Cross Country Memories

I woke up today thinking of Phoenix. Perhaps it was the weak, pale February sun streaming in my windows, filtered through gossamer white cirrus clouds. Only in the winter, with the cold sucking humidity out of the air and the thick trees bare, does Virginia ever approach the sheer visibility of the Southwest. And on a morning such as this, my mind went back to the crisp clarity of a Friday evening, the sun all coppery on the darkling sand, when my pilot and I passed a Southwest 737 on the approach path into Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

I've had some occasion of late to reflect on the past, and one of the things that stands out the most is my need to keep busy. Well, busy is not the right word--distracted, more like. It's stood me in good stead, actually. In college, when I was finally shamed enough about mediocre grades to put in some effort, it drove me to a respectable finish. And when I entered the fleet as a mighty, world-famous Green Knight, it put me up for a lot of working weekends.

Now, the reality of a fighter squadron is, literally, training. Training to kill, in the air and on the ground. In the Marine Corps, the latter is much more important and it is additionally required that fighters be able to kill on the ground only one side of the battle--the enemy--while leaving the friendlies unscathed. Considering the proudly stated mission of the Marine Rifle Squad is "to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or to repel the enemy assault by fire and by close combat," well, some degree of precision in this endeavor is required from us carefree airedales.

So there is a secondary reality, and that is flight hours. As Malcolm Gladwell put it, the path to proficiency lies in hours spent (10,000 hours being the minimum requirement for mastery, and while we all strive for that, who has that much time, I wonder?), and so our individual and collective ability to kill our enemies without fragging that closing and destroying Marine Rifle Squad relied on flight hours.

Flight hours, of course, are expensive. Not just in fuel (2,000 or so gallons of which we used each flight), but more tellingly in maintenance. For it is axiomatic in the realm of physics, whose laws are inexorable for us as those of death and taxes, that maneuvering such as is required to arrive quckly and safely in the right spot of the sky, oriented the correct way, in a slightly negative-G dive (which helps the bomb fall more closely aligned to the aircraft computer-extrapolated ballistic path) to deliver some hundreds of pounds of hate and discontent upon the enemy, accurately, puts some necessary and occasionally violent force on the jet. All the computers, and hydraulic pumps, and hinges and joins and bolts and generators, all the structural fuselage elements--all of them subject to sudden loading and unloading of gravitational forces as we airedales, with joy in our hearts and laughter in our voices (it's true) yank and bank our way up from the safety of terrain masking and roll in aggressively to "the chute," that wonderful and terrifying flight path from which said hate and discontent would shortly be dealt, but also a dangerous prison of principle, for in "the chute" one is "on government time," a nice way of saying we are required by divers oaths, spoken and unspoken, to deliver the fire support so desperately needed by our comrades regardless of personal safety, and a jet scribing a predictable straight path through the sky toward an intended target for some five to ten seconds makes a juicy target for the foes and their air defenses, doesn't it precious?

Which is all to say that the airplanes, designed as they are for the Newtonian toll by wonderful engineers at Boeing, undergo quite a beating in everyday flight. And they are not, therefore, always working.

Now, fear not. Being nothing less than a professional organization, American Naval Aviation has instituted many safeguards to ensure that broken aircraft are diagnosed and healed quickly (for machines so complicated, which carry life in their austere and purposeful cockpits, act more like living things than cold machinery). The fine Marines who crawl all over the jet and learn it's most secret places, in rain and cold and heat and long, deadly sunny days, they diligently diagnose all manner of little issues, and even more diligently repair them. They are Marines, of course, and are deeply invested in doing their job correctly - something to which I've alluded before. And they certainly won't certify a broken aircraft for us airedales to fly.

That means we only have so many aircraft at any one time, and as each aircraft can only fly so many times per day (three), we only have so many flights. And with a squadron of 34 aggressive, type A, red-blooded aviators all clamoring for flight hours (for to reach eventually that 10,000, though I've only ever heard of one gentlemen do it, and he wasn't flying the Hornet's ful 13 tons of twisted steel, sex appeal, fully articulating leading and trailing control surfaces, and hydraulic and electric circuits, so I'll spare him my envy for his piston-engined, single-control-surface monoplanes), and more importantly all 34 needing training for to kill accurately, space on that flight schedule gets pretty precious. When you start factoring in that maybe only 10 of the aviators are qualified tactical instructors, and one of them is needed for every flight with an unqualified aviator trying to get qualified for to become officially more accurate at killing, well, Flight Hours are very precious indeed, and you can probably forget Mr. Gladwell's 10,000.

But. A brilliant solution. The United States having a vast and reliable network of airfields left over from the days they also enjoyed a comfortable technological and economic advantage over the rest of the world, due largely to the vision and enterprise of men and women like that 10,000 flight hour earner (and where did all of that go, we wonder), and airedales being professionals, well, why don't you go seek your 10,000 hours on the weekend, young WSO? However, you must not under any circumstances come back to the home field until you are scheduled to do so. Therefore you must seek your fortune elsewhere--in Las Vegas, or Phoenix, or Long Beach, or Palo Alto. If you can show good reason, you may go farther afield: Seattle, Portland, Boise, Lake Tahoe, Albuquerque.

Well. Unspoken was the fact that I, like many of my fellow "road warriors," was single. And though some were vocal about the "double standard," I had no desire to pull my peers from their families on the weekend. Also, I was conscious of the fact that in the competitive world of fighter aviation, it was rather well looked-upon if one showed uncommon dedication to flying.  And there were real benefits, too. Places to see, bars to visit, new airfields to experience, all while earning per diem getting a free hotel stay. Plus the advantage of progressing in qualifications faster than my peers, if I could entice an instructor along. And I didn't have to go home to my sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment (seriously, my wife still teases me about my life with only a bed, dresser, and desk) and wonder what to do with my weekends.

So I became a consummate road warrior--during one two-month stretch, I did nine weekend cross-countries. Yup, if you're counting--that's every weekend. Plenty of distraction. 

They were days of work and wonder--sitting, hot, in the pits of El Centro with the engines screaming at idle, poring over a chart and scratching fuel and time calculations on my kneeboard to see what sort of Bingo we'd set to safely arrive at our next destination (Bingo being the term for the minimum amount of fuel required to get to base, with a specified safety reserve) while the sweat beaded under my visor and made the mask slippery on my face; knocking off 20 minutes of dogfighting, breathless and panting from the G forces and the strain of keeping one's head turned around and locked on the other aircraft, and keeping my voice aviator cool on the radio with center as I asked for IFR to Phoenix; nervously asking for a lower altitude VFR over the Grand Canyon, and receiving permission, and descending lower into the layered red rock walls while a sparkling blue river winked out of the depths; calling hotels and 1-800-Wx-Brief to file the next flight from the deliciously cool FBO in Palm Springs, giddy with freedom after deciding with the other aircrew that we were NOT going to Long Beach tonight, that we wanted to go to Las Vegas instead, and spending a half an hour 'making it happen;' scrubbing clean an ancient whiteboard with paper towels and the damp sleeve in a crumbling base operations building, wallpapered with squadron stickers, in preparation for a full debrief; and best of all, the sudden quiet at sunset, when the radios magically stop squawking and the light fails and cockpit cools off and the horizons become brilliant streamers of red and pink and orange--when it was time to find a new place, a new hotel and restaurant and bar, and the work is over.

And I remember one winter afternoon, awash in coppery sunset light, when at 18 miles from the field we were directed to turn left and intercept the approach path for runway 07C ('zero-seven-center'), and asked to slow to 130 knots. These instructions are to be followed to the letter, now, because there are many airplanes at any given time trying to get into that small little cone of airspace around Phoenix Sky Harbor, and land--many of them filled with innocent passengers, at that. Having them all moving at more than 100 miles an hour, and climbing and descending on there way out and in, complicates the problem immensely. The hardworking controllers at airports like that deserve a beer next time you meet once in your local watering hole, maybe, and they certainly deserved the utmost professional courtesy from the likes of me, whose ego was often close to writing checks his body couldn't cash, and nor could his airplane, at least not without upsetting the smooth flight of 150 odd southwest passengers, but that fortunately didn't happen but once, and it's a story for another time.

In any case, it was with some trepidation that I tapped the foot pedal, and transmitted back to the controller, "Combat 41 unable. Minimum airspeed 150." Which was putting my pilot and the controller in a pickle, and no mistake. For the former, well, our 13 ton aircraft with two tons of fuel aboard did not like flying at 150 knots, oh no precious, what with finite lift available even with the wings totally reconfigured for maximum lift provision. It requires an exceedingly gentle touch, I'm told, and a high power setting, which the aircraft greatly desires to turn into speed for to gain more lift and stability. A hundred seventy-five knots being preferred. For the latter it became immediately evident why our speed was a problem. Several miles ahead of us, nearly blending in with the desert floor (at 18 miles one is barely seeing the southwestern suburbs of Phoenix below), was a trundling Southwest Airlines 737, placidly and gently gliding in at about 130 knots. Not being designed, see, for the speed of heat, or for eight Gs, or for accurate delivery of death to all comers in the air, on land, and at sea, the Boeing 737 has nice large rigid wings that are uncongenial to the lift or drag requirements of, as one pilot once undelicately put it, "flying through your own a**hole." It is therefore also much more stable at slow speeds.

My pilot answered my radio call over the Intra-Cockpit Communication System (ICS) with a four-letter word unprintable on this family website. The controller, after a pregnant silence, said uncertainly "Combat 41, roger, traffic twelve o'clock, three miles, seven-thirty-seven." Which meant, of course, that he heard me about the 150 knots, and oh by the way there was another aircraft off my nose at three miles. To which my pilot replied via ICS, "Tally," and I was able to say "Combat 41, Tally that traffic," and then quietly wonder whether we'd have to do a turn of holding before we landed.

But this controller was smart and helpful, which made a nice change from all the rude ones who question your omniscience and try to kill you by flying you into either an airplane or a hill, true story, and both also for another day. He hopefully asked over the radio, "Combat 41, can you land on the right?" which of course that Phoenix has two large runways, the right-most one being shorter when landing on runway 07, and perhaps we could land on a different runway than that tortoise of a 737 quite safely. So I hurriedly thumbed to my airfield diagram, saw that the right runway was 7,800 feet long, which was about 200 feet shorter than we'd like but technically quite long enough for the Hornet, and doing a quick calculation on how much I trusted my young pilot's ability to stop from running us off the end of the runway, and exiting the airplane ungraciously through the door that Martin Baker provides, and quickly tapped my foot pedal to transmit cooly, "Combat 41, affirm," and save the day. Which, of course, I did, because the controller happily replied "Roger Combat 41, maintain visual separation that traffic and continue your approach visually to zero-seven-right." It wasn't exactly kosher because under IFR traffic rules he has to give me a heading, but it was quite an expedient solution. My pilot accelerated to a much smoother 175 knots and swung right to offset from the Boeing and line up on the right runway, which looked rather short compared to the two other 10,300-foot-generous runways provided by Sky Harbor. And, having a pilot's generous dose of ego, he batted no eyes at my quick brief about the 7,800 foot runway earmarked for us.

So I found myself with the setting sun at my back, beauty before my eyes and relief in my heart, passing a Southwest Airlines airplane in my hornet. We touched down about 15 seconds before he did, and ended up having to wait a while on the taxiway, worse luck. But it sure made the beers taste good that evening.

Red Flag Nellis

Three weeks ago, I shipped out with my squadron for Red Flag Nellis, an aviation war game conducted at Nellis Air Force base in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's not much of a deployment, as it's only five hours away from San Diego, and it offers some pretty nice benefits: world-class training with other aviation services (including international ones) and the opportunity to experience the pleasures of Sin City. The exercise comes at an important time for our squadron particularly, as it forms the "final exercise" an air-to-air training syllabus we've conducted these past months. And almost as important as the tactics we practice is this opportunity for the squadron to experience the vicissitudes of deployment as a team before actually heading out to Japan next March.

Much as I remembered the last WestPac, deployment is suddenly a small life, made up of a shared hotel room, shared workspaces, a rigid vehicle schedule made for the convenience of all (but really the convenience of none), and the annihilating desire of comrades to engage in debauchery in Vegas. There are significant frustrations, like the lack of privacy and amenities (laundry, gym). There is constant heat and new faces and a high tempo of briefs and planning, with little free time in between. But there is also a high and august calling about it, a chance to really learn the trade of being a Hornet aircrew. There is a chance to live the tactics in way that is impossible in the comfortable life of San Diego; there is the immense satisfaction of working as a team to solve problems--logistical and tactical; and there is the unique joy that comes with being young and hardworking, being in a new and exotic place, and feeling capable of anything.

From the blowing desert surrounding Nellis AFB rise the fantastic towers of "The Strip," rising like Oz to the south of the base. They are a surreal sight in the canopy as we taxied to take off each day, while at night their brightness hurt our eyes whether viewed through night-vision goggles or not. It's truly amazing what we have created in Las Vegas - buildings of striking beauty and innovation, lavishly adorned, dedicated ironically and only to Mammon and lust. Long after our civilization has faded, I'm sure, the towers and sculptures and fountains of Las Vegas will stand mute ruined testimony to the glory and corruption of our people. As for the runways at Nellis: they will disappear, as all artifacts of virtue and sacrifice do--stories of those themes live only in legend. "Go tell Sparta, passer-bye / that we, obedient to their laws, here lie."

But there was little time for philosophical reflections during the exercise. The first week I was on the night page, beginning my day at 5:00 PM to fly at 10:30-ish, returning to the hotel around 6:00 AM the following morning after all the debriefs. The cycle was a bit like groundhog day: lots of briefs before the flight, lots of briefs after the flight, then time to go home, hungry from lack of time to eat and drained from the heat, the adrenaline of flying, and the strain of waiting in all the briefs. The hotel wasn't much of a home, either: reeking of second-hand smoke and constantly contaminated with the noise of slot machines, it was actually a little stressful as living quarters. But in spite of the schedule we had one weekend to relax, which we occupied (characteristically) with a gigantic party in the Wynn in downtown Vegas that Saturday night filled with craps, catered food, and squadron shenanigans in our party suits -- a kind of flight suit done in our squadron colors and adorned with patches of our choice (usually cataloguing our various experiences in the Corps and sometimes funnier stuff). Given that it's such a distinctive and novel suit, however, some of us were asked whether or not we were strippers as we strutted amongst the tables in the casino. A compliment? perhaps. Only in Vegas, though.

That single Sunday was given to recovery and, for some of us, church. The Cathedral in Vegas is amazing for several reasons, and I've written of it before. For one, it is on the strip itself, stoutly lodged among rival temples to pleasure and money. For another, it has some fantastic art. Non-traditional, to be sure, but nonetheless fantastic. Dominated by a youthful, athletic, beardless Jesus, there is a triumphant air to the aggressively modern building. It's enough to make most Catholics uncomfortable, as it sort of ignores the suffering aspect of Christ's life, but its worth seeing and spiritually stimulating nonetheless. It felt like a turnpoint, too, because I moved from the awkward schedule of night flights to the more normal rhythm of daytime missions. And by that point most of our comrades were surfeited on gambling and night-time pursuits. From that point on it was a race to Friday, our last day in that city of harsh sunlight and dark nightlife. The fantastic flying and long hours helped pass the time.

In my experience, the best part of Las Vegas is getting there and leaving. It is wonderful and magnificent, but up close it reveals its seediness despite the appalling luxury and its unhappiness despite the constant entertainment. It makes me uneasy. It was good to fly in Red Flag, and fun to see the wonders of that city again. But it was better far to leave.

Especially since I went from there to a wonderful and much-anticipated vacation in Chicago, autumn town and long-time love affair of mine.

Cross-countries, moving, and wildfires

The past several weeks have been very busy - so busy, in fact, that I have not seen the last four Notre Dame games, which for those of you who know me well is quite rare. I'm not quite complaining, either. I split my time between my job at the squadron, often spending twelve or so hours a day there, and the St. Brigid's young adult group. And being so busy is certainly having a positive effect on me, though it can be superficially frustrating at times (such as when I want to watch my favorite TV shows).

On the flying side, there was a two-week period where I went on three cross-countries: the first to Phoenix, the second to Las Vegas, and the third to Yuma, AZ (though that one was more of necessity than by choice). The whole idea of a cross country is to take a weekend with a jet to get training done. The positive from the squadron's point of view is that training flights take place on non-working days, freeing up more sorties during the week, and cross countries allow flights to get done without maintenance support. The positive from the aircrew point of view is that we get to travel on the weekend to places like Phoenix or Vegas. And it is fun to fly around unfamiliar places - the sense of detachment and appreciation that comes from looking on new cities and the countryside from the air is always exhilarating.

The Phoenix trip occurred during the week, because Miramar Airfield shut down that particular Wednesday for the upcoming weekend airshow (October 12-14). That day we flew over as a two-ship, or section, from San Diego in two legs, stopping each time to dogfight each other. Those kinds of flights are my favorite: high-G, intense, competetive, and just plain fun. We made it to Phoenix without incident, checked into our hotel for the night, and went out for a quiet evening of college football over steaks (I was pleased to see Navy beat Pitt in overtime) and turned in early. The next morning, we got up, drove to the airport for two more flights; the first being another dogfight, the second being an air-to-ground roll in practice flight (an explanation of which can be found in this post). That night--Thursday--we went out with the ASU kids in Tempe, spending our evening at a bar ironically called "The Library." It was decorated with bookshelves (and real books!), but it served strong drinks and boasted the entertainment of an 80s Metal cover band called Metal Head--which meant we rocked out to Def Leppard and Van Halen tunes for the rest of the night. It was a little surreal to be back in the college atmosphere, but it was one of the better nights I have experienced since the nightlife of Pensacola.

We recovered Friday morning over a full breakfast spread, kindly (and anonymously) purchased for us by a patron of the hotel who noticed us in our uniforms. That was the first time I have ever been treated specially for serving in the military, and it was humbling--I realized personally that while wearing the uniform I am the steward of others' respect and hope. I was also very grateful, and thus motivated I joined my comrades for our two flights back to San Diego. On these legs we fought each other again, and landed Friday afternoon exhausted but satieted with high-performance flying--just in time for the weekend.

That weekend was one of labor for me, as I moved from my La Jolla residence to a San Diego apartment. I moved chiefly because my lease in La Jolla was up, and my previous room-mate had a friend living downtown that he wanted to move in with. As it turns out, the move is a positive one: I am renting a bigger appartment with a closer friend for a lower price. My new room-mate, Brooks, had his girlfriend, brother, and sister-in-law help us move everything across town, and I had some friends from St. Brigid's Young Adult group assist, and overall it was pretty fun. As when the anonymous hotel patron bought me breakfast, I was humbled by the friendship and charity present I found in my friends, who gave up their Saturday to help me move my belongings (in the rain, no less).

The next weekend saw the Las Vegas trip, which was a little different from our jaunt to Phoenix. My part in the plan was to get LAT qualified. LAT is a military acronym meaning Low Altitude Tactics (I think), and next to dogfighting is the most fun I think you can have in a fighter jet. It involves raging around scarce hundreds of feet above the ground, diving through valleys and pulling hard over ridges. And like dogfighting, it is hard work-- we pull a lot of Gs in LAT because it is important to keep the aircraft's speed up, in case we have to quickly climb away from the ground--and high speeds mean high Gs when you turn. It is also very warm, because the air coming into the cockpit is ground temperature and does little to mitigate the heat of the sun coming through the thick canopy. Each flight is roughly like an hour-long workout. We flew two sorties that day, stopping in between at Edwards Air Force Base (and landing behind an F-22, which was kind of cool). Flying into Vegas itself was extremely busy, since we have to compete with all the commercial carriers and the corporate jets for airspace and tarmac. Yet despite the intensity of the approach, I couldn't help notice in awe the gigantic multicolored desert cliffs that surround the city, cast into sharp dramatic relief by the setting sun. I always get a sense of awe flying over the high desert--it seems to be all jagged ridges and blasted lakebeds like a foretaste of the apocalypse. Nearly as impressive is the massive metropolis springing out of bare desert, tucked into a deep valley and bordered by a giant still lake. It looked like something out of the Arabian Nights.

Vegas is kind of a destination for military aviators. The airports there are reasonably kind to us, the city itself is reasonably close to the restricted airspace where we do our training, and Vegas itself offers a lot of entertainment. That Friday night we were staying in the Stratosphere hotel, and decided that we would "stay local" - eat dinner there and go afterwards to the Stratosphere nightclub. Before that, however, I was subjected to a "hasty callsign review," where amongst much drinking "Vigo" was rejected and I was awarded the moniker "ECMO-2." An ECMO is the backseater in an EA-6B prowler, and is responsible for jamming enemy radar signals. As such, ECMOs are reputed to be nerds. Evidently I give off the same impression. After that was over, we went to the nightclub where I happily sang along to all the 80s music they played until I couldn't stand up any more and went to bed.

The next morning I didn't have to fly, so I was free to recover and sightsee as I pleased. It was actually a very depressing day. The temperature was cool--which I wasn't prepared for--and I was fighting off the nauseating after-effect of the previous evening. I was struck by how quickly and disconcertingly grand impressive casino facades and sumptuous casino lobbies gave way to the tawdry glitter and cheap furnishings of the casino floors themselves. I was vaguely disgusted by the expensive design shops built next to banks of industrial vending machines and airport-style shops hawking magazines, ice cream, candy, and soft drinks. The entire city seems designed to be overwhelming and beautiful on the outside, but crushing on the inside. I was shocked and saddened to see elderly men and women gambling and drinking alone at slot machines, and easily frustrated young men with bored pretty young women aimlessly shopping and gambling at quiet, bitter blackjack tables. If Vegas is supposed to be a center of entertainment and fun, so why are so many of it's pilgrims unhappy? I spent nearly the whole day lonely and depressed.

Then I went to Mass. The Cathedral for the diocese of Las Vegas sits almost directly on the Strip, just north of the Wynn casino. It is a dramatic, geometric building that looks to have been built in the late '50s. The facade had a mural showing three men paying homage to a Christ in apotheosis, accompanied by the exhortations "Prayer...Penance...Peace." Inside, the retablo behind the altar consisted of another, pure art-deco mural showing what I assume to be the resurrection--a noble, powerful, youthful, clean-shaven Jesus (identifiable only by the holes in hands, feet, and side) sprang up from the tabernacle in a burst of vaguely atomic light, surrounded by similarly virile angels, spreading his hands toward the ceiling. It was unlike any religous art I had ever seen. However, the trappings on the altar themselves were beautifully carved and expensive-looking, and the church itself was remarkably clean and well-maintained. It occurred to me later that the diocese of Las Vegas was probably quite wealthy. Despite the jarring decorations, the mass itself was orthodox and heartfelt, and preached to a full congregation. It felt good to shut out the huge palaces on the Strip and retreat for an hour into familiar church hymns and rituals. The depression and the sadness of my day melted away, and I exited the church in a more cheerful frame of mind.

Stepping out the church door, I was greeted by a gritty blast of cool dry desert wind. The palm trees were bowing toward the horizontal and sheets of dust raged howling up the Strip. Well-dressed gamblers and partygoers, hunched against the assault of sand and air, scurried along to get cabs or get inside. I slitted my eyes and strode as best I could down to the Flamingo, two miles to the south, where I was staying for the night. I passed the silent, wind-lashed fountain outside the Bellagio and inwardly rejoiced at this desert windstorm that had thankfully shut down the painful, frenetic pace of the city. Returning to my hotel, I ate a nice, quiet dinner with my room-mate, declined my comrades' offer to go to the Playboy Club, and retired early.

The following morning we simply ferried the jets home from Vegas in one trip. We did a low-level (more LAT), which was fun, and I got to see some of the fires in their very early states as we flew in from the east, but on the whole it was simply good to be back in the solid reality of my own routine and apartment. After two cross countries following so shortly after each other, I looked forward to a week to settle back in, get back in a routine, and not have to live out of a suitcase. But providence had other plans. That week the fires struck San Diego county. Monday morning the pilots in the squadron flew the jets to Arizona (to get them out of the danger zone) while the WSOs--like me--stayed back to run the squadron. There was much to do. My job turned out standing Tower ODO, as the officer in charge of running the airfield itself. It is largely a supervisory role and it isn't too difficult. Mostly I just make sure that the crews who operate the actual control tower, the refueling equipment, and the fire trucks are all doing their job in accordance with the airfield schedule. That day I had to start the field preparing for the eventual arrival of the President, along with his assorted limosines and helicopters, all of which were flown in Tuesday night by Air Force transport aircraft. It was exciting to be a part of that kind of planning, and part of the firefighting effort--even if all I did was supervise the support of real firefighters.

The following day the squadron was shut down, so I sort of had the day off. The day after that, Wednesday, the jets flew back in and I was asked to fly to Yuma as part of a training detachment. Even when fires threaten our home town, training must go on. Those of us who went were lived in areas not threatened by fires. The trip itself was supposed to be a quick one: fly over Wednesday night, complete the training flights Thursday morning, be back that afternoon. But all of our jets broke. And they broke hard. We spent Thursday trying to fix them, reluctantly stayed Thursday night again in Yuma, and found out Friday that the maintenance would take probably several days, so we rented a car and drove three hours back to San Diego. Though the trip ended up a frustrating experience in many ways, I was surprised and humbled by how well my fellow aircrew and the maintenance guys handled it. You learn a lot about the quality of your comrades when you watch them deal with adversity. Those guys I was stuck with complained a lot, but not in a negative way. They did it to be funny, and they do it in spite of working very hard to fix what is wrong. They didn't whine or give up. As a result, the trip turned out to be kind of fun. I was reminded again that I am in the company of true professionals.

The events of the last three weeks or so have left me with a wealth of experience. I am not sure how it all fits together. Phoenix, Vegas, Mass in Vegas, moving, wildfires, getting stuck in Yuma--I am fortunate to have enjoyed and learned so much. As a new guy to the squadron, I get the more thankless tasks and the rougher hours, but it seems there is a bright side.

Still, I hope I can go at least a couple of weeks without a cross country.