A lot has happened....it's a LONG one......

 Well..., let's see.  I forgot last week to talk about Kristen dog sitting a fellow classmates dog for two days.  My classmate found a lump on his dogs side.  So they went to have it removed.  They usually leave "Blitz" home alone during the day while they are at work.  They didn't want him to mess with his stitches so they asked Kristen to dog sit.  He is a BIG Weimeranger! Haha.  Dallas tried to play with Blitz for a little while but just kind of gave up after she found out that he wasn't interested.

To say thank you to Kristen they took us out last weekend to a local comedy show.  It was Kristen and my first time to a comedy show.  It was a great experience.  The theater was packed with local military folks...., and only a few locals.  I guess we're all looking for anything at all to do around here.  Haha.  One of the comedians was Jose Sarduy.  He is a reservist pilot here on the base.  I heard that he was funny....., but he really was.  He was probably the best comedian there that night.  He has two Cuban parents and was raised in Miami.  He has a catch phrase of "DAS WAD EIN TOHKIN ABOW" (That's what I'm talking about with a heavy Cuban accent).  It's going to catch on like Larry The Cable Guy's "Git R Done"  I'm sure of it.  Haha.  Anyway.  It's cool because he's a pilot and he's funny.  Click on this sentence to link to his site if you're interested.  Of course I had to buy his coozie.  I'm an avid coozie collector for anyone that doesn't know........Seriously.

This past week I had my T-1 cross country.  Ok.  The T-1 does have long legs and can go cool places.  But not only do I have to practice cruising at high altitudes (easy), I have to practice my instrument approaches to land (hard).  So I only have two hours, and I can do whatever I want to do with my time.  I would love to go far away from Laughlin AFB, but then I wouldn't get enough practice at my approaches.  So that pretty much takes all the fun out of my "cross-country".  And if that wasn't enough.  Military aircraft can only land at airfields where we have fuel contracts with (we get a special lower rate).  And what makes it even less fun is that my squadron only allows us to RON (Remain Over Night) at military airfields.  So....... It ended up being a planning nightmare last week with all of these things kept in mind.  We tried 11 bases till we finally found one that worked.  There were so many reasons that the first 11 didn't work from no rooms on base, to the tower closes at 8pm (and we'd be arriving at 11pm).  So our final selection was Davis Monthan AFB in Arizona.  Really cool!  Everyone that we told we were going there was jealous of us.  We were actually pumped! Well...., there were two planes going there together.  Us and two more students in the other plane.  They took off six minutes before us.  Our plan was to fly to El Paso, TX.  eat dinner, relax, plan and wait till nighttime for our next leg to davis Monthan AFB.  When the first plane got to El Paso they saw really bad storms and even dust storms!  So they diverted to Roswell, NM.  We heard them over the radio and decided to do the same.

 Roswell was alright.  We got a rental car and went eat at a resteraunt.  Its always fun to be in uniform in a city where there is no military base.  Everyone just looks at you like...., "What are they doing here?".  It's funny.

 Our plan had to change drastically because of the storms to the West. We decided to go to Ellington Field in Houston, TX.  It's a joing use field with the Texas Air National Guard, NASA, and civilian traffic.  We kinda bent the "staying at a military base" thing because there really is no "base" there, its just a squadron of F-16's.  We slept at the civilian FBO (Fixed Base Operator).  It was waaayyyyyyy better than expected.  They had nice clean rooms, and all you can eat snacks, beer and drinks! We landed at 12:30am

The next morning we woke up (11:00am) and went to Cracker Barrel for "breakfast".  Then we came back to the airport to plan and depart.

As we were starting our jet the other crew's IP was flagging to us to tell us he had a problem.  Their jet had an oxygen leak.  That sucks because it was out of tolerances for them to take off.  You need oxygen in case of an in flight emergency where you have to don your oxygen masks.  You could pass out and crash into the ground if not.  Bad news.

 Anyway, we decided to be nice to them and let them take our jet and we'll wait with their broken jet.  The other IP outranked our IP and the other IP had a wife and kids to go home to......so long story short...., he got the good jet.  Which to us was kinda cool.  We let our home base know of the problem.  Then we just sat around and waited to see what they wanted to do.  It was cool just hanging out and playing the waiting game.  We were really starting to hope that we'd be stuck there over night again.  But it didn't happen.

The guy with the oxygen showed up. darn.  He asked how we were going to pay for it and we showed him our military credit card.  he said that he didn't take those.  YES!  Awesome..., maybe we will stay another night after all.  But then he called his boss, and his boss said since it's military he'd do it for free.  Thanks a lot!  Haha.  Actually, it was really a good feeling to know that some small business owner sucked up his profits to help us out.  Go USA!

This weekend my mom and a good family friend (Mama Oddo) came over for a visit.  They got here on Friday afternoon.  Friday night we went to eat at the Herald downtown.  The Herald is just about the coolest/hip place to eat here in Del Rio.  It was fun.  then we came back to our place and talked for hours.  It was good catching up.

Saturday was a FULL day.  We went on a two hour walk all over base with a stop over for free breakfast at the community center, then we went to eat at our favorite local Mexican restaurant, Poncho's, then we went out to the lake to show them the Mexican border, then Wal- Mart, then church, then dairy Queen for ice cream, then finally home to chat and relax.  It was a long 36 hour visit!  Haha.  It was great to see Mama Oddo and my mom.  I'll see ya' next time at graduation mom!

This is Dallas with her two new toys from Mama Oddo.

12-18 July <--- Not catchy but informational

I went to Harlingen, TX this week.  It's a small city right at the very bottom tip of Texas.  We met up there with another crew from our base.  They all wanted to go and eat at a sushi restaurant that they knew was there.  I don't eat sushi..., but since we don't have a sushi place in Del Rio I didn't want to disappoint everyone else.  I ate fried rice.  Oh well., better luck next time.  This week on my out and back flight I plan to stop at College Station, TX (home of the A&M Aggies) for soem Freebird's burritos.  I'm hungry just thinking about them.  Haha.

This week I had my first low level flight in a T-1.  A low level is flown at 500 feet above the ground.  It was awesome!  It took about 45 minutes total.  It was so cool watching the world go by fast right below our plane.  When we flew over roads and interstates I was wondering what the people in the cars were thinking.  I mean just imagine that you are driving on some desolate road way out in Nowhere, TX, then all of the sudden a jet comes buzzing over head at 500 feet.  WOAH!  Haha.  I bet people start getting paranoid that the government is watching them or something.  Like we caught them speeding or something. Haha.

Some friends of ours dog had surgery this week.  They asked Kristen to look after their dog while they were both at work for two days.  To say thank you to us they cooked us dinner and brought us out to a comedy show on Saturday night.  It was funny.  There was a comedian there wo is also a pilot here on base.  he might have been the funniest guy there. His name is Jeff Sarduy.  Click on this sentence to go to his website.

This week I have an out and back to College Station, and then a cross country/remain overnight flight on Wednesday.  I'll probably just stay around Texas to get as much done as possible.  I was going to try to make it to New Orleans, but I won't get as much training as I would if I'd just stay in Texas.

This coming weekend I have my mom and mama-Oddo coming to visit us.  It's going to be so much fun.  There's not much going on over here so I guess we'll just eat BBQ and Mexican food all weekend!

Oh, by the way..., lets just say a lot of people read this blog.  I have a blog patrol account which keeps track of who comes to visit and when.  I have about 20-50 hits a day.  This site is busiest on Monday and Wednesday.  It's pretty cool...., I mean I only have a limited number of family and friends who know about the site and read it.  The rest is just random people who have found the blog and continue to read it.  Sweet!

I'm starting to feel like a real pilot

This week I started my navigation phase of training.  The weather in Texas sucked here this week.  It started out with Hurricane Alex early in the week, and then record floods and then a high pressure system that just sat there and held the bad weather over us.  If this weather was like this any earlier week in my training then I might have been upset.  But since I'm in navigation phase now I can act like a real pilot.  We don't really care what the weather is.....,Well, I shouldn't say that......., Our minimums for weather that we can fly in have dropped A LOT!

It was so awesome flying into other airports this week and listens to the GA (General aviation) traffic call off approaches and ask for weather updates all the time.  Haha.  We just flew our plane right to the minimum weather conditions and did touch and go's.  IT WAS SWEET!

This week I had my first out and back (we affectionally call them "out and snacks").  An out and back is where one student flies to an airport, does a few approaches, then lands.  We get out of the jet, use a courtesy car to go eat.  Then we take off, do a few approaches at that airport, and then fly back home.  It's awesome. 

This week I went to Lubbock, TX (Home of Texas Tech).  It's about a six hour drive....., but a 40 minute flight from Del Rio, TX.  Haha.  We went and ate at a Mexican restaurant called Fuzzy's.  It was kind of like a Izzo's, Freebirds, or a Chipoltle...., but not as good.  Their slogan was "What's in your Taco?" Which was pretty funny so I had to buy the souvenir cup of course. Oh...., it was funny when we pulled up to Fuzzy's and everyone there was looking at us like, "Where did they come from?".  Like we were aliens or something.  And a few women whistled at us.  That was pretty funny.  I guess people in Lubbock don't see men in uniform to often or something.  Haha. 

They put up our (future) flight suit nametapes outside our flight room this week also.  These are different from the ones that we wear right now because they have our wings on them, which lets everyone know that you are a pilot. 

See, in the Air Force there are a bunch of career fields that wear flight suits.  And even some of those have their own wings that they wear on their flight suits.  Its kinda hard to someone not in the military, but you can start to tell the difference between them if you're around them a lot.  Anyway....., these are MY wings that I'll get on my chest 22 Oct this year!  When I saw them this week I got really excited.  Not to mention we took votes on what we want to eat at our graduation dinner, and how many guests we have coming.  Wow!  It's a lot closer than I thought.  Actually, it's 100 days away from this Wednesday.  I only have 14 flights left in this block of training (navigation).  And navigation is really the only checkride left before I find out what plane I get to fly at my drop (8 Oct).  So I'm getting there.  Slowly but surely.  I'm starting to get excited!!!!!!!!!!!

Kristen made me another countdown chain from 100 days.  These are fun.  Everyday I'll just tear one off till there are none left!

There was a drop Friday night.  It was a pretty good one for the T-1's.  There were six C-17's, one KC-10, one KC-135, and two predators dropped.

For anyone who has been here and gone with us to the lake take a look at these photos!  All eight flood gates have been opened on the Lake Amistad dam.  It flooded or washed away 100 houses down river so far.  The lake is so high here......Thanks a lot Hurricane Alex.  The marina was even shut down this weekend!

This week I have another out and back on Tuesday.  It looks like beautiful weather.  I'm really trying to fly to Roswell, NM.  They have a really long runway and a few challenging approaches to fly.  Also, I could see an alien there.  We'll see.   I hope everyone is doing well.  Thanks for all the comments last week.

If you click on this sentence you can see a cool video I took flying just above the clouds.

I passed......on the second attempt

What a week.   We have had nothing but great weather since I started T-1s so far.  Of course on the week that I am supposed to take my checkride a storm, Hurricane Alex to be exact, rolls on through.

I had my checkride on Tuesday.  We were told that our checkride would be flown to Waco, TX.  Now Waco is the farthest of all the "local" airports that we fly to.  And my partner and I had never flown there before.  They say don't do anything dumb, dangerous or different on your checkride......, but, we were doing just about all of those.  Haha.  It was a very cloudy day here at Laughlin.  I was chosen to be the pilot to take off and get us there and my partner would fly us back.  I am a little slow on my "ground ops" (all of the ground operations, like moving switches, starting engines, and basically everything that has to be done before takeoff).  Oh well, I'd just have to take my time today to make sure that I do everything in my power to help me succeed. Ha.

Long story very short, I hooked the ride for a switch.  For some unknown reason I moved the anti-skid switch, which tests, turns on and off the anti-skid, to OFF....?!  I have never done this before.  There is no reason to do it.  In fact, it's bad if it's OFF because if we were to have a takeoff malfunction and it was OFF the anti-skid brakes would not help us stop.  And we need their help to stop 16,000lbs before going off the end of the runway.

Oh well, so that's the reason I hooked.  It was a stupid mistake.  I did well everywhere else though.  I had to go onto my 88 ride on Thursday.  An 88 ride is a overall big picture ride where the evaluator grades if they think that you have what it takes to complete the program.  It sounds very menacing..., but with the reason for my 88 ride I was not expecting it to be a big deal.  On Thursday I had my 88 with the checkflight commander, oooohhhhhhhh...., gulp.......  I was nervous about that until I sat in his office to brief for the flight.  He was so cool with me.  He told me that he's sees no problem with me being able to clean up this checkride.  And that he talked to my flight commander and he had nothing but good things to say about me. Whhheeeewwwww....  I was relaxed then.

Long story very short again.  After a lot of hurrying up and waiting we finally took off.  the check pilot flew one pattern and then I flew one to a full stop.  Haha.  It was only a 15 minute flight!  It has to be one of the shortest T-1 flights without an emergency ever...  So thanks for every one's prayers and thoughts.  I am on to the next chapter in training now, navigation.  It is the bread and butter of pilot training.  It is nine weeks long and it is the most fun and the most challenging time in pilot training.  I have my first flight in this block of training on Wednesday.  I'll take pictures.

I am peeling from last weekend!  That'll teach me (again) to put on sun screen!

We decided, on a whim, to go to Sea World for the 4th of July.  We got our neighbors to watch Dallas for the night and we left.  We left on Saturday afternoon.  We got a room to stay at on the drive there. We found a room at Lackland AFB in San Antonio.  Staying on bases is nice because its safe and cheap.

We stopped at a taco Bell on the way up there because we don't have one in Del Rio.

We got a room at the VOQ (Visiting Officers Quarters).  It was my first time as an officer getting a room on base.  Nothing to special..., I just felt cool.  The room was OK.  It had a separate living room/kitchen.  It even had a walk in closet.........all for $39.00!

This is a really windy shower that was in our hotel room.  We laughed about it for a while.  Click on this paragraph to see it.

We went eat dinner at Outback in San Antonio.  We don't have one of those either.

On Sunday morning (4th July) I woke up for a morning run (in the rain).  It was a great place to run because the base is big and there is a lot of heritage there.  Lackland AFB is where the Air Force has all of its basic training (the yelling and buzz cuts).  I went running around the parade field.  It's where big ceremonies take place.  The field is HUGE and is lined with WWII fighters, cargo planes all the way up to some of the most modern planes.  There are A LOT of planes on display there.  I just ran by them all taking pictures of a few.  It made me think.... who would try to mess with us?  I mean, these are planes that we have de-commissioned sitting on poles out in a field and they're still better than probably 95% of all other nations air forces.  Wow.  We're awesome.  Don't mess with us.

Sea World!  We both got in free because I am active duty military, thanks Sea World.  We were there early enough to beat most of the crowds and plus the sky was still cloudy so we had free reign of the park for a couple of hours. 

We saw some dolphins up close.

In the large aquarium we saw stingrays, sharks and other large fish. Click on these sentences to see video of it.

We went to Shamu's show.  It was fun...., I guess.  I think the whole Sea World experience might be for kids though.  Shamu was pretty cool though.  No human were eaten on the day that we went.

We saw a ski show also.

Log ride.

We went on the two roller coasters there.  Haha.  They were fun.  I guess I am used to pulling G's and loops.......Kristen was not though.  Haha.

When we got back to the truck we saw a grass hopper on the windshield of the truck.  I thought that he might have been confused.... he's a GRass hopper...., not a GLass hopper!  That was bad.  Kristen puts up with me though.  God bless her.

Thanks everyone for all the comments last week.  I check the blog every night for comments.