Combat Day
Warning: For those of you who hate to hear stories involving ROTC, you might want to ignore this post.
Talk about busy, I had either a test or a quiz in almost every class this week. I'm pretty sure i did well on all of them. Flying has been going well, but man is it hard. You have no idea how much work there is to do, especially when you are in clouds or a condition where you can only use instruments. Yesterday we worked on holds. Ever been up in a plane in the clouds and have had to wait for a clearance to land because of weather? Yup, that's what we were doing. Just making big rectangular circles in the sky over a given point on the ground.
In other news, my brother got his mission call. He is going to the Terreon, Mexico mission, and leaves on February 11th. He was so nervous he was going to go to Salt Lake like me. Lucky kid is going to know spanish. That will come in very handy out here.
When most people think of the Air Force, they think only of airplanes. In fact, only about 2-6% of the Air Force actually flys. You wouldn't think that they would would have ground forces, but they do. The Air Force has special operations groups, combat troops, and special forces groups. Today, we did training for that sort of stuff, and it was way fun.
The detachment all dressed in out battle dress uniforms (Camo) and met up at Rock Canyon Park at the base of the mountains. Once there, we divided into two different groups, the aggressors and non aggressors. We all put on masks and were given air soft rifles that are the same size and weight as M16's. For the next hour or so, we worked on ground movement tactics, holding positions, laying cover, and all sorts of stuff that helped us try and reach the objective of the scenario. We did very well at it. My uniform is completely dirty from crawling around in the dirt. The terrain was desert, but with some trees, ridges and ravines. I'm happy to report that i was one of the last men standing when everything was over. It was a one shot and you are dead game, so we lost quite a lot of members in our squadron. In fact, i was the only member of my fire team (about 4 people) who survived. During the entire exercise, we were evaluated on how well we led, and dealt with certain situations.
Well, i already sent in my absentee ballot. In my mind, i was voting 1st for a commander in chief, 2nd, a president. It's hard to think any differently when i know that the next president will make the decision as to whether or not I go into action. I will not mention his name, but if you know the two men running well enough, i'm sure you can figure it out. regardless of who you support, YOU ALL BETTER DAMN WELL VOTE! There are people out there dying so you can have that right....use it!
Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. Everyone keeps asking me about Christmas. I'll tell you all what i've told you before.... I may or may not be home. If i'm there, it will only be for a couple days, since i will be driving with my family to Iowa to be with family. Yeah that's right, i'm flying across the country only to drive back halfway. Makes zero sense, except it would be the only way i could see people on Rochester.