It seems to me that the majority of guys who live in Memphis don't deviate, either on the front end, nor the back end of trips. When asked why, their response is almost always the same: "I always take the scheduled deadhead." I had a trip a number of years ago, when I was on the Bus, that deadheaded early in the morning, to ORD, then about 10 P.M., it operated back into MEM. I deviated, of course, and got to the airport hotel just prior to the 8 hour final check-in. At show time, I met the captain in the lobby, and asked him when he had gotten to the hotel. He said around 7 A.M. When I asked him why so early, he responded with that classic Memphis response, "I always take the scheduled deadhead." I asked him what time he had gotten up this morning to make that flight and he said around 4 A.M. When I asked him what he did all day, he said he had just stayed in his room. It didn't even phase him when I mentioned that there must be 20 flights a day from Memphis to Chicago.

Maybe I like to live dangerously, but I've never missed a check-in and have always gotten to where I needed to be, on time. You learn these things when you don't live in domicile. However, there was this deadhead to Mumbai, but that's a whole other story.