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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Move number 1...(and #2)

Right after A and I were first married, and he got his CFI, we had discussed him taking a flight instructor's position to get hours. Generally this is the first step in a commercial pilot's career. Living in the Salt Lake City area, we found that the market there was way saturated with CFI's. If I remember right, we found a school that would employ him, but not enough to live on. We started to look elsewhere.

An offer came from A's hometown in Texas to instruct there for a start up flight school that would replace the one he learned from years prior. He was so excited. We packed up our house, put it on the market, got on our vehicles and drove to Texas. We got an apartment there and I started the job search. A eventually had to start searching too, as just as we left Utah, he was informed that the school would be delayed in opening. They still wanted him to instruct, but it would be a little while before it would be up and running. OK, we understood that. Sometimes it takes a little longer to get things running. A went to work for the FBO there, pumping gas. I eventually found a job, first at the photo center at the WalMart, then for an insurance company doing data entry.

We waited 2 months, being strung along by the guy who was opening the flight school. Our real estate agents in Utah weren't doing anything to market the house. We still had a mortgage to pay, as well as rent to pay in Texas. After about 2 months, we decided that we weren't making enough to support two households and we had a tough decision to make. We couldn't get a straight answer out of the flight school guy, so we decided to pack up and move back to our house in Utah while we still had the money in savings to do so.

A was able to get a really good paying job when we got back to Utah, but it was a "ground" job. I was able to find something in Salt Lake that paid well, so we were able to build our savings back up again.

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