Reserve, Off Reserve, Reserve.

It has been an interesting couple of months. After transferring to DFW on August 31 things have been moving pretty quick. I spent September and October on Reserve. The Month of November I was awarded a Comp Line. A composite line is basically a mix of a hard line and reserve. A hard line is on that the entire month of flying is scheduled. A comp line you could have a whole month scheduled, or it could be be 3 sequences scheduled and the rest being reserve. This is what my month looked like. The other thing about a comp line is that you send an email and give a "wish list" of what you would like. I requested thanksgiving off, and the weekend of the 18th. I figured that wasn't much to ask for. I did get the weekend of the 18th off, but I was scheduled to work a 4 day trip that would have had me sitting in Montgomery Alabama for 30 hours. I have yet to overnight there, but it's my understanding that there is a waffle house (which i hate) a subway, and a gas station that sells fried chicken. This is NOT how I wanted to spend my thanksgiving!
I learned real quick a wonderful benefit when you are a line holder. You can "trip trade" for any open trip. Of the three trips I was assigned, I only flew one, the other two I traded out of. I had a total of 4 trades. The first I traded because it had 3 Mexico trips, with two Mexico overnights. I try my best to avoid these. Obviously the next was the Montgomery on Tday. I ended up trading 3 times before settling on one that had an overnight in Houston. My daughter lives there, so I was excited that I would be able to have thanksgiving with her.
After my experience with a comp line in November, I decided to go back to a reserve line for December. I figured it would be my best bet for getting Christmas off.
The way they seem to assign flying if I was a comp for Dec. I would end up in Fargo on Christmas.
As far as reserve lines go, It's not bad. Thursday, Friday , and Saturday off most of the month. Except the weekend end of Christmas then it will be Sat, Sun, Mon off.

Things are also coming along on the airplane. I'm at 250 hours on it now. I'm finally starting to feel pretty comfortable with it. We have been getting several ifr days lately as well, so it's good to get some ILS practice.

One morning they were calling for fog, and very low ceilings. It was a short flight back from Houston, so I kept the speed up trying to beat the fog. I ended up seeing a very cool image as we flew the downwind at dfw.

Have you figured it out?
That is downtown Dallas, the skyscrapers sticking up out of the clouds/fog.
Now here is were it get even cooler.

The city split the fog as it moved in from the southwest.
I have never seen anything quite like that. And yes we made it in before the fog, it started rolling across the north side of the field as we were pulling into the terminal.
I have learned there is one major side affect to being an airline pilot. You easily get sick. I got a cold my first trip off IOE, and now I'm home with a pretty good flu or something. I do attribute it to the profession, because I have not had a serious flu/illness in probably 10-12 years. So that being said, It's time to finish this post, and go sit back down for a bit. More to come soon.