Class 05-04 is Next...Finally!

Well, I'll start by updating you on my trip out west to Seattle...it was great! I had a great week out there relaxing with family and just enjoying a much better place than Columbus, MS. The trip out was a little different than I had planned though. I got up around 0500 to make it on time to the airport, checked in, boarded the plane and the a few minutes later was disappointed to here, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain speaking. We're having some difficulty with one of the airspeed indicators, so we're going to power down and then power up to see if that takes care of the problem." Well, that didn't do a whole lot and we had to deboard and wait for the next flight. I was originally going to connect in Dallas, TX but ended up going to Atlanta, GA instead. Anyway, to make a long story short I arrived in Seattle about 7 hours later than originally scheduled to.

My uncle's place is in Gig Harbor, which is south of Seattle. It's very nice and in an awesome location on one of the many bays out there close to the Tacoma Straights Bridge. The day after arriving I ran in the morning and then headed to McChord AFB to grab some things for the big Thanksgiving meal with my Uncle. If God takes me the T-1 track, I'm going to try for a C-17 to McChord...the base is pretty cool and in a great location. Later that night a cousin of mine flying takers at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, WA arrived. I hadn't seen him in a long time so it was good to catch up some. The next day, we were able to try out a Boeing 767-400 simulator, which was too real. I was even able to pull off some landings...they weren't the smoothest in the world, but hey give me a break. Of course Thanksgiving day was great too and I ate entirely way too much!! When it comes to food I have a hard time cutting myself off.

One of the coolest things about the west are mountains. When the weather's nice you can see Mt. Ranier from the house, and luckly there were a few nice days while I was out there. It totally makes a person wonder why they live in the midwest...other than family and things like that! I was also able to check out the yacht of one of my Uncle's friends.

The weekend before I headed out west, I made a trip with some friends down to New Orleans to check out the sites. We hit up some good restaurants, checked out the local aquarium, took a walk through The French Quarter and GOT TO SIT IN AN A-10!! If you couldn't tell, the best part of the trip was the A-10. Since we're military, we decided to stay at one of the Navy bases in the area down there. Well, this one in particular also shared the base with an F-15C ANG unit and an A-10 AFR unit. One of my friends knew a pilot who had gone through Columbus awhile back, so she called him up. He was able to hook us up and take us out on the flight line to look around. The A-10 Warthog is one bad plane! It's not the most pretty lookin' thing, but it would tear anything/anyone up on the ground it came into contact with. I wouldn't complain if I got one of these out of pilot training at all. Here are a few pics I took.


Well, Class 05-04 starts in approximately 3 weeks from now and I can't wait! A lot of our classmates have been arriving over the past couple weeks or so and it's been cool to meet some of them. I think we're going to try and grab some dinner together tonight. I'm as ready as I've ever been to get this pilot training thing started...I'll do the best I'm capable of and leave God the rest. Check back for pilot training info soon.