Birthday Flight

Today was AWESOME! Yes it’s my Birthday so that helped but the day just went great. It started with having a nice long breakfast followed by a brownie Birthday Cake during our brief before my flight. Then we loaded a 2 Star and a dozen diplomats from Japan on the plane and took them to Baghdad. The flight went well as there were puffy clouds to play with =)

Then we took off to another field were my buddy Shalin has been living. The weather was very bad there and we shot an approach to minimums, and I mean minimums! Johnny did a great job with the approach and landing with a quartering tailwind of 21 gusting 30 knots! Yea can you say sporty! After we off loaded and uploaded our new passengers we were told that the weather where we were going was down to 200 meters visibility. We needed 800 meters, they said to wait but we didn’t want to wait at our current location as we thought we would get stuck if the weather got any worst. So we departed and headed home to wait out the dust storms. When we took off for the 20 minute flight home the weather was VFR (over 9000 meters of visibility), by the time we were over the field it had dropped to 1000 meters and on landing roll out after I shot a cross cockpit approach (because my instruments failed) they called the field 600 meters and closed the field. Yes we just got in!

This little video is of the flight back to Balad, it was a dream. This is what I love about flying, playing with the clouds and getting the mission done. I could not have wished for anything better!

We were released early as the weather everywhere was poopy and getting worst. We ate dinner at DFAC 3 and I had get this, Steak, Shrimp AND Lobster! I know it’s rough over here. Sure the steak was ok and the shrimp fried and the lobster was a rock lobster that was over cooked but you know what who cares, it was a great meal and I enjoyed it. I even had a slice of carrot cake because I could.

Now I am letting the food settle before I head to the gym and then to bed. Oh Karyn thanks for the card, it made it on time, in fact perfect timing as I got it after my flight. Everyone thanks for everything and I’ll chat more later when this smile wears off of my face, Aloha!