Day to Day

Well the day to day pace is starting to set in as things get squared away and everyone settles in to their job. We've flown a couple of times, I love it, everything about it, hopefully its not just the newness of it all. All of the annoying things you usually have to back home is taken care of by someone else. All we do is show up, get briefed and do our thing. We moved some troops around base hopping all over northern Iraq with a pallet or two thrown in every now and then. Its revolutionary to these guys how quickly we can get them down the road, which is hilarious. We are the red-headed step child of the AF, the tortuous in a race of hares that don't nap. But when you are at an army base with nothing but Helos and convoys you become Speed Racer.

I'm feeling a lot more confident with my job with every minute but always have more to learn than I already know. My AC (aircraft commander) is probably the most experienced guy here, not the most flight hours, but the most hours here in the past 4 years, so I'm pretty set. He gives us a play by play of what to expect and look for at each stop, as well as his thought process for every decision, which is really making up for the below average flight time we're getting.

I'm having a good time, but learning down time while waiting to be alerted is much more dangerous than de-pantsing a big army guy. We found an 85 lbs dumbbell and started dropping it from our "tanning bed" onto stuff we scavenged up, which escalated through rocks, water bottles, shaken up cokes, bananas, insect spray bottles and a bike helmet, but were called off when we picked up the fire extinguisher. Then we had balancing competitions on our makeshift ladder.

Halloween was uneventful since we had to go to bed early for an early flight. I did go for a run right after dark, road lit from a full moon, and the massive burn pit which with the addition of choppers whooping overhead gave a pretty good halloween mood. Don't worry, apparently there are no ware-jackels...