So... its been about a month since my last post? Already I am slacking. Its been 4 weeks now that I have been living out of my lovely room at the La Quinta hotel outside of Brooks City base. Our last official day of our AMP course was last Friday, and now we have 2 more weeks of SERE training (survival/evasion stuff). The course was pretty good, mostly classroom and workshop stuff the first week, then the 2nd week was the physiology week. Monday we did the altitude chamber, all the way to 35K feet which doesn't feel to good even with a tight fitting aviators mask and pressure breathing, and then found out my hypoxia symptoms mimmick me on my 4th or 5th drink of the night. The rest of the week we were doing parachute landing exercise, spacial disorientation in a SIM, and oh yes, the mighty centrifuge. I did everything i could the night before and morning of to get my BP up (very salty meal, pseudophed, lots of caffeine), but couldn't quite fight the forces on my first try. Since I am stationed at a fighter base, I had to do the toughest profile, including up of 9 G's for 15 secs, and this series at the end of the profile going from 9-4-3-8-3-7-3-9. I held the 9 G's for about 10 secs and then started freaking out because my vision was... well everything was black. I didn't G-LOC (pass out) but I thought i was going to. After I got out of that crazy thing I had the worst back pain ever. The oc had to examine me, because I guess there have been some cases where guys have even fractured a vertebrae from this. I was okay, just hurting. Lots of "g-measles" too (petechiae in dependent areas from all the stress). Since I still had to qualify before I can fly in the jet, they gave me another shot the next week and this time I passed. Still lost some vision, but the thought of having to do this again was enough to motivate me to squeeze and strain like I never had before.
The last 2 weeks were more lectures and workshops, and the last week we finally got to go up in the air. We all got a sortie on one of the trainers (we flew at Randolf and Laughlin, training bases) so the choices were T-1, T-6, T-38, T-43. (the fast jets are the T-38 (trainer for the F-15 and 16's) and the T-6. I got the T-6, which was pretty damn cool. The pilot let me fly a little, did some loops, rolls and pulled some G's.
On the social side, I've met some great people out here. We've hit up some of the hot spots on the river walk and lots of good places to eat. I'm trying to get my share of Mexican food when I'm down here since the selection in Korea is quite limited. I somehow managed to win a Happy Hour party for me and 100 of my closest friends (do i have 100 friends?) at this dueling piano bar called Howl at the Moon, which is awesome. I decided to invite the whole class out this Friday since some people who have already done SERE graduated, and it was a great opportunity to celebrate. About 20-30 people ended up coming out, and we all had such a great time.
We have this whole labor day weekend off, so just spending most of it relaxing and catching up on other things.
Like I said about SERE starts Tuesday, the first week will be some classroom and practical stuff, and then the next Monday we are drug out to the woods somewhere, dropped off, and then picked back up on Friday. I hear they give us a potato and a power bar... for the week... so it should be interesting!
This is all for now, enjoy the pics!
Our night out at Howl at the Moon, me and Tommy B taking control of the floor!
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Birthday Dinner for Mike
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