alert. This morning my alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. and it was like I was swimming up from a deep morass. I did Not want to get up! But I made it, and Chuck came and picked me up again, and this time we actually made it all the way into Grissom Air Reserve Base. :) They had a little breakfast for us with mini bagels, tea, coffee, oj, and pastries, and we hung around for about 40 minutes prior to getting a flight briefing, an emergency procedures briefing, a little talk about the base and what all it does, a security bag and person check through the metal detector, etc. Here we are shortly after takeoff...don't we look awake and alert and cheerful?? (Ignore the circles under my puffy eyes.) ;)I was having a little trouble staying awake during some of that, but the emergency procedures woke me up. Their oxygen masks are personal oxygen containers contained within a plastic bag that you put over your entire head. You know, like you were told not to do as a kid. The bag seals around your neck and you breathe in until the bag inflates. When you are out of air, the bag deflates and sucks up against your face. You may feel dizzy at first, but that's just from the pure oxygen. Either that, or you're not getting any oxygen because it's not working and you are now dizzy because you've got your entire head in a plastic bag. The emergency exits all come equipped with ropes with which you can climb out a window or door and rappel down the side of the plane. Hehehe. Riiiiiight. LOL Anyway, it was interesting.
I knew one of the other people there, out of the 22 people who attended, and I heard a couple of gentlemen discussing our airport operations at Kokomo and what a positive, beneficial, busy thing it was-then one of them pointed me out and my ears were burning a little. :) When we got on the plane (KC-135), the boom operator is the guy who gave me several flight suits and gloves, and who is a private pilot who flies with Steve. He asked if I'd like to sit up front for the take off or the landing, then said the landing is the better view, which I happily accepted. Nice guy, and it's neat to know someone on the crew.
We took off and headed over to Kansas or Oklahoma (nobody was quite sure), and met up with
an RC-135 which is a recon (spy) plane out of Offut AFB out of Omaha, Nebraska, where I used to live. :) The boom operator, well, he operated the boom and got the probe connected and refueled this other aircraft. He lays on his belly and operates the machinery there, and there is a seat to the left and right of him where people can lay on their bellies and watch, take photos, etc. We all took turns, and I took several photos as the planes hooked up. I tried hard afterwards to fight off a nap, but failed, and so did Chuck. Early mornings will do that. ;) We ate our bologna sandwiches and cookies that Judy made (thank you Judy!), and wandered around between the cockpit and the boom area just looking around.When it was time to come in, they cleared out the cockpit, then our club member crewmember waved me up there and I got to sit in the seat right behind the two pilots for the flight in. It was pretty interesting. Most of it was fairly normal stuff, but they had two flight computers that were completely non-intuitive. I even asked about them and was told they were really a "botched" system, hard to figure. The plane came down final at about 130 knots, which isn't much faster than the Cheyenne and felt a lot more...stable I guess. You didn't get that "hurtling" feeling. You sure wouldn't want to get behind on power adjustments for the four engines, but other than being very large, it didn't look as intimidating as a person might think.
The pilot was a woman, and she was a tiny little thing. An itty bitty woman flying a humongous airplane got a few comments. She had a booster seat and still didn't have her head above the panel. :) She had an instructor in the right seat and was going through transition training. She did a nice job. After her landing, her instructor complimented her on it, and she replied with "thanks, I don't think I've made a good landing in here yet", to which he said "Well, you can't mess them all up." That made me laugh, for some reason. ;)
Afterwards we were debriefed, and then they asked the civil pilots to stay for another chat, which Chuck and I did. The Staff Sergeant (or was it Master Sergeant?) who did that final talk finished up, then looked at me and said "You flew with me. You gave me a Biennial Flight Review." I looked around and said "Me?" He said "Yes, we flew out of that strip on 31, Camel-Lot. I tried to get you to come out here and fly for us but you wanted to stick with the smaller stuff." I laughed and said "Yes, that was us all right! You have a better memory than I." That was kind of neat, all these years later.
I did get some photos, and I'll get those up soon. It was fun, Chuck and I both enjoyed it. :)
When we got back, I had to run several errands, took Kaylee out to Kokomo for an hour or so, went to dinner, then came home and we had a birthday party for Dulcie. Poor Kaylee wanted tons of people to come, but she set it up in her bathroom and it was 9:30 at night. She dressed up in a mint gown and high heeled shoes and combed her hair and wanted us to dress up in party clothes too. She wanted her grandparents to come over, but it was late. We took the cats into the bathroom where she had strung up toilet paper that she decorated, and a paper chain that the kitties could play with. We sang happy birthday to Dulcie, lit a birthday candle in a piece of bread for her, and turned on some music and the three of us danced in a bathroom strung up with TP for about four songs. The cats were both quite freaked out by the whole process, but we tried to make it happy because Kaylee was excited about it.
That was the end of this very busy day. I'm tired enough that I can't go to sleep yet. And, inserting a whine here, my back is killing me for something like the third or fourth day now. This is just the second day or so that I've complained about it. I keep waiting for it to get better, but anti-inflammatories and all, it's just not. Bah. Pinched nerve, I think, at least that's what it feels like.
Well, I think I'll do the photos tomorrow, as the sleepies may have just hit, finally. Here are a couple photos to look at anyway. :)
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