If I'm headed West it must be morning

Time, in the strictest sense, has ceased to matter. Wake up, head to the airport, fly to points West.

Sit for the day.

Fly to the East, and home.

That's been the routine for the past several weeks. Vacations and illness among other pilots in our company have meant a busy schedule that continues into August.

This is fine with me. More flying is almost always welcomed.

The weather has been consistently good, with only a few days spent dodging thunderstorms as the dog days of summer settle onto the upper Midwest.

Nothing has broken on any airplane I've flown for what seems like ages now and I can't remember my last instrument approach.

These are fortunate days then, a respite from the cold, snow, ice and low ceilings that were so routine but that seem so long ago.

It helps to have a short memory up here. Summer comes and winter is quickly forgotten. The weather will always be like this. That fallacy holds right up until it doesn't and the skies are once again filled with snow and ice and cloud.

I wish I had a good flying story to share. I don't, just a grinding stretch of airports, airplanes, fast-food lunches, clearances read back by rote and the same patchwork of fields slipping slowly below my wings.

A freight pilot's glamor story: I flew into Sioux Falls three times in 21 hours. Twice I was heading West so it must have been in the morning. It's getting hard to tell otherwise.

The compass has become my clock.