I'm getting in the swing of things.

I'm kind of a big deal

So what's been happening over here?.......not much.  The internet went down for 36 hours and you would have thought that the world was going to end.  Haha.  I/we rely on the internet for EVERYTHING! I can see now that I don't care if I sleep in a five star hotel or a sleeping bag under a poncho hung from a tree during this deployment, if I have a good internet connection then my deployment will be good.  It's sad but true.  That's the world that I live in right now.

This clip is a RPA (Remotely Piloted Airplane) landing right over my bus.

I've flown nine ten times now.  I've been here for 26 days now.  That ratio (my flying to days here) sucks!  Which means I've only flown 39% of the days I've been here.....which sucks.  To be fair, my first flight wasn't until day 10 (once all of my in-processing was done).  So since then I've flown 63% of the time.....which is better.  I want to fly 100% of the time!!!  That's just a pipe dream.  The AF always has some sort of qweepy stuff to fill in useless time.  AAAgghhh.

It's hot here.  It doesn't say dusty....but it is

I'm still new here so I'm not too experienced just yet.  Once I get into the regular rotation I expect to have my flying to not flying ratio way up......hopefully.

When I got here I was P-57, which means that I was Pilot number 57.  We needed 63 here before we could start sending the older guys home.  Since then we've got two shipments of dudes in and my number has gone down.  My first drop was to number P-51. The my next drop was to P-47.  That's where I'm at right now.  I think the next drop for me will be on 3 Jun when some more dudes show up and some leave.  Once my number gets down to P-01 I'll be next!  So it actually seems like I'm dropping numbers fast!

Here's a video of a small group of MRAPs passing us by at nighttime.  They are menacingly HUGE when they roll past you...

I started doing my second duties over here (scheduler).  Ha.  It's funny.  I'm still learning Excel that's on my Windows XP laptop and now I'm expected to be an expert on Excel 2013 or something.  Haha.  And the spreadsheet is really complicated!  We fly 24 hours a day. I need to watch everyone's crew rest (12 hours), turn times, consecutive work days, experience level..., etc...  It's pretty difficult.  I'm confident that if the schedule were left to me for more than two days......, the world would explode.  Seriously.

The "plan" is for me to fly for seven days and then schedule for two, rinse, repeat.  So hopefully that'll be what happens.  That might be OK.  Someone told me today that a bad day flying is always better that a good day behind a desk......And that checks!  I made a goal of flying 160 total combat sorties and 750 combat hours....., but this goal is looking harder and harder everyday.  Maybe I'll step back, re asses, re plan, and then re attack my new goal. Stand by for new goal.

My flying has been so much fun lately.  My first two or three flights I still felt like I was being judged or graded, like in pilot training.  But my third flight was with my friend, Dynomite.  Yes, people with calls signs go by call signs out here.  Ever since that flight its felt like I'm just flying with my buddies.  It's been really nice.  I'm really enjoying flying out here.  Oh, and BTW, we're doing the mission at the same time......, catching bad guys and bringing them to justice.  Sweet!

Saying that, I flew through my first icing in this plane.  I thought that it was cool, but the other pilot didn't think it was.  OK, education time.  There are two different ways that aircraft manufactures can choose to get rid of ice on wings.  First off....  Ice on wings = No lift = 15,000lb of metal in the sky with my pink butt in it plummeting towards mother earth.  So ice is bad.  You can have anti-ice or de-ice.  Most planes have anti-ice which means that hot bleed air from the engines exhaust is piped trough the wing and tail leading edges and melts any ice that is trying to form.  The bad part about that is that it degrades the engine performance once its on.  De-ice is rubber boots on the leading edges of wings and tails that inflate and knock off ice once it has formed.  This is the cheaper method.  And this is the first plane that I've flown with de-ice.  I had ice forming on my wings and I had to "pop my boots" (that's an industry term..., you're welcome).  It was so awesome!  It made a reasonably loud sound and I saw the ice burst off.  Cool stuff.  But I can see how this could be kinda scary at night, in a storm. Next weeks lesson will be thermals, and how they affect lift on your first segment of a climb....haha.

This is our mail center in my squadron

We (my squadron) get at least one of these type of boxes a week since I've been here.

I got my first care packages.  Kristen sent me a large package with a rug, some flip flops and plug-in smell good stuff.  All stuff that I asked for.  I say that because I'm getting a lot of people asking me what to send.  And I really don't need anything.  I'm doing fine.  There's electricity here and they feed me everyday (for free).  They can't change my SSN and so far no one has shot at me.  So anything else is just extra.  My mom sent me some water flavorings, gum, chocolate, snacks and candy.  That was good.

I talk to Kristen almost everyday.  She's doing great.  She stays busy hanging out with neighbors, friends and family, working out, sleeping, cleaning and cooking.  She started looking for a job to stay busy also.  She went to the vet the other day and held a dog that someone left at the doorstep.  NO KRISTEN. Haha.

A wreath Kristen and her mom made.

Oh, it takes 20 combat flights to get an Air Medal.  I have 10, so I'm halfway there.

I'm a combat veteran

Haha.  I say the title as a joke but it's true so that's pretty cool.  I've flown six combat sorties now.  Your first 20 combat sorties get an air medal.  Every 20 after that you get an additional little pin on your medal.  The people who leave here are averaging seven air medals.  So I'll make my goal to leave here with eight.  That's 160 flights..... That's a lot.

I've done some pretty cool stuff so far here.  Unfortunately there's not too much I can talk about.  I can tell you that while I'm in the plane it's awesome.  Afghanistan looks eerily  like Southern Texas.  Which I'm not sure sounds bad for Texas or bad for Afghanistan.  But either way it's mostly flat, in the southern region, and dry.  The five hour blocks that I'm in the plane are basically dust free!  Which is AWESOME!  Clean air is great.  Also, the sunrises are beautiful.  I said the word "pretty" the other morning in the plane to the crew describing the sunrise and got flak, but it was.....pretty. I've been flying the midnightish lines so my days have been completely backwards.  I'm awake every night and sleep during every day.....it's weird being tired at 8am

My first camel spider.....it's not that big

I have been assigned an additional duty over here.  I'm now also the Assistant to the Chief of Scheduling.  Which is basically just me helping out the scheduler.  Scheduling is a tough job.  The Chief of Scheduling right now for our squadron is a pilot, but he's not one of our pilots.  He is on a non-flying deployment where his whole job is to make the schedule.  Which may sound easy but we're flying 24 hours a day here. And we're always upgrading people and keeping currencies with different flying tasks and techniques so it's a TOUGH job.  Everyone is always asking for their PFA (Personal Flying (subsitute word "flying" as you see fit) Agenda) to be looked after and such so there's a lot of qweep (Air Force word for paperwork) to do.  So anyway..., I'm slowly being trained and tasked with different things with the job.  I'm basically going to be the scheduler for about 3-6 days a month to let him have some days off (he hasn't had one in three months).

Which reminds me to tell you that I'm on a day off right now.  Which may sound good but I don't want it.  I want to fly everyday!  Once I get my hands into the scheduling biz some more I'll make sure my PFA is taken care of.

We wear pencil pocket patches over here when we're not flying.  It's the small patch that covers our pencil pocket on our left arm.  The squadron made some number patches.  Numbered 1-69.  Each pilot gets one that corresponds to the number of who the next one is to go home.  I showed up here and got number 57.  I just got moved to number 51 so the countdown has started!  Haha.

I also got some pencil pocket patches made for the Lieutenants out here.  There are only three of us pilot Lieutenant types here right now.  And we have to stick together.  It's called the LPA (Lieutenant Protection Agency).  Every squadron has one.  It's just to help us stick together since we're the young/new guys.  And in this squadron we need it since we're outnumbered 20-1 over here.  The rest of our squadron is comprised of half Captains and the rest crusty Majors and Lieutenant Colonels.  We're really all cool with each other so it's just kind of a fun thing to do.  I'm picking up the patches today.  They are brown and sand colored and say "MFLPA" which stands for Mother Freakin' Lieutenant Protection Agency.  Haha.  Everyone is going to get a kick out of it over here.

This is why I'm glad I'm aircrew

A few buddies and myself also made a music video.  I can't say too many more details on it because it's still in the works but it's pretty funny.

Kristen sent me a picture of Dallas "playing" frisbee

I talk to Kristen over the phone just about everyday, thanks to the internet, and email.  I talked to my dad one via phone and some emails. And I kinda talked to my mom once on the phone (she's not up with this computer thing just yet).  So overall it's not that bad over here.  I'll take more pictures next blog. Peace!

I'm officially deployed

Wow.  So much I want to talk about.  So much I want to tell.  There are so many stories.  But some of them I can't tell, and I have a crappy internet connection so far so this won't be as detailed as I'd like it.

My bags on deployment day 0.

Navy SEALS kicks some ASS!!!

Everyone in the terminal listening to the news of Osama Bin Laden

I left Virginia Beach, VA at 0200 from a Navy instilation on my way here.  While waiting to board the plane the news hit of Osama Bin Laden being killed.  Wahoo!  But really..., they couldn't wait till I was over here so I could of at least maybe had a hand in it....?  Geeez.  It was a funny joke that the plane/deployment was cancelled because of the situation.  We won!  Haha.  Not a shot....I'm still over here.

Land after crossing the ocean!

My plane over there

This is the "hotel" on base in Ramstein AB, Germany.  Kristen and I definitely need to go!

Me in front of my tent

Beer #1

Beer#2

I landed from VA in Germany.  We were allowed to get off for two hours (but not leave the airport/base) so that sucked.  From there we flew somewhere else.  That's where we were allowed off and told to wait for the next flight to my location.  It ended up taking 36 hours there.  But it was OK.  They gave me a bunk bed in a tent.  And they had a two beer limit per 20 hours...... So I max performed that limit while I was there.  The beers there are giant (probably 32oz..., I couldn't tell because they were in another language).  And there's no alcohol on base here so everyone tries to make the best of it.  The food wasn't bad there either.

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View from the cockpit looking back during flight

From there I rode on a C-17 to my location.  It was so cool to fly into a war zone. We all had to put on our flak vests (bullet resistant) and helmets.......cool.  I asked the crew if I could ride in the front and they allowed me to.  So that was AWESOME!  We flew about 20 Americans and 70 foreigners (I'm at a NATO base).  They smelled.  Haha.  We landed in the middle of a lightning storm so that was fun.  We waited to de-plane till it stopped.  My commander met me at "baggage claim", helped me with my bags and took me to dinner.  It was pretty cool.  Then he showed me to my room (it's a tent).  It was about 1130pm local time and everyone was sleeping in there already.  He told me the measure of a man is how quiet you can be.  Haha.  Yeah, try to be quiet with three HUGE bags and trying to find sheets and stuff in the dark...... it was quite an experience.

Here's my room.  It's hard to see because there's no lights

The next morning I got up and caught the bus to the squadron (it's a 25 minute bus ride to our squadron).  This base is so big!  There are 30 different nations here and about 30,000 personnel.  The U.S. only makes up about 1/4 of it.  That makes it good and bad I'm finding out.

I started my in processing on day one and that pretty much took up the whole first day.  For the next eight days it was more of the same.  I've been on the schedule to work twice since then doing squadron stuff...like driving the crew bus (crews to and from the flight line).  It's kinda cool.  But not what I'm here to do ya know.......  It's so funny that we're at war here but I still have to go through all of the usual in processing stuff that you would go through in the states.  Our military is the best!  So I'm all done with my in processing now and I fly for the first time tomorrow (Friday).  I can't wait!

Me driving for the first time out here

Me in front of an MRAP-ATV...Think 4x4, diesel and bomb resistant...yeah. BA!

 Let me tell you about or squardon bus.  It runs once an hour.  It makes three stops.  Once at the squadron, once at one camp site, and once at another.  It takes one hour to make the complete circle.  We don't have official drivers.  Whoever has been riding on the bus the longest, for that particular trip, becomes the driver.  I drove on day two.  Haha.  I didn't know where I was going.  Traffic here is crazy (tanks, MRAPS, civilians, foreigners, locals) and the drivers side is on the right.  Haha.  Too funny!  It was a blast.

Me in the C-5

View from on top the mighty Galaxy (five stories up)

A C-5 from Dover came here yesterday morning.  I got one of our crew buses and went out there to meet them.  The pilot was my flight commander.  I took a few of the guys to the DFAC (dining facility) and picked up food for the whole crew.  C-5's don't spend the night here.....must be nice.

Well, I've been talking to Kristen as much as possible. Usually once a day.  We run 24 hour ops over here so my internal clock is always messed up and I end up calling Kristen at weird hours.  We're 9 1/2 hours ahead of central standard time.

Till next time!

Missing my hubby, but keeping busy!

Well, happy Seis de Mayo!!  Plenty has happened since Coy blogged last.  I apologize for not blogging sooner, but I thought Coy would have plenty time on his hands, so I didn’t!!!  I’ll blog until he has time to do so…I hope that’s ok with everyone!! 

Coy left Louisiana on 30 April.  I think telling each other bye was the hardest thing I’ve/ we’ve ever had to do.  The crazy thing is, is we both knew a long time ago he would be deploying…so you’d think we would’ve been prepared for the emotional part of it…but we were both, naturally, really sad.  I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend as much time as I did with him.  Many people in his class said goodbye to their spouses, children, and family members months ago when this new training began back in….I don’t know, December…?  I was able to fly to Seattle (Thanks Mrs. Dianne!), visit in Dover, drive to Atlanta, and drive to Mississippi.  I stayed in Atlanta for a very long time, and I practically moved into Coy’s room when he was in Mississippi.  Living only 3 hours away from where he was in Mississippi was a blessing!  And, I was able to spend even more time with him because his group, during training, took a while to complete the program (I’m sure he mentioned their issues in previous posts).   So him leaving was bitter sweet for me.  I was happy that he was finally deploying because the sooner he leaves the sooner he gets back!!  But it totally sucks all at the same time.  We’ve been together since high school and I think the longest we’ve ever been apart was 6 weeks when he was at ASBC…so this 6 – 9 months will be hard for us both, I’m sure.  Hopefully it’ll fly by!  The night he left La we were on the phone and Coy mentioned how people go through these same emotions everyday…Men and women are always deploying and leaving family members being…It’s tough, but somebody has to do it!  It’s crazy…I remember when Coy commissioned Col. Collins thanked me specifically for giving my husband to the military…I was so confused at the time.  I was thinking I’m not giving him to the military…I mean I’ll share…!  Hmph!  You know those kids who don’t really like to share??  But they do only because they have to?  Well, that’s the military!!!  They own Coy for at least 10 years…they share him with me sometimes!  Haha….and I’m totally ok with it.  I wouldn’t have our lives any other way.  No words can explain how proud I am of my husband and how happy I am to be a military spouse.  Knowing my hubby fights for our freedom is the best feeling in the world.  God bless our troops and their families!

I did hear from Coy on Tuesday…I was out with my sister-in-law Mia and I had a surprise phone call!!!  It was amazing hearing his voice and knowing he was on the other side of the world!  Got to love technology!  He is safe and doing well.  He said he’s been busy and it was really dusty where he was!!!  I’m not sure what I can or can’t say about his whereabouts, so I’d like to just let everyone know that he’s fine and he can fill in more details later if he wants!  I’ve been sending him daily emails and pictures of the things I’ve been doing…just so he’s not missing out on anything.  I don’t really get replies from him (understandable) but he has told me that he gets and loves the emails…so that makes me happy.   Just know that if you are emailing him and not getting any responses you’re not the only one!  He’s just a busy bee in the sandbox! 

Well, Osama Bin Laden is a history lesson…high five to our troops for that victory!!!  I tell you, news like that makes me so proud to be an American!!! 

If anyone is concerned about me, I’m doing fine.  I’m keeping busy with friends and family and there has not been a boring day for me yet.  I’m very thankful for my parents because right when Coy left they were planning things to do with me!  I’ve always loved that about them…they never let me just mope around!  I’m sure I will look for a job, but I haven’t yet.

Dallas is having so much fun at her maw-maw and paw-paw’s!!  She has 3 other dogs to play with…I’m not sure what she’s going to do when we move to DE!  We’ll have to get her a friend!!  I think she's been sensing my emotions or just me and Coy always coming and going and she's been licking her leg raw :(  I think its getting a little better, but it looks so nasty...I feel so bad for her!  Hopefully, now that I'm home for a while she'll leave it alone.  I brought 3 of them to the groomer on Wednesday…I normally bathe them myself (or my dad does), but they’re shedding their winter coat and needed a good brushing!

I did get an iPad 2 before Coy left...so I can bring it everywhere and Skype with him wherever I am...I don't want to ever miss him if he has an opportunity to contact me!!  He was so pumped up about it and then he left :(  I told him if we really don't Skype while I'm running around I'd ship it to him!!  I also bought a cheap little clock so I could set it to Coy's time where he is!!  Just so I know...I guess I'm a little crazy, but I'd like to look at it and say, he must be sleeping...or maybe he's eating lunch! haha  a little goofy, but I'm ok with that!  I'd like to look up at the moon sometimes and think that e're looking at the same moon or the same star, but when the moons out here the sun is out there...so the clock is all I have!   

My cousin, Hank made his confirmation last night…on Cinco de Mayo!  But don’t worry, the family went out for Mexican after and it was delicious!!!  We went to Case Garcia…I had a great time, but it was so different dining there without Mrs. Dianne…that is her stomping ground!  And I had two margaritas…one for me and one for Coy ; )

I hope everyone is enjoying this warm weather…I know I am.  I’m not a fan of the cold!!  Stay tuned in, I’m sure once Coy has time and a decent internet connection over there (he said its been terrible) he’ll post a blog.  If for some reason he doesn’t, I promise I’ll keep

everyone updated!! 

Thanks for reading!!

~Kristen

P.S. One of Coy’s Aunts sent out an email last week requesting friends and family to set aside a little time on Monday nights from 7-7:15PM to pray for Coy’s safety and success while he’s away.  I thought it was a great idea and so thoughtful!!  So, I’d like to extend the invite on our blog so all of our readers/followers can join the family if you wish in prayer during that time…no matter where you are or how much time you dedicate.  I’m sure he’d appreciate everyone’s thoughts and prayers.