one week down

Well, to those of you that actually follow this thing, I have finished my first week on my first deployment. My crew and I have been flying about every other day, except when we have to go to stupid meetings about how to have a good deployment. We are doing lots of interesting stuff and some really boring things. All in all, it has been a pretty productive week. I am getting lots of working out in as we have a full 24 hours between flights most days. Hopefully Rachael is keeping up with me like she promised, but we will see. We spend a lot of time just sitting around reading when we aren't at the gym or flying. The food here is pretty much some of the worst food that I have come across. It is good enough to keep you alive but they can really butcher some of the simpler food (salad, burgers, french fries). Other than that, not much is going on. I will update again when I actually have something to say. Later folks!

In country

Well, i am finally out here in country and getting ready to fly my first mission. Things are going pretty well. Other than breaking my wedding ring on the first night here everything seems pretty normal. It is really hot here (as expected) but it still kind of hits you in the face every time that you walk out the door. We are laying around our room right now just resting up so that we can go out and start flying tonight. It should be a pretty plain Jane mission with not much going on. This will be good for me so that I can get used to the weird accents that all of the controllers have out here. I was pretty bad on the way in, but it worked out anyways.

I am living with my aircraft commander and our navigator in a room that is about the size of our second bedroom in little rock. It is pretty tight living but we have set things up the best we can. We have had some air conditioning issues since we got here but those may have finally been worked out by our mid night maintenance call.

That is really all that I can put on here for now.

Stuck in Canada

So I have officially left on my first deployment in the military. It was definitely one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do. Things started out pretty well when we were able to get out of little rock on the first try. The seven hour flight to St John's Canada was pretty easy since it was all high level cruise. The IP on the plane was busy at the galley cooking up some brisket that he had been smoking for the trip. We had a gourmet meal at 21000 ft of brisket, corn, and rolls. It was a goof way to start a deployment. Once we got to St John's the FBO team had some cold beer waiting for us at the parking ramp. We got checked in to the hotel and then we went out and celebrated all that newfoundland had to offer. We were supposed to leave St john's late on saturday night but our managing agency at Scott gave us a 24 hour hold because the weather was so bad for departure. We should get to england on monday morning just in time to catch the royal hangover from "the wedding". After that we will see how the plane holds up and that will determine whether we press on or vacation at another locale before getting into the sandbox.

I hope that you all are doing very well.
Rick