Da Young's are together again

It was a great day! Amy, E and myself were all at the same place at the same time, and I scored because that place was my house.

E was down in Colorado Springs for a work thing and Amy was just getting back from her cruise/party/work thing with Dad and I was not in the desert so the stars all aligned and we were able to met for a BBQ at my place.

It has been at least 3-4 years since we have all been together so there were a lot of lies to swap and food to be eaten. We had some Kalua Pig, pineapple, kabobs with chicken and steak and yes some cold beverages!

This morning I had to get up early and leave for a 3 day trip to Florida, too bad as I would have like to spend all the time I could have with Amy and E. I will how ever get to go and see my buds Scott and Karyn in Fl.

The pictures of the 3 of us are on my camera so I will post as soon as I can, but here is a picture of the new 8 blade props that I am flying in right now down to Fl to show off.

Gulfport for the last time (I hope)

Well I spent another week in lovely Gulfport Mississippi again. No I didn’t try any of the food as I was locked in my room and had the wonderful pleasure of trying many different flavors of MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat).

Again it was a lot of sitting around with only one big work day, and it was a long one. We didn’t know when we were going to get called up to fly so we were in what we call alert status, when they call we haul… It’s kind of hard to adjust your sleep schedule when you don’t know when you are going to have to work, so you just sleep when you are tired. Well a little birdie told us that we should expect to get called at 2230, well we found this out at about 1800 and had been up all day. So I tried to take a nap, but that was not the best sleep.

When we did get called we were welcomed by a nice simulated chemical attach so we got to sit in our gas masks for a little over an hour prior to stepping to go fly a real world mission. The mission was really awesome. We flew to Pope and then briefed up a 3 ship formation to include 2 T-34s that would be filming us dropping 156 total jumpers in one pass across the drop zone “Mass on the DZ”

I had to pain, I mean privilege of leading the formation around some sketchy weather to find the drop zone. After a few dry passes due to winds we were cleared to drop. Even though the #3 plane did not drop 1 & 2 got there sky soldiers out. This was the first time I have seen 104 parachutes all in the air at the same time, now that was impressive! After leading the formation around so that #3 could drop we headed back to Pope and then back to Gulfport.
By the time we got back to Gulfport it was 16.5 hours from when they first called us to go fly, now mind you we didn’t really sleep before they called us either. So as we got back to our rooms we were all a little loopy.

This was all on Friday and the war was now over, but I drew the short straw and had to wait till Sunday to come home. One would think that if the war was over you could go off base and test your luck on the blackjack table there on the coast, but no… more MREs for all.

Sunday we finally returned and had to get ready for regular work on Monday, so you tax payers feel good that you are getting your money out of me. But in all it was not that bad, and the best part is that we won’t have to do this again for about 4 years!!!

ORE in Gulfport Take 2

OK I have been slacking on keeping this site up to date. I have been having a lot of fun and well using my time somewhere other then on the internet. So here are some of me latest trips:

I am currently in Gulfport Mississippi for an Operational Readiness Exercise. Yea let me tell you how much fun this is =(

I left Cheyenne at O dark early on Tuesday morning and arrived in Gulfport to play the war games by 0700. I really can’t complain much as I didn’t have much to do. I never even put on a gas mask. I just had to hang out by the phone as I was sitting in the room.

My crew did get alerted once and it was to fly a local proficiency trainer, which is just a lot of takeoffs and landings, nothing to cosmic. So we decided that we would take this opportunity to cruse up and down the coast.

It was on the night of the lunar eclipse so as we were buzzing around New Orleans checking out the ninth ward we saw the eclipse. It was pretty cool but as there were a little clouds so we asked to climb up to 13,000 ft and then we got a real nice look at it.

It was time to land but the base was still under a simulated attack so we flew back to New Orleans and shot a few approaches into Lake Front. The approach takes you right over down town at less then 1000 ft so it was good for some sight seeing.

Now I am still in my room waiting to go home. I will be able to publish this in when I get home so enjoy your weekend and I’ll try and take some pictures of this weekends snowboarding trip.

Aloha!