the clueless american

We're pretty bad about keeping our various websites up to date, but you know how that goes. I realized the other day that we haven't posted a picture on our main site since December 2005. I usually have a lot to say on this blog in my head and then very little when I actually open a new post, so I thought I'd start randomly sharing some pictures from time to time.

Anyway, this is from October 2006. MJ went down the slide once and really seemed to enjoy it, so the second time e took his picture. The picture looks great, but what you don't see is that Mama wasn't in a position to catch him so he landed on his feet and promptly face-planted in the dirt at full speed. Needless to say he was a little upset, but we finally got the dirt out of his mouth (and hair and...). As MJ would say, yaaaay Daddy! Yaaay Mama!

Edit, 12 December: e thought this was incomplete without a close-up. Make sure you click on the picture to see the fear in his little eyes!

Let me tell you something, you want to hear a pin drop in an airport? Just yell out "Breach!" near the metal detectors and see what happens. I had just gone through security when that happened, and in about 10 seconds the place was so quiet you could hear the scared heartbeats of the people around you.

After a few seconds of silence, a TSA employee walked out and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. You have just participated in a security drill. Have a great day."

Unfortunately, the TSA had just unnecessarily confiscated my tiny vials of Refresh Tears® because the employees at the X-ray machine weren't familiar with TSA's rules, so I couldn't go on to have a great day. I did have a pretty good one, though. The worst thing that happened after security was that my laptop battery went from 94% and 2 hours, 42 minutes to 3% and 0 hours, 5 minutes in just over an hour, which means I got to see only 2/3 of The Usual Suspects. I spent the rest of the flight listening to my jukebox while I alternately snoozed and worked on the crossword puzzle.

Even with the notorious Winter headwinds, we got in to ABQ 45 minutes early. It took about an hour to get my bags and the rental car, and then another hour to get to the base (which is connected to the airport but of course you have to go around the outside to get to the gate) and get checked in to billeting. I was dreading having to lug my laptop to the lobby every day for the internet, but it turns out I can just barely get a connection in my room. Yay!

I was really in the mood for Anthony's Pizza at the BX, but I walked in at 1557 and all the restaurants were shutting down. I saw the schedule which listed a 1700 closing time on Sundays but then someone pointed out a new sign that they had all decided to close at 1600 today. It was just my luck that the base has a McDonald's right across from the BX. I'm starting to get a cold and really didn't want to drive around town looking for food, so I got a burger and headed back to the room to finish TUS and chat with e before she fell asleep on me.

Well, after less than 2 weeks it's time for another change in the blog's look. This after e told me my site was looking a little gay. I said, you mean, like this:

and she said, "yeah, just like that." So now the new style is hopefully a little more manly, like the sheets I used to have when I was single where one visitor's first comment was, "guy sheets." Like I'd have the sheets that lil guy up there would sleep in!

It's funny how things work sometimes. The day after I gave e the go-ahead to give away our old Sony DVP-330 DVD player, I get this email from sonystyle.com informing me that they are on the verge of settling a class action lawsuit against them. It's funny because I basically tolerated the bad unit the whole time I had it. At first I didn't know any better because DVD players were relatively new, and then later on it didn't fail enough to warrant replacing it, that is until about 2 weeks ago. We replaced it, gave it away, and then got it right back so we could copy down the serial number for the upcoming (March 2007) settlement.

In case you're wondering, I downloaded the proposed claim form, and it seems that Sony will either reimburse actual expenses (up to a point, no doubt) for repairing the unit or provide a $40 certificate to buy Sony stuff if you replaced the bad unit before December 2003. I first thought I was hosed because we kept our bad player until a few days ago, but then I realized we bought a DVD player in 2002. It's a portable, but we definitely used it when the Sony wouldn't play a disc, so as far as I'm concerned that was my replacement for the malfunctioning unit. We'll see how it goes when March 7 rolls around.

Click here to see if your crappy Sony DVD qualifies.

Well, I'm off to a good start on another fun trip with the C-130. It started out Thursday night at 11:30 when I got the call saying we were leaving ASAP Friday morning instead of Saturday.

On Friday morning when I got to work the Air Force was already calling asking why we didn't take off at 10. This is the kind of small stuff I sweat: there is no way a crew can legally even be in the building less than 12 hours after the phone call comes in, so asking them to be airborne in 10.5 hours without any kind of waiver is ridiculous. Add this to the fact that there was someone else from the Air Force calling to say they weren't sure who we were or where we were going. Typical fun.

We finally found out where they wanted us to fly and got airborne towards San Antonio. On the way in, Houston Center called us and said we didn't have permission to land at our destination so where did we want to go? A few quick phone patches later the destination realized their part in the game and agreed we certainly did have permission.

When we got there, we found that our passengers were prepared for this supposedly high-priority mission by not being ready to go. We called them when we landed and the pilot kept saying things like "Yes, we're here. Right on the ramp. In San Antonio. Yes, we're here...." That didn't bode well for loading up and going like we'd planned. Thanks to the passengers' sense of promptness we left 2 hours and 40 minutes after we landed instead of the 45-60 minutes we'd been hoping for.

The 5-hour flight to California was fairly uneventful until the end. As we descended into the airport the pilot noticed the oxygen low level light come on. I was flying from the right seat, so that means my hand and the yoke were between my eyes and both the light and the LOX gage. We quickly found that one of the regulators in the back was turned on emergency, probably by a passenger who accidentally flipped the switch.

After landing we tried to get some help on the way for the LOX problem, but first we had to convince the Air Force that we actually were on a high priority mission and they needed to get us some help fast. During this time the FBO was showing its appreciation for the amount of money we were about to spend on fuel by doing nothing. They figured I was kidding when I asked for a power cart, so 45 minutes later when we got tired of hearing the APU and shut it down, we found out we were alone on the ramp. We had to drag our bags into the building and then ask if they'd be so kind as to help us find a way to the hotel. 8 hours earlier when I no doubt was talking to the previous shift, there was no problem shuttling us to the hotel. Now it was a problem that we had so many people and their cars are so small and they want to go home, etc. etc. We finally convinced them to at least call a cab for us.

Thankfully the hotel was very close, and we got in the rooms at midnight eastern time, only 12 hours after our initial takeoff. I'm definitely getting too old for this. I looked in the mirror and my eyes are bright red. I guess I'm off to bed to rest up for tomorrow night's return trip.

Well this trip is turning out to be loads of fun. After checking out of the hotel at 3 and getting to the airport by about 3:45, we started planning for the flight back to San Antonio with the medical team still over 3 hours away.

The pilot had the great idea of shortening the day by flying closer to the medical team instead of waiting for them to drive back to us. He looked around and found that they were 10 minutes away from Moffett Field near San Francisco and directed us to start planning for that.

This is where things got interesting. The pilot, while well known and somewhat important in AFRC, doesn't have a lot of experience with active duty missions--at least it seems that way. So far throughout the trip he's refused to deal with the active duty command who actually controls us; instead he only deals with AFRC command and tells them to report what he says to the Air Force. The reality is that we're on an Air Force mission and should deal with them exclusively.

Anyhow, this led to the pilot asking the wrong set of people to recut the mission down to Moffett. Some of these wrong people disapproved of the change despite the pilot's repeated assertions that as a reservist he didn't need to listen to the active duty controller. The pilot then started using his AFRC connections to get a reserve general involved. In the end AFRC cut us a training mission to Moffett so that we could continue on the Air Force mission to San Antonio. I'm not positive, but I think a lot of the friction wouldn't have been necessary if we'd been talking to the right folks from the beginning.

Just to kind of poke us in the eye for causing so much trouble, the airplane decided not to work for us. On startup the ignition relay on the #4 engine failed, causing us to shut down and replace it (luckily we had one). Then after re-starting normally we taxiied out for takeoff and on the runway noticed very low power on #4. We wound up taking it back to parking to troubleshoot for an hour, but nothing the crew chiefs could see fixed it. We had to give up for the night because no light carts were available and it was hard to see the engine. The plan is to go back to the hotel and look at it tomorrow in the daylight.

So, 9 hours after checking out I'm back in the same room tonight. The friendly front desk staff gave me a coupon for free internet, but naturally it says it already expired. I guess they base their expirations on Eastern time where it actually is tomorrow, but I got the $9.95 internet anyway. It's not like I wouldn't get it.