 p.m. Up at 3:30 Friday, just three legs and home by 9:30 a.m.

The first day pretty much kicks your butt and you don't really get enough rest to recover, so you start out tired the next day and it just kind of builds from there. This week I managed to skip taking a nap in PSC in favor of going to bed early. I paid some bills, made some phone calls, replied to some emails and was in bed with lights out by 7 p.m., looking forward to having plenty of sleep for a change.

At 9:53 the phone in my room rang. This only happens when Crew Scheduling calls to tell you that the night plane didn't get in due to weather or mechanical so you can sleep in the next morning (no plane to fly out). It was a woman asking for Sonja. I'm pretty sure it was another flight crew that had just arrived at the hotel and got to sleep in the next day. I said something rude, slammed down the phone and crawled back into my marshmallow bed. All the Red Lion Hotels went through a remodel during the last few years which included new furniture and pillowtop mattresses. The PSC hotel did this about four years ago. The mattresses were nice at first, but as they wear in, they start to break down and soften. You can actually see body prints where they are most commonly slept on.

After a few minutes of tossing and turning and not getting comfortable and my back aching, I got up, yanked all the covers off the end of the bed and made myself a taco on the floor. With the fan on to drown out the flight crew now conversing on the patio of the room next door, I was able to sleep reasonably well for the rest of the night.

Apparently I'm not the only one who prefers firm beds. A couple other pilots also admit to sleeping on the floor at the Red Lions.