Originally Posted by
Gulfasaurus
I live in base and hate 1 days. I much prefer driving to the airport and doing the employee parking and airport song and dance 3-4 times per month. Plus anything less than 30hrs home I feel like I'm barely home at all. Just enough time to shower, sleep, cook a meal, prep a uniform and leave again. The only real benefit is sleeping in my own bed next to my SO but we get enough days off now that it's not really worth it. I'll happily fly a 5 day trip unless it's complete garbage. I even like international 6 days. Back in my 135 days I used to do 21-30 day trips, that stuff wears on you fast. Now I've become used to airline trips, 5 starts feeling long but for the right trip can be worth it, 4 is not too bad, 3 seems to be my sweet spot. Good thing there's a lot of variety in the bid pack.
When I was a commuter, I hated 1 day trips, which NYC seemed to get a lot of on the ER and 320, because it was double uncommutable, effectively "3 day" for 6-8 hours pay.
Now that I live local, I still hate 1 day trips. Except as PB Day burning weapons. It's 55 miles to JFK (so the bulk of ER trips) and at least 1+30 driveway to TSA on a good day, and 3+00 if it is rush hour. At a minimum, I'm spending 3 hours driving in/out, unless it's a middle of the night report/release. Once in a while when I get forced into a line (bid reserve 11-12 months a year, if I bid a line, it's solely to burn banked PB days) the 1 day trip, 12-15 hours off, 1-2 day trip blows goats. I get 9-12 hours at best at home, and need to sleep, eat, laundry, deal with whatever chaos the Yellow Fluff has bestowed upon me (Yellow Lab Puppy) and then drive right back. Screw that noise. And it's $38 in tolls, and $25 in Diesel to go in. And similar cost and longer if I take NJ Transit to Penn, LIRR to Jamaica, and AirTrain to JFK. And then the debacle if I get delayed/rerouted, and can't make the last train to Denville out of Penn Station. That's about $200 Uber home from Penn.
Professional RES bidder. At least 18 hours between trips. Minimum. Maybe drive to JFK once a month.
It's mid march. February 2nd is the last time I drove to work, 0900 SUN report to go to Hawaii.
Maybe I go fly this week. Maybe I don't.
I can see why some guys would love high credit 1 day trips, but even as a NYC non commmuter they often suck bad. Maybe if I lived in PTC Base housing, or in Queens/Long Island, I might like 1 days more.