Good Movies

Here's a quick post. I decided to list a few movies I've seen recently that might be worth your while.

1. The March of the Penguins. --This one was really cool. I thought I would get made fun of by my friends for renting it...but it was amazing. Good footage and you won't believe how interesting the little dudes are.

2. The Great Raid. --A WWII movie about a raid to rescue U.S. POW's from a Japanese POW camp. Not as good as I'd hoped, but the story is a good one and based on the truth.

3. Prozac Nation. --I didn't think I'd like this one. I rented it b/c there was nothing else that looked good. Kind of weird...but is compelling. You sort of feel depressed after watching it. Christina Ricci seems to be a great actress.

4. The Lords of Dogtown. --A movie about real-life skateboarders in the early days of skating in California. Not alot of substance, but it was pretty cool to learn how it all got started.

5. Girl with a Pearl Earring. --A good movie to watch on a date I guess. It's been around for a while, but I finally saw it a month or two ago. It's about the painter Vermeer and the creation of one of his famous works. On a side note, I'm almost nearly in love with the main actress..Scarlett Johansson.

stress off--weekend on

Small victories are nice. Even though I had been certified as a day flight lead, I still had to accomplish a specific flight at night to become night "blessed." This was the night 4 v 2 Opposed Surface Attack sortie. This is generally the flight that you accomplish on your day cert. ride, but the night specific one poses a few more challenges. I wasn't worried about the flight itself, but since there are so many more contingencies with flying at night I knew it would be more difficult to brief and fly.
Basically, an opposed SAT flight is this: you take off as a 4 ship...you go to a holding or "marshalling" point out of the simulated war zone. You "push" at a specific time so you can make a TOT "time over target" with your weapons in the target area. On the way in the red air (at least 2 other f-16's acting as the enemy jets) press in your direction and you have to react by shooting them w/missiles, etc. This part can be very tricky since you have to weigh going to merges and "mixing it up" versus continuing to the target and getting your bombs off. After you defeat the air threat you continue to the target and drop your bombs--which could be a variety of different weapons depending on what the flight lead weaponeered and what the target type was. Oh, I forgot to mention that as you cross into enemy territory there are multiple SAMS (surface to air missiles) that can take shots at you. We simulate this and execute threat reactions to defeat the missiles.
Once you are off target the objective is to get out of the threat area and back to good guy land. Now, the Red air adversaries prosecute you again as you attempt to leave. The goal is to get home, so you kill the air threat and leave.
At night, this is all a bit more difficult. You're flying with Night Vision Goggles and flying tactics and formations may be altered by the flight lead. Weather and adverse NVG conditions can sometimes make it very difficult to see where everybody in the formation is. Sometimes somebody in your formation will go "blind" (losing the visual on their element mate) and this can take alot of time to get back together and may alter your attack tactics.
Well, I didn't want to bore you. I'm just glad that flight is over and now I can fly for a while without being evaluated constantly. I have today off. So my stress level dropped back to normal levels---and I'm going to enjoy this one.
I'm also enjoying the fact that my friend "Artie" aka, Alex is just starting the FLUG at his base in Japan. Now I just get to sit back and tell him stories about how I was the big clown at certain points in the FLUG. This will just stress him out more since he knows he'll be putting on his own big red shoes and big red nose too....
Pilots always say that when you screw up you are a "clown."
Artie, my only advice to you: "BANZAI!!"

For Chris Roark

These pics were taken especially for my bro, Chris Roark. The man loves cheese...and the man loves meat. So here's what I captured in the little Italian town of Cividale Del Friuli on a Sunday afternoon. A sweet little town dating back to over 30 B.C. with a cool river and awesome sights...but most importantly, a little grub stand that would meet the approval of one Chris Roark. Fried meat and cheese....with a little polenta thrown in to boot. Nice.

No big events

This week at work was mediocre. We're about to move into a new building---which is actually pretty nice...however, we aren't getting a day off of work to "move in" to the new building. Even though we have contractors moving the big stuff, we still have to do all the little things required to set up our individual shops to be operational. This means spending next friday (a USAFE down day) going to work and getting things ready. Our squadron commander has been really good about the whole deal--and he's not the one screwing us out of a day of work...but it's something we have to do.

Other that that, I really don't have any big news to report. I didn't do anything this weekend. Which was nice. Our squadron is starting a band...which is cool. I'm gonna play guitar..and it's been a while since I've picked up an electric. It was great to get in there and really jam out. We've got a couple of good musicians that know alot of the current rock songs and are able to teach me alot of the good tunes. It should be fun playing for the squadron and any other crowd that wants to hear us. Not sure when we'll find time to practice, but whatever. We don't have a name yet....but expect it to be non politically correct in true fighter pilot fashion.

Well, that's about it for now.
See ya.
Ed

Battered but Alive

Recovering from the year 2005. Today I'm on leave before I start back to work tomorrow. I really don't feel the least bit caught up from everything that has happened in the last several months. Pretty much, my life has been a shambles outside of work because a)I was busy at work and I placed the priority on doing a decent job and b) when I had a free chance I was taking advantage of the travel opportunities in an attempt to blow off steam. However, I really wasn't able to do the little things that make normal life necessary: grocery shopping, laundry, personal hygiene (just kidding.) Really, it's been sort of tough but I asked for it.
I hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Year's. I really wanted to make it back to the states for Christmas--but since I had to work to finish my upgrade at work, it really wasn't possible. This bit me in the end, since my Grandmother died and I hadn't already "pre-positioned" myself in the states. Let me tell you, trying to get a last minute flight out of Europe in the holidays for the next day is almost impossible. I guess that goes to show why you should be really wealthy and own a private jet.
I wanted to thank everybody for the emails, cards, etc. that you guys sent me. It's weird spending your second Christmas away from home. Not too bad--just weird.

Here's the breakdown of my most recent journey:
Left Aviano on the Friday before Christmas early in the morning. There were 3 of us that would be joined later by some other folks from base. We pushed north to a town near the Italian border in Austria. Neustift--aka, Stubital ski area. We snowboarded for 2 solid days there and had a Christmas dinner in the little town at a pretty nice restaurant. A cool family from Australia gave us a good dinner conversation. I nearly paralyzed myself attempting a 360 on my snowboard off of a pretty steep jump. Caught on video. I was able to wiggle my toes and I knew I was still mobile, so I continued boarding. My back still kills me. Possible life-long injury and I will forever hate myself for it.
We met up with my two more pilots and one of their girlfriends and pressed to where the snow was even better: Switzerland. We drove to an area known as Davos. We crossed a mountain pass that was ridiculously high and NO attempt was made to clear it by snow trucks/salters. I didn't like this at all--but luckily my SUV has 4wd and we made it. My mom would have collapsed from terror in this situation. Davos was cool--some real world-class skiing. I snowboarded one day and then broke out my skis to hit some cool runs.
Now the story gets interesting. Trigger and I left Davos early in the morning after 2 nights and headed to Milan airport. We were able to get some cheap tickets on RyanAir to Scotland. Final destination: Edinburgh--site of Europe's largest New Year's Eve Festival. We flew into Glasgow--(nice city...a bit rough at night...so be careful if you go.) Once we got into Edinburgh we checked into our hotel. Actually, it was a hostel. I really would classify it as a mix between a campground, brothel, crack-house and prisoner-of-war camp. It was ridiculously terrible. I just went into survival mode a this point and hearkened back to my days at Air Force Survival School. Our fault, of course, since we didn't make an attempt to book good rooms well in advance. Anyway, Edinburgh is an awesome city. Great castle, people and sights. I really enjoyed it. By this point in the trip, I had no clean clothes and probably looked like some sort of soccer hooligan. However, we did our best to clean up and see the sights: 2 art museums (free), the castle, and I got the best personal tour of a nearby bay/seaside town--which was my favorite part of the entire trip, hands down. I got to see a neat little sailing club and walked down the cobblestone streets of the old village. Really cool.
Overall, Scotland was great--we met awesome people and learned a good bit.

The pictures above: one of a performance by a bluegrass/scottish infusion band during the festival and one of the sun setting at the seaside at the sailing club.