Mexico: Day 1

The next few posts will be from Mexico, I typed them up on the phone when I had the time. Enjoy!

Day 1,
Yesterday was a laid-back but still very eventful day. First came the traveling. The night before I was the best man in mark and Jennifer's wedding. I had a great time and by the end of the night had drank a fair share of vino. After I was driven home to matt and mikes house, I almost immediately crashed on the sofa and completely forgetting that I had a 6:15 international flight the next morning! At 5:20 I woke up and strained my eye across the room only to have one of the worst feelings ever, I starred at the clock for another moment and to make sure I wasn't dreaming took a good look at my hands. I can actually look at my hands and know of I'm dreaming or not based on the little details that my mind leaves out, like the hair on the back of my hand or the wart on my finger. But this was no dream unfortunately. The clock infect said 5:20, a mere 55 minutes till my flight. I don't even remember putting on my clothes and dashing out the door. I think I actually woke up somewhere on the san antonio highway and I was certain there was no chance I was going to make the flight taking off in less that 45 minutes. I was only about 10 minutes away from the airport and knew there was no way for me to get to the air port, park my car, get my boarding pass, go through security, get to the gate, and finally step on board the aircraft. I figured my that itinerary would have to be changed and I would have to tell my friend Stephanie, who had arranged for me to be picked up when I arrived in Guadalajara. I was getting ready to also dish out a bunch of extra dough as well. I was imagining how much more I could have done with that money in Mexico!

Well, I parked my car in long term parking at the San Antonio airport, quickly grabbing my gear and dashing across the street into the terminal. My airline, American airlines was in the new terminal B. As I was waiting in line for the front desk i was thinking about how I was going to plead with her to let me somehow get on the flight. I finally just decided to tell her that I messed up and ask her what I needed to do to get on the next flight.  I walked up to counter, with my puppy eyes and said, "I messed up, I'm supposed to be on the 6:15 for Guadalajara." The airline representative said nothing but started typing away at her keyboard. She motioned her eyebrows in a curious manner and looked up and me and said, "You have 4 minutes to check in, and you're here now, so you've made it!" my jaw dropped and I might have jumped into the air. I was pretty eccentric. After I got my boarding pass and was waiting for a moment in the short security line I thought to myself, if i had tried to do that on purpose, I would have been like James Bond, but I didn't so I was more like one of the three stooges who just lucked out.

A few short minutes later i was on my way to Guadalajara feeling like i was just in the opening scene of a James bond film. The journey was fairly uneventful and I was really surprised it only took 2.5 hours to get from callas to Guadalajara.

Once I arrived, I quickly passed through immigration (la migra) and customs and went outside to the free world. It felt good to see my old, crusty, barely passible passport get another stamp on its light blue pages. It was almost like the hard thump of the officials stamp snapped me out of a work induced trance and I was about to embark on a journey.

I was expecting Stephanie's good friend, Netto to pick me up, and since my flight came about an hour late, I would expect him to be a bit irritable. When I walked out the doors to the lobby, I found netto holding a hand written sign saying my name. I walked up to him and said here I am! We quickly made our way back to the car and drove into the city. First we went to stephs grandmas house to pick up the key since steph was coming back with her parents and were in Guadalajara. Netto and I got the keys from grandma and walked across the street to her parents house dropped off my luggage and then left I'm search for some cold cervesa. We went to a  bar called komar y tomar, which simply means, food and drink. It was a neat open air bar that served liters of michiladas and clamatos, which are beers with added spices and seasonings and of course Latin americas favorite, salt. We finished our first one over some good conversation and then i decided to try some 100% authintic Guadalajaran Mexican food. What did I order you ask? Was it a super burrito like in petaluma's mi pueblo? Was it a taco like the one from san antonios riverwalk? No i ordered some nachos and they were amazing! We finished a liter michalada and a liter clamato. Meanwhile, i found out that steph had arranged for her freind Antonella, to pick me up that night and take me out for salsa! What more could I ask for!  After leaving the bar, I was ready for a nap. Netto, dropped me off and I passed out. Antonella eventually got a hold of me and at 1015 picked me up and we went to la diabla where we danced the night away. We called it quits a little early since Antonella had to work the next day. I got home a crashed, it was quite a long day!

A Return from Absence

Well, it's been a few months since I have even had time to think about this blog. I thought that when I graduated, I would have even more time for things like writing on this blog. I guess it just tells you how different things can be from how you imagine them. Since my last blog, I completed UPT about a week before I "dropped" and found out that I will be moving to Japan to fly the KC-135 at Kadena. I'm really excited about the assignment as it was my first choice aircraft and my second choice location (after hawaii). After that I had UPT graduation. That was a really nice time for me as my parents, two of my uncles, and one of my aunts came out for the event. I hadn't seen my parents in about a year and a half, which was a bit too long. Laughlin did a nice job of making it a worthwhile event for everyone that attended.

The weekend after, Mom and I flew out to visit my Uncle, Aunt and cousin for a few days. It had been about 10 years since I had seen them! It was nice to be able to use of the leave I had been accumulating over the past year and a half.

Two days after returning from a really nice visit with my relatives, I went out to Washington State (Spokane area) for a month of water survival and wilderness survival training. The young enlisted two-stripers where nothing short of grizzly mountain men, yet, donning the same uniform that the rest of the Air Force wore. They were very skilled at making mountain men/women out of us. It was cold, wet and at sometimes, just outright miserable. By the time I left that state, there was over 2 feet of snow on the ground and over a month later, my big toes are still numb from the wet and cold conditions.

After that I've undertaken the monumental task of out-processing my current base for the next one, in Japan. There are multiple checklists that had to be accomlished and it seems like the base leadership is always looking for ways to keep us busy on top of all this paperwork. The difficult part is that I'm actually not going to Japan right away. I'll be doing a TDY (temporary duty for the non-military types) en route to Japan. I'll be up in Altus, Oklahoma for 5 months learning how to fly the best that is the KC-135. From what I've heard, it will not be like UPT at all and is much more of a "big boy" program in a sense that they don't make you sit in the classroom for 12 hours a day and study. It's a much more relaxed pace as well. Even though Oklahoma isn't the most exciting place, I've got the attitude that if I can make a blast out of Del Rio, I can make any other location a blast too, some places just need a little more work put into them than other locations.

Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Years! I will try to keep writing in this when I get the chance as well as add some photos from christmas and some of the other said events.

5 flights left!

At this point in time, I am able to count my remaining flights with just one hand! I now only have 5 flights left and should be done with the UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training) in as little as a week from today! This is assuming all goes well and I don't try to do anything dumb in the airplane. Two weeks from Friday, I will "drop" my next assignment which includes finding out where I'll be going and what airframe I'll be flying. Currently, I'm trying to get outside of the 48 states. I know I'll be happy flying whatever airframe I get and know I'll enjoy the mission, so pretty much as this point, I can't loose, I win no matter what.

My first choice (today at least) is the C-21 to Ramstein AB, in Germany. After that I'd like KC-135s to Hawaii, England, Japan, and then the domestic places. The reason why I'm so anxious to get out of the 48 is because I don't have any dependents so I don't need to worry about finding a good school for children and I want to see as much of the world that I can while I'm still young. All of this is also dependent on what is simply available for our individual drop. So I'll have to just do the best I can and see what happens...

Time is flying by... No pun intended

Alright I've been slacking in the update department again. I've finally got some time after a busy busy month. I've had big events (a flight or simulator) everyday workday except three for all of August. Last week was my Navigation check ride, basically the biggest exam of pilot training for those not familiar with the curriculum. I passed and was able to take a deep breath, then get in the jet the next day and do something totally different, formation flying. It's quite a bit different from from T-6 formation and it makes a lot more sense than how we did it in T-6s. T-6s felt like I was putting an air show on for nobody, here in the T-1, its more about mutual support and maximizing the potential of the jet. We are actually doing it up about 20,000 feet at the moment, but this is just for training to do it 500 feet above the ground in a week or two where we will be simulating going undetected into hostile territory to make an air drop. It should be pretty sweet. Last month we took our "hero shot" photos, here it is:

 Oh yea, August 25th I made 1st Lt :)

Starting to feel like a real flyer

So I haven't been totally on top of this blog lately. I'm going to try my best to get back with it and keep whoever still checks the site out updated and little more frequently.

Time here is quickly coming to to a end, we are graduating October 21st!  That's two months and three weeks! I'm in charge of putting all the graduation events together for our class which is kind of a joke because they have a graduation every three weeks so I pretty much just found out who the senior class banquet officer was and asked what they were doing. Everything has to be through the Officer's Club on base so there isn't really too many choices.

I've been flying all over Texas this month. It's really a big, beautiful state. We've been doing a lot of low levels which are military training routes that are flown at 500ft above the ground. I've flown through the mountains of Big Bend National Park and flown routes through the wind farms of San Angelo and Abilene. I'm really enjoying beening able to look out the windows and take a lot of photos on my little iPhone camera when I'm sitting in the jump seat. We normally have 1 instructor and 2 students in the jet. When we take the jet out, we do two student sorties so we swap seats halfway through if we are stopping anywhere for lunch. So when you sit the jump seat you actually get to look around.

Well I'm going on a "cross country" mission tomorrow. I'll be boing to be in Oklahoma tomorrow and staying at Tinker for the night. I've got to go plan for it! Hope everyone is doing well. I'll try to write again later this week.

Quick update

Hey, haven't written on here in a while but wanted to let you know really quick what's going on. This week I've been going on out-and-backs. These sorties include me, an instructor, and another student going out to two other airports, stopping at the second one for a meal, then having the other student fly back. Yesterday we went out to Lubbock, Tx for Italian, today we went to Ft Worth for sushi. Tomorrow I'm flying down the boarder along the Rio Grande till it opens up to meet the Gulf. Then I'm flying up the coast to Corpus Christi to catch a bite to eat (I'm in a cajan mood because I just had sushi today)... All in a day's "work"...

Happy 4th of July!

Here's a clever commercial if you haven't seen it already...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRMW1FXSHw