Chapter 11

I woke up in the morning and realized that we had several branch offices and I had not seen any of them yet. After Shannon came down for coffee I told her that we were going on a trip; she looked at me and sleepily asked where? I told her that we should take the Lear for a little ride and see if it was as good as everyone thought. She excitedly asked again, "where are we going?" I told her, "I planned to take us to a very nice tropical spot called High Level first then on to where ever else I thought of after that."

She laughed, "you do realize it is winter now? High Level wouldn't be considered tropical even in the summer."

"What? You mean we have opened offices in places other then the tropics? I am shocked."

Shannon groaned at me and said she would pack for our vacation.

Once we got to the office I asked Rick what I had to do in order to borrow one of his toy planes. Rick informed me, "Just phone flight services and they would set things up." I got the number from him and called.

"Hello, McDonald Enterprises Flight services how may I help you?" a lady answered the phone.

"Hello, who do I talk to in order to use the Lear Jet for a couple of days?" I asked her.

"I am sorry sir, the Lear Jet is only available to the president of the company and no one else" she responded.

"OH, and who would that be?"

"That would be Mr. Rick Lowry," she said with conviction.

"OK, what about his boss, would he be able to get the plane?"

"Sorry sir, Mr. Lowry doesn't 'have' a boss, he is the boss." She laughed as if it was funny.

"Then why is the company called McDonald Enterprises and not Lowry Enterprises?" I queried her.

"Oh I think maybe he inherited it," she said hopefully.

"How long have you worked for McDonald Enterprises?" I asked her.

"I have been with the company for a little over two months now," she said.

I praised her for doing a good job then I asked to speak to her manager.

After her manager came on the line I told him who I was and that I would like to use the Lear jet for a couple of days, He told me it would be ready when I got there and I thanked him.

I phoned Rick on the way to the airport and gave him a hard time about owning my company. All of us were laughing when Shannon overheard me tell Rick the story of how I had to ask Rick's permission to fly in my plane.

When we arrived at the Hangar we walked into the office and the girl behind the desk said,

"Hello, what can I do for you?"

I recognized the voice from the phone and said.

"Yes, I phoned earlier and talked to you about using the Lear jet for a couple of days."

She looked surprised to see me and said, "yes I remember, I hope Mr. Stevens, the manager, was able to explain that it is the presidents plane and not to be used by anyone else."

"Who exactly told you this?" I asked her.

"Well, I don't think anyone really told me that but when I asked about the Lear jet just sitting there I was told it was a presidential plane and was only for special occasions," she stammered.

"Well let me introduce myself, I am John McDonald and this is my wife Shannon McDonald. We own this company, so that would mean that I own the Lear jet and we will be taking it for a little spin to see how it handles," I said with a big smile.

"Excuse me Mr. McDonald, let me get Mr. Stevens for you," she stammered.

I laughed and said, "don't get concerned. I think you did a fine job and I am glad you are looking out for the interests of our company, why don't you point me in the direction of the coffee pot, once we get a cup maybe you can show us around the Hangar as we haven't been here before."

Shannon broke in, "Speak for your self John. I have been here before, I bought it remember."

"Oops, I guess I spoke out of turn, but we could still use a tour" I said.

She took us into the lunch room and after we had filled a couple of cups with industrial strength coffee she took us around the Hangar and pointed out the different planes as she explained what each was for. I was surprised to see that there were 8 planes in the Hangar buildings; Shannon didn't seem to be surprised at all so I didn't say anything as I mentally kicked myself in the ass for not reading all the reports that were e-mailed to me everyday.

She took us out of the Main Hangar and across a small alley to a smaller Hangar, Once inside I could see a couple of pilots and engineers doing preflight checks on the Lear, one of the pilots looked up and recognized my from the Hawaii trip.

"Just finishing up here, Mr. McDonald. We will be ready for takeoff in about twenty minutes," he said as he rushed over to us.

"OK, we are not in a big hurry, take your time," then as an afterthought I asked, "does it always take this long to get ready, what I mean is it is a 45 minute drive from the main office, and we were there for another 1/2hour before we drove out, that seems like a long time."

"No sir," he said, "but when a plane of this type hasn't flown for over a month there are a lot more checks that need to be done."

"Oh, it hasn't flown for over a month? I would have thought that Rick would be flying this plane on all his trips and I know he took a trip just last week," I said.

"No sir, Mr. Lowry always flies on one of the regularly scheduled flights, this plane hasn't moved since it came back from Hawaii," he stated.

"Oh man, it seems a shame to leave a plane like this just sit here and rot, it has been almost 6 months since we got back from Hawaii. Well Shannon, I guess we will just have to start to take regular trips in order to justify keeping this plane," I said with a smile.

We continued our tour and ended up at Mr. Stevens office. I had not met him before so I introduced myself to him, he offered us some coffee and told us that the plane would be ready soon. I explained that we had just been given the grand tour and just needed to bring in our bags for the trip. He immediately sent one of the engineers to grab our bags and walked over to the plane with us. When we got back to the plane it was ready for boarding and they were just loading some meals on the plane. I asked about the meals and Mr. Stevens told me, "it was Company policy that a hot meal was offered to all passengers on McDonald Airlines."

I laughed and asked him who came up with the name. He told me that the pilots called it that and Rick had not objected to it. I told him that it was fine and we got onto the plane, the Hangar doors opened and away we went. It was an uneventful trip and I was very pleased with the service offered. The copilot came back several times thoughout the trip and offered us something from the bar or asked if we would like our meals yet. We ate about half way through the 2 hour flight and we were impressed with the quality of the food. I asked the copilot, "is this the same food as was served on the big planes?" He explained, "our meals were taken off of the food cart that had just arrived for the regularly scheduled flight that would have taken off about 30 minutes after our flight." I asked, "how the pilots could pass out all the meals on a full flight of men?" He informed me, "The flights were seldom full of men, usually half full of men and the rest of the plane was taken up with shipments of equipment." He went on to explain, "The bigger planes had flight attendants just like all the other commercial planes"

"What do you mean all OTHER commercial planes?" I inquired

"Well since we started to take the public on our regular flights we had to apply for a commercial carrier's license," he informed me.

I looked at Shannon and she explained, "there was no commercial carrier flying into High Level on a scheduled flight and we were asked several times by the city to provide such a service so we decided to do it, didn't you read your e-mail about this?"

I apologized and said, "I would start reading the e-mail every day like a good owner."

We landed in High Level and it was COLD, it was about -25 degrees Celsius which is really cold. Shannon had phoned ahead and had a rental car sitting at the Hangar waiting for us. We got out of the plane and jumped right into the running car. Man, I was glad Shannon was thinking ahead, there was no way I would have ever thought to have a running car sitting there waiting for us. Shannon jumped into the drivers seat of course and drove us to the Hotel. We registered and the clerk welcomed Shannon back, and mentioned she had not seen her since before the wedding and congratulated both of us. After we got into the room I asked her about it and she told me, "The Company newsletter had carried the story about our wedding." I asked, "How would the hotel clerk have gotten a copy?" Shannon told me, "All employees got the newsletter delivered to their houses in the mail."

"OK but how did she get a copy?" I asked, quickly losing my patience.

"We own the hotel dear," Shannon replied sweetly.

"OH," was all I could say.

"So I guess that was in an e-mail?" I asked.

Shannon laughed, "no, we built this hotel before we had e-mail."

"OH."

I looked at the time and realized I only had a couple of hours to do a quick inspection of both the Mechanical and the Electrical branch offices before they closed for the day. I told Shannon, "You should stay here as I don't want you to run into anyone that might know you while I went and played 'customer'."

I arrived at the Mechanical office and talked to one of the sales guys for a few moments about having my SAWMILL built before he called in a couple of millwrights and a welder to help figure out what it was I was looking for. I played the part of the Owner that knew just enough to be dangerous, a part I had seen played by lots of owners through my years as a millwright. The group was very patient and offered to have some plans developed by our engineering firm, (Which I didn't realize we had). I must say they really seemed to be on top of everything and even gave me a tour of the shop so I would realize they could handle the entire project. I was so impressed I almost awarded them the contract right there.

I left there and went over to the Electrical Shop and went through the entire project with them, it didn't take them long to realize I had no idea about the electrical side of things but seemed to have a good grasp of the mechanical side of things, they asked who would be doing the mechanical work and I told them it would probably be their sister company. They told me that they would put together an engineering team and develop a complete plan with the mechanical team and I would have a quote within 1 month for all the work from clearing the site to a finished project. I told them, "That isn't going to be soon enough and that I need the quote within 1 week. What could you do in order to get this done?" The sales guy went to a computer right away to see how many engineering guys they could get up here the next day then he pulled up the Flight services screen to see what he could get for a flight for the engineering guys. I was looking over his shoulder when he spotted the manifest for the Lear jet. It said that myself and Shannon had arrived in High Level a few hours ago. He turned to me and asked,

"Do you work for McDonald Enterprises by any chance?"

Everyone in the room stopped and turned to me waiting for my reply.

"Not exactly 'work for'. I don't really do much. I own the company," I replied.

"So I guess we don't need to rush all these engineers up here for this project then?" he asked.

"No, I guess you don't but I would have been really impressed if you could have met my deadline, I was going to let you go and try. You guys impressed me so much I almost got into the sawmill game. That probably wouldn't do, can't get into competition with our customers," I grinned.