Five rides left!!!

Another good for almost nothing week here as far as flying goes.

The one person on my crew that was sick got better (good news) so I was looking forward to getting back on the schedule ASAP.  We were put back on the schedule for Tuesday.  Yaayy!  But when we started to brief someone asked if this ride could be a proficiency ride.  Like a freebie ride that does not count but just lets us get our feet wet again in the jet.  AAAuuuuggggghhhh.  I DID NOT WANT A PROFICIENCY RIDE! I just want to get this training over with fast so I can serve my time overseas and get back.  Out of the eight of us pilots that went through this training there are only three of us left over here.  And we all started on the same time.

So we were scheduled for our real ride 7 (of 12) the next night, Wednesday.  And we flew it!!!!!!  Haha.  Yeahhh!!!  Haha.  Finally I had a little more progress with the schedule around here.  We were on the schedule for Thursday too!  Yes, finally I'll be moving ahead.  But.......... (doom, doom, doom), drama strikes again.  Another person in my crew got sick, like ER sick,  So were were cancelled for our Thursday night flight and not put on the schedule for Friday either.  And now the new norm is to not fly on weekends here (which would normally be awesome, but right now I don't think so).  Sooooo, I haven't flown since Wednesday, and only have one more counted flight under my belt since a week ago.  I'm on the schedule for tomorrow but it's an 80% chance of rain (we can't do our mission in the weather). Darn.  Hopefully this week my flying/schedule luck will get better.

We went to the lake a few times this week just to hang out.  Mostly to feed the ducks and never to jog, haha.  The lake here is so nice!  Click on this sentence for a video of ducks following Kristen.

On Thursday night ($.60 boneless wings night at B-Dubs) I got a few people to come eat at B-Dubs.  Click on this sentence to see our waitress balance a beer.  My Army buddy showed up again and asked me and another buddy of mine if we wanted to go of the Chinook the next day.  I knew I wasn't flying the MC-12 the next day so we said yes.  Of course...., it was AWESOME, again!  We did some LZ (landing zone practice) and a quazi low level.  The LZ stuff was so cool.  They fit this giant helo in the tiniest places with almost no wiggle room.  Click on this sentence to see the helo clip some trees (36 seconds into it).  Click on this sentence to see me riding in the back of the Chinook.

Friday night we drove to New Orleans with my old flight school classmate and fellow MC-12 pilot Mike to party.  He's leaving to go to the sandbox on Monday so we wanted to have a good sendoff.  Another friend from pilot training, Trey drove down from C-130 training in Little Rock, AR to send Mike off too.

We went to R&O's seafood on Friday night and Mike got to peel his first crawfish.  We ate so much food that night.

My beautiful wife and I

Kristen and her mom

Matt, Mia and me

Me, Mike and Trey

On Saturday we (Kristen and I, Mrs. Denys, Trey and Mike) went to the French Quarter Festival.  It is my favorite festival in New Orleans.  Although I think it might be getting a little bit to big.  It's starting to look like Jazz Fest to me, which sucks, because that means it's being taken over by tourists.  But it was still AWESOME!  We listened to music for a while, walked around and ate.  Mia and Matt came out to visit also.  It was nice to see everyone out there.  I saw all kinds of old friends out there.  Kristen and her mom left in the afternoon.  We walked around the festival again and Mia and Matt met up with us again.  We hung out on the balcony at the BBC where it was 3 for 1 drinks!  We left Mia and Matt to go walking around Bourbon.  It was such a pretty day, click here to see how pretty it was.  Click here to see how pretty it was #2.  Great food, great music, great weather, great people......., good times!

Hand Grenades

Mike rode a mechanical whale..., yes, a mechanical whale

Trey almost got hit by a streetcar

We went in some many clubs!  We stayed out all night.  We totally forgot to eat dinner so at 3am we ate Crystal burgers at the end of Bourbon.  Click on this sentence to see Mike get thrown off the whale.

It was nice for Trey to drive down and it was nice to send off Mike properly.  My send off will be in about three weeks.  I don't think we'll have a beer fest for me though.