Getting Something Done

What a difference a week can make. I flew three days, had ground training on the fourth day, and had a mandatory sports day on the fifth day. Now that is what I call a busy week...in comparison to the previous week. I should be about five days of doing something away from getting out of this hick state.

The flying on NVG's is pretty cool, except for when it is time to land. The lack of depth perception makes for some firm landings. I am fairly sure that I compressed the spines of everyone on board during one of my landings. The goggles help you see like it is almost day light, but if there are a lot of lights around, everything starts to look like one big light and you lose detail.

We are starting to think we may get to leave this place soon and we are definitely ready. If everything goes well, I could be one or two rides away from graduation by this time next week. Not that I am ready to leave, but I am! It has been nice, but after coming from the beach to this...well, not exactly icing on the cake. We are looking forward to normal, non-overall wearing people. You think I am exaggerating (as if I have ever done that), but I am not. In fact, we were in Lowe's looking at carpet and paint for our Boise house and we saw two of these beauties...AND THEY WEREN'T TOGETHER!

Yes, those are irrigation boots with normal shorts and the Arkansas standard...sleeveless shirt. We found out that the Sleeve Monster lives in the South and it has a very large appetite.

Lastly, Happy Birthday again to my mother. 58 is only a little over 8 years old in dog years. Also, to my aunts Betty and Carol, my grandpa, and everyone else in my family that had a birthday in that calendar grouping. Sorry we missed the festivities, but we will be back to enjoy the summer ones.

Baseball and Flooding

Well, I would like to report about the reason I am in Overall Land, but I didn't fly this past week. I was lucky enough to get a class on tactics and intelligence...I flunked the latter...and that was it. My class is waiting on the class ahead of us to get through with their night flights, so we can start our night flights. We are hoping they will get finished up this week in order that we can start. It rained a good part of the week and it is supposed to resume again this coming week. We need more rain, like a fat kid needs ice cream. When it rains here, it puts it down. Our lawn looks like a pond. The gutters are completely clean, but they still over flow from the roof because there is simply too much water. Here is a picture to show you the amount of rain coming down the gutter on to the driveway.

With doing nothing most of the week, I got several rounds of golf in and then went on a little trip at the end of the week. Candi, Peaches, and I went to Memphis to watch a Triple A baseball game and to show Peaches the town.

The Memphis Redbirds lost, but it was a very nice ballpark in the heart of the city. It had rained earlier in the day and they were on a big losing streak, hence the lack of fans in the stadium. We stayed on the other side of the road from the stadium and checked out Beale Street after the game. It is supposed to be a hot spot for local musicians, but we didn't check out that many spots. The next day we left Memphis to come home, but we went through Mississippi in order that Candi could say she had been in the state. It turned out to be a cool little trip because we found a Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Tunica, MS. I found out that I never want to swim in that river because the monsters below live there (and my zoom was completely out).

I did, however, get my feet wet in the mighty Mississippi, but not where those man-eating catfish could nibble on my toes. Notice the sign behind Peaches- the water was up about ten to twelve feet from normal.

Tunica is known for its gambling since it is supposedly the third gambling destination behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City. We took advantage of the casino buffet and the museum. The only gambling we did was deciding which road to take with all the flooding. Most of Arkansas and parts of Mississippi are under water from the weeks of rain. The trip across the state seriously looked like we were passing through lakes most of the time since the road was always higher and out of the water. We saw many homes, vehicles, and land under several feet of water.

Once we got home, Candi couldn't get enough baseball, so we went to see the local Little Rock Double A team (Arkansas Travelers) play. They have a brand new stadium and it was a real good experience as well.

I wish I had more substance than baseball and flooding, but that is the extent of it. I have a flight tomorrow morning because I didn't get two landings logged off during day flights. I will basically get up tomorrow at 4:00 AM for a 5:20 show time and then wait around all day for two landings then go home...I am so jazzed about that! I love getting up real early to wait around and it seems to be the Air Force's motto.

Happy Birthday to my grandmother...er...mother this week. I will send some denture cream to the nursing home for your present, mom!

What A Week!

As I told you last week, I battled the air sickness thing, then I was over it. Well, I got sick again on Monday. I didn't fly first, so I had to sit back and wait for the student pilot to complete three routes before I could fly. I did well for the first two routes, but by the third one I had my head buried in my Hefty bag. They let me off the airplane and I had to go to the flight doctor again. I was pretty down because I thought I was over this and I was thinking that the first time I got airsick was because I hadn't flown in a while, but now I had no excuse. Thankfully, prayers were answered again and I flew twice more during the week and didn't get sick either time, so now my roller coaster is back up at a high point. Unfortunately, Peaches (Jamie) wasn't as lucky. He had to ride while I flew first Friday and he got sick before he even got to fly and by the time he did get to fly, it didn't take long to manifest itself. The wind was really strong last week and that is what makes it so bumpy when you are only a few hundred feet off the ground. Unlike being at 40,000 feet, 300 feet is very unstable and turbulent air, so when the wind is blowing at all, it can really be felt. Long story short, please keep both of us in your prayers and thoughts that we can get through this without any more incidents. As long as we don't have to ride along while someone else is at the controls, I think we might be alright.

When they have a bunch of students and we have to ride in the back, this is what we get to see. This is what is called a CDS (Container Delivery System) bundle and this particular load slides out the back of the aircraft and on the way out, a chute attached to a static line is deployed to keep the load upright on its fall down to the ground. The chute doesn't really slow the fall, it just keeps it upright. We can hold up to 16 of these bundles. It is pretty cool to be flying 2,000 feet behind another aircraft when they drop multiple bundles like these right in front of your nose.

Well, as I mentioned, I did get to fly three times this week. That in itself is pretty amazing considering the weather we have been having. Thursday was supposed to be one of the worst days in recent history due to the weather forming that looked to produce many tornadoes. Fortunately, it mainly passed to the north of the Little Rock Air Force Base. Of course we had the rain, lightening, and wind, but we didn't have the destruction that the weather guessers predicted we would have here in the Little Rock area. The whole storm system was actually a lot weaker than they had thought, but it still cancelled us twice last week. We continue to get large amounts of rain to an already flooded area. Arkansas has received more rain in the last two weeks than Idaho does in the whole year.

The weather has been keeping us from getting out and doing much (like golf) and I am getting a little tired of sitting in the house. But when life gives you lemons, you got to make lemonade...which is how I justified shopping for a few new pair of shoes. Candi gave me the green light, so I really can't be blamed. After all, it was her cat that went to the bathroom in my shoes rendering them unwearable. I guess I could have worn them around, but everyone would start calling me the "old cat man" after the smell that would follow me around.

I am starting to get close to the end of my training. I start night flying this week and I have two academic events and nine flying events left. It is possible that I might be able to be done on time (April 29th), but I figure it will take me a little longer because the class ahead of me are about at the same place as our class due to the bad weather. The squadron is also going through a huge inspection this week, so I am thinking that will put us a little behind as well. I am looking forward to getting done and getting home, but I am enjoying the flying...AS LONG AS I AM NOT PUKING!

We Survived The Tornado

I know so many of you were wondering (one parent) of how we are doing after tornadoes ripped through Central Arkansas. It was nice to see that one person watched the news, saw that a tornado hit Arkansas, remembered that the Presleys are there, and decide to find out if it affected us. Ok, enough wishing people cared and whining about it, but we are just fine.

The tornadoes came Thursday night and we got to see a funnel cloud as it skipped along the landscape just over three miles away. I am guessing we should have been taking cover, but then we couldn't have said that we had seen a tornado. We didn't feel much of the wind associated with it, but we did get a steady dose of lightening that was the most impressive thing ever. The sky stayed lit up for almost a half hour and as the tornado passed, the flashes turned to an eerie bright green. A neighbor took this picture.

As for the effects of the F2 tornado, it snapped a lot of trees in half and leveled a lot of mobile homes. The stories you hear about the ladies in their house coats with their hair up in curlers and a cigarette in their mouth as they describe what the tornado sounded like as it tossed their mobile mansion in the air....ARE ALL TRUE! It wasn't funny what happened to them, but it was humorous listening to the locals as they jockeyed for air time with their neighbors. Each story getting bigger than the last and all ending with "I just couldn't believe it was happening to me." The worst damage seemed to be at the local airport where it damaged thirty some planes and hangars.

Other than the weather being horrible, I got one flight in last week and my prayers were answered because I didn't puke. The flight went very well and the aircraft commander even tried to do some maneuvers to make another guy sick and I was sure it would do me in, but I hung in there just fine. I was scheduled to fly again on Thursday, but the weather didn't cooperate. I am scheduled to fly tomorrow morning (Monday) and the weather is supposed to be great until the evening, then it is supposed to rain again. The whole state is flooded, so besides not being able to fly due to the lightening and bad weather associated with rain, we really don't need more water from the sky. The flights have gone well and I should be switching to night flights during the middle of this upcoming week.

Candi is doing well and continues to work from home. She is also working part time as an interior designer. We are planning on painting and re-carpeting our house when we get back and she is figuring out all the colors and what needs to be painted and what needs to be carpeted...besides the obvious answer of walls and floor. I really don't like making those decisions, so I am very thankful she is doing the leg work with me occasionally saying, "that would look great."