Getting Ready To Come Home...and Flying More

Well, this whole process is a bit trying. I am now on to a break in training (BIT) program that has seen me fly four times this past week, which is more than I flew in each of the previous four weeks. I haven't technically graduated (scheduled for Monday...but also scheduled for two days last week) and I have been given more tasks than during IFF. So much for time off! Apparently, the only way to get time off is to actually leave...SO THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING! We are traveling home to Idaho this Wednesday for five days.

You know me, I don't like to be the center of attention, so I am very excited that everyone wants to see Candi, the one in the oven, and then me...and in that order. However, for those of you who won't be able to see us, here is a picture of Candi and junior (29.5 weeks along).

We have been keeping busy doing things around here when the weather allows. Lately it has cooled off (into the 80's), but it has brought afternoon and evening thunderstorms. In order to cope with the weather, Candi bought herself a 55 inch tv to watch all those sports that she is always watching. I am not big into the whole tv or sports things, but I will have to admit, it is pretty awesome.
However, I do think Candi is getting a little too wrapped up in this whole thing and I don't know if it is the tv or the sports, but she made us sit and watch the BSU game last night. If it wasn't enough to tear me away from my novels I have been reading on the weekends and all the baby planning I have been doing, she made us sit in sections and color coordinate like the stadium at BSU!
Other than that, we are ready to come home this Wednesday night. It is going to be a little spendy, since we are going to end up boarding our dogs and having to leave our car at the airport, but it will all be worth it to be home for a few days. We are trying to see everyone, so if you aren't on the schedule, call and I will pencil you in. See a bunch of you very soon!

IFF COMPLETE...and I had to work for it!

Let me start off by apologizing to those faithful readers for smashing your reading dreams this past week by not having my blog up to date. It has been a very difficult past two weeks and the last thing I had time for was updating my blog. So here is what has happened since we last sat and talked.

Candi went off to frolic with friends and watch a great football game and I, well I had a different experience. First, right after I posted on my blog and tried to hold it together like I wasn’t crying the whole weekend, my toilet broke. In my attempt to fix it, I broke even more parts and tried to recreate some of the natural wonders of Yellowstone Park, right in my bathroom. I was able to get the geyser turned off and the new parts in, but to do so, I had to put my two helpers outside while I did this…my dogs.

Upon capping the spill in my bathroom, something BP would have been proud of, I go to the back door to check on my dogs. My eyes were quickly drawn to the gaping hole in my fence that was now missing several boards. I then shifted my gaze to the other side of the yard and was easily able to find Jaxson, since he had a twelve foot 1”x4” in his mouth and was taking it to his pile of three similar pieces. I joyfully returned to Home Depot for the second time on Labor Day to prove I was doing just that, laboring. I got home and fixed the fence in the 98 degree heat, then decided to sit down in the air conditioned house and watch a little TV before the big BSU game.

That was the time that my weekend got even better! 4.35 minutes into pleasuring my eyes with my lovely fifty inch TV, the bottom two-thirds goes blank. After pushing every combination of buttons on the remote and turning off/on the TV multiple times, I realized it was dead. I confirmed this by going to Best Buy, which is coincidentally right next to Home Depot…and they both aren’t just around the corner. Luckily, we had a backup, small TV in our bedroom that I was able to watch the game on.

I know I haven’t mentioned flying yet, so let me get to that. I couldn’t go to the game because I needed to fly and our airline flight back from the game might not happen due to weather. Well, Candi made it in right as a tropical depression hit San Antonio…and I was cancelled for the next two days due to weather. I COULD HAVE EASILY MADE IT TO VIRGINIA WITH TWO DAYS TO SPARE!

I finally got to fly a low level on that Thursday and all was well. Then I had to wait a few more days to let my roommate finish his last two flights, since there were limited instructors qualified to instruct our last two flights and he needed to finish first because he had to go back to Boise for personal reasons. He got his flights done in two days (I sandbagged in the back seat of his lead aircraft on the two flights) and then it was my turn this past Tuesday to start my last two flights. These flights are pretty much, “we are going to throw as much at you as we can, don’t worry about it, do your best, and don’t do anything dumb, different, or dangerous.” One minute into my first flight, I did something dangerous. The rest of the flight went pretty well, but the one thing at the very beginning made me fail the flight. However, because I completed the actual mission and did that well, they let me go on to the last flight…I just had to redo the one item. No big deal, right? The next flight went descent, until I decided to drop a bomb without getting clearance to do so…BIG DEAL! Dumb and dangerous! Well that little bit of indiscretion, bought me my second hook (failed flight). And by regulations, two hooks in one phase of flight gets you a progress check. A progress check, as explained to me, is to see if you should stay in the program or get kicked out. Since I was on my last flight, it was now an “all or nothing” flight. Needless to say, I didn’t eat or sleep very well for a day, knowing that my future, career, etc. all depended on this flight.

I flew the progress check on Thursday and didn’t make any stupid mistakes like the previous two flights, thus passing the flight…AND GRADUATING!!!! I later learned that even if I had made a mistake, they would have given me a few practice flights to try to iron everything out and then try it again, something that if I had known, might have saved one to two linings of my stomach. It was a very stressful and frustrating last few weeks because of all that happened, waiting for flights, and then falling flights when I got to fly them, especially because the overall flights were good, they were just marred by one bad decision each. But, alas I am complete with the course and can now breathe, eat, and sleep again. I could never have made it without all the prayers everyone lofted on my behalf- it definitely was a miracle that I held it all together at the end and got through. I could never have made it on my own.

With that being said and your attention span waning because of the length of this, I will wrap this up by telling you that Candi and "it" (as she calls our baby) are doing just fine and I am taking a few days off from studying. We did get away last weekend to Dallas to watch the Yankees play the Rangers. I must say Candi was a trooper for being pregnant and sitting in the hot 99 degrees sun with high humidity to watch men swing a stick at a small white ball. However, we had great seats literally right on the field (see picture from our seat below). It was a quick up one day and back the next. It was a good little trip, we made the most out of it by hanging with the cowboys at the Fort Worth Stockyards, seeing where JFK was shot, and touring the associated museum. Here is one of the suspected gunwoman on the grassy knoll (and a view of the building the shots rang out from & street where JFK was shot)…

Other than that, we are looking for a new TV, I am starting to read the stack of “Dads for Dummies” books that Candi has put together for me, and we are getting ready to come home for a few days in less than two weeks…HURRAY!

Passed My Flight...And No BSU Game

A bittersweet week, but I will take the end result...not like I have a choice anyway. I ended up only getting two flights, two simulators, and several academics this week. However, the last flight was the last "big one" that was weighing heavily on me. I did well enough to pass even though it wasn't my best ride, but nevertheless a huge answer to prayer. On the positive side, I am sim and academic complete with IFF and only have three flights left. I have a low level that ends with a bomb run up towards Abilene and then two close air support flights in the same area where we simulate things we will be doing in the Hawg. Things like getting a calls for attacks from ground forces, coordinating with other air support, and then rolling in and hitting the "die button" (the name I came up with for our "pickle" button...the button that drops a bomb). They have many says for things, but one that I heard this week, that really makes you think was, "don't push that button unless you have hate in your heart and are ready to send people to their maker." I think the first time you drop a real bomb in combat (or fire a live bullet) it will be a moment you never forget. People just don't live with warheads on their foreheads.

Long story made short, I am hoping to to be complete with IFF this week. As you have seen, things don't always go as smoothly and as quickly as I would like, so we are just hoping and realizing that hope is not a method of execution.

On to more important things, my commander put a stick in the spokes of my life bicycle on Friday. I was just riding my bike by on my way to DC to watch the Broncos and next thing I knew I was flying past my handlebars through the air and hearing something about how he didn't want me to get stuck on the East Coast due to some gust of wind that someone named. I think it wasn't the storm as much as it was trying to get our class done with the program as quickly and painless as possible, especially since we lost half of our class a few weeks ago due to some DUIs and some other charges. The bottom line is I didn't get to make the trip to watch BSU with Candi, hence the reason I have time to write this on a vacation weekend.

As I just told someone on the phone (yes, I had two people from home call me this week...which I wrote in my journal because it is so rare...NO I DON'T SERIOUSLY HAVE A JOURNAL) that it's just me and the dogs listening to old sad country songs, drinking, and crying "since my old lady left me." We are actually handling it just fine. We found us a watering hole to go skinny dipping in and I managed to find where Candi has been hiding the cooking gear. And by cooking gear, I mean a pan to make hamburger for tacos. A guy has to cook when Chick-fil-a closes on Sunday! Below is a picture of a lot of naked swimmers:

How many of you scrolled down just to see if maybe...you ought to be ashamed of yourself. It is a new swimming place I found for the dogs that is pretty close to the house. Here they are chasing swans, which seemed harmless until one took after Zoe and she turned, quit the doggie paddle, and executed a full out breast stroke to get back to land. Anyway, I need to get back to studying since I don't want to be distracted tomorrow night when I get to watch ESPN for the sole purpose of trying to see my beautiful wife...and supposedly there will be a game on during that time as well!

A special thanks to those two of you that I don't call "mom" who called me this week, it seriously means a lot. Speaking of my mom, beside always being a regular with the calling, she now has opened up this whole new cosmos called texting...next thing you know, she will be tying up the horse and getting one of those automobiles! Slow down mom, there is no need to keep up with the Jones. Technology is a passing fad and we will be back to carrier pigeons soon. Just kidding, love ya mom!