the buddy-pass era

I was reminded that on this date in 2011 I was gigging in Alaska.    Singer Ken Slavin had gotten a week of gigs there and brought me along in my usual role of pianist and musical director. 

Now, some gigs pay for the whole thing, including airfare and hotel.    Others just pay for the gig and you have to swing the travel.    If the gig pays enough, then it's as if airfare and hotel are paid after all, and all's well.    But back then I also had the buddy pass.

My brother flew for an airline.  Still does.  Part of his compensation was that every year he got a handful of passes that anyone could use, if they just paid the airport fee and were willing to fly standby, based on the seniority of the pilot in question.    So, when Paul was first starting out, I got less seniority, and that rose as time passed. 

It was a great way to travel if you had an open schedule.    As a composer, I did.    If you need to be get there on a schedule, or (more often) need to be back home on a schedule, not so much.    I ended up using so many of those passes precisely because there were so few in my brother's circle for whom that would work.    There were several years there where at least a pass or two went unused. 

So that Alaska trip paid pretty darn well, partially because I didn't have to pay more than airport fees to get there.

12 years ago!

. . .    and that was the last buddy-pass flight I took.    By 2011, it had already been getting iffy, because the airlines were tightening up their slack.    Very few flights where you had even an extra seat available.    But this hit right at the wrong season for Alaska, when seasonal workers were flocking to the lower 48.

After a wonderful week wining and dining and living the high life and gigging and swinging for appreciative audiences, I spent 4 days in Alaska airports, sleeping on chairs, at one point driving across the state to Fairbanks because they had 3 extra seats on the next day's flight —– only for them to be taken by the time I got there.

(Upside:  a spectacular early-morning drive on a perfect day through one of the last great wildernesses!)

In Fairbanks, I was nearly crying from exhaustion and deprivation.    Somehow I got a friend to get in touch with an old colleague who dropped everything, came and got me at the airport, and let me nap in a real bed for 3 hours.    Ahhh!

Finally, I paid out the nose for a trip to Seattle, halfway to SA.    Then waited even more, and buddy-passed to SA.    That did it.    I'd buddy-passed for the last time.

Interesting!   I'd had a conversation just this week about how you put your kid down and then never pick her up again;  you return a Blockbuster movie and never check out another;  who knows when's the last time?    Then this thing came up.

That season of life, from the late 90s to the early teens, carried me around the world [mostly] in style, to some of the most vivid travel experiences of my life, then carried Catherine and me together on several splendid anniversary trips and more.

It really was like getting another college education.    Thanks to Paul for landing such a great gig and sharing his passes so readily.