the clueless american

I'm off on a trip again, this time to participate in the 62nd anniversary of the Normandy invasion. We'll be dropping some troops on 4 June, but for now we're just concerned with getting there.

Today was a very early start, with a 3:30 wakeup time. Despite a minor maintenance problem the trip was fairly uneventful as we picked up passengers in Macon and Nashville. We're staying the night at McGuire, which gave me a chance to see my mom. Getting her on the base was a mess, since apparently everyone else in the world was trying to get on at 4:30 on a Saturday. After that mess we were able to have a good time.

There's not much town outside the gates, so we decided instead of driving halfway back to my mom's house we'd just eat at the Garden State Diner near the base. We had a true New Jersey diner experience, complete with a not-quite-rude-but-not-friendly-either waitress and a table of old women loudly complaining about the food and how they were going to eat some of it and take some of it home for later.

When my mom dropped me off I found out that my key wouldn't work in the door, so I had to walk over to the office to get it re-keyed. By the time I got back to my room she was already home! I'm glad it's closer than we both thought.

Now it's time to enjoy a little sleep before another early morning tomorrow as we head up to Goose Bay.

My night may have been uneventful, but one of our troops had an experience last night. Apparently while I was with my mom listening to old ladies complain last night the rest of the gang was at the sports bar across from billeting having some food and drinks. One of the guys had more drink than food and was worse off than he seemed to everyone. When the last three left the bar, two turned right to their building while the last guy seemed to be turning left to his. He overshot and instead wound up in the golf course 1/4 mile away, trudging through the fairways in the dark. At one point he fell down a drainage ditch and bent his thumb back pretty hard.

He says he was pretty out of it but woke right up when a security policeman said "On your knees!" and ordered him to produce his ID card. Seems the guy wandered on to the flightline side of a building and was nearly on the flightline itself when they spotted him.

It didn't take the police long to figure out what was going on, so they brought him in to the drunk tank to cool off a while. Later when they realized his hand was really hurt, they took him to a nearby hospital where they wrapped it with an ace bandage. Getting back to the base was his own responsibility and took him until about 5:30 am for our 6 o'clock bus time. As he gathered his bags from the room he didn't use, he realized that the night before he'd had his backpack with about $2,000 of camera equipment with him and had no idea where it wound up. We searched the base as much as we could before takeoff, but in the end we left without his camera.

4 hours later we arrived in Goose Bay, one of the more isolated places I've visited in my travels. For the first time here I got to stay off base, and the hotel is pretty nice. I suppose a travel guide might describe it as rustic, but it works for me. Due to an apparent addition error on the part of the scheduler, we only have 16 hours here instead of 19. That means I have to hurry up and get some dinner so that I can be up at 3 again tomorrow.

Update, 29 May 03:45: I checked my email one last time before packing up the computer and saw an email from e that said someone called her to report that they'd found the camera. The guy who found it said the first thing he did was look on eBay to see how much he could get for it. When he found out it was $2k he told his mother who said he should try to return it. So, the sort-of honest guy looked through the bag where he inexplicably came up with my name and home phone number. e told him that the camera was owned by one of my traveling mates and he said to call NJ to straighten things out. Unfortunately e forgot to give me the phone number, so we'll have to wait until we get to England to get in touch with the guy.

I am SO ready for bed! Last night I wasn't able to get to sleep until 10 before my 3 o'clock wakeup. When we got up it was the usual hurry up and wait until we finally got airborne just after 9. The flight was relatively uneventful, although it was interesting to see an O-6 have trouble with radio calls and position reports. On active duty an O-6 would have crossed the pond many times, but a reserve O-6 might be a high-time domestic Delta captain who's only flown over once or twice in his life. He did well enough to get us across in less than the predicted 7 hours (the winds get the credit for the shorter time of course).

By the time we landed my little headache from this morning was pounding from having a headset on so long. When we finally got to the hotel 2 hours later I announced that I wouldn't be joining the crew for dinner. I don't even feel like waiting for room service. I think I'll talk to e and then hit the sack!

There wasn't much flying for me today. I made it to bus time after having my £9.50 free breakfast. What's that you say? Well, breakfast is included with the room, so in addition to the £3.50 normal room service fee the hotel tacks on an additional £6 fee for putting your selected breakfast on a tray if you ask them to deliver. I figure since I didn't eat last night that's at least £10 worth of meal I can afford to spend on breakfast.

Since the Colonel wanted to fly again and the aircraft commander still hadn't been in the seat, those two went together while I hung around ops for awhile and went back to the room. Still jet-lagged, I just hung around for the few hours until I had to go right back to the base for the welcome BBQ. I haven't driven a right-hand-drive since 1990 when I was in Japan, so it was interesting to get used to shifting with my left and staying on the other side of the road.

The BBQ was pretty good although almost none of the RAF chaps were able to make it since they were flying. After I got some eats and a few free pints courtesy of the Royal Army I took the early bus back to the hotel. Tomorrow we're the backup crew for the other plane so hopefully we can get released early and go sightseeing.