Yet another marker in time.
One of the things I absolutely enjoy in life is the sharing of a passion. Flight. Today I took up 5 people who had never been in a blackhawk before. 4 privates (one of them a friend) and 2 LTs. It was a little night unaided flight around the trace of Seoul. Slightly hazy... well ok, rather hazy... starting in twilight and gradually turning to night as the city lights grew in intensity. Seoul, a rather pretty city at night. PAX were up on headset on 12 pt ICS. Smiles all around. Passing the north side of the trace several were nodding off. Returning back down the east side and dropping them off at K-16 before resuming our flight under NVGs for another 2.5 hours. Offloaded them on the left side of the helicopter and escorted them to flight ops. You could tell they had been touched. Smiles on all of their faces. I love sharing what we normally take for granted, flight, and seeing, even in an army blackhawk, how it touches people. The other day a group of ordinance people wanted to do a reenlistment in the back of our helicopter. Again, all of them had great fun. Was a fun flight too, taking them around the trace twice. Every time we'd turn or climb or descend they'd go nuts thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Magoo was right. Flying makes everything better. We really shouldn't take it for granted. It's magic and we perform it every day.