Moving Right Along

Seven days after arriving in Hood River I’m now on my return flight to Nashville, TN where I’ll get my car and drive back to Saint Louis, MO. My reason for going to Hood River was to successfully complete my training and demonstrate to an evaluator that I am capable of operating our UAV. Now that that’s done the job really starts.

Through the course of this training I’ve encountered a lot of stressful situations and many more rewarding experiences. I’ve taken more tests in the past month than I took though any given college class. I’ve been challeged by instructors to correct inflight emergencies during our simulations and challenged by mother nature to make sound judgements during actual flights. I’ve been vaccinated for all sorts of illnesses and have more lined up. The experience has not only given me job skills but it has also given me the opportunity to meet some very cool people.

People from Washington, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, Georgia, Indiana, Arizona and Hawaii. The majority of them have already seen the war first hand and experienced things that we’re all fortunate enough not to have to experience. One of my friends said that you don’t really know someone until you’ve had a beer with them. If that’s the case, I know a lot of people very well now. We’ve spent entire days together, working from dawn to dusk and then dinner. We’ve driven hours just to find a decent place to eat. I know I say how lucky I am a lot, to have met these people and I’ll continue to say it. The people made this great.

Last night we went out and celebrated our success over dinner and drinks. It was great to sit around and talk about whatever, as long as it didn’t involve work. Afterwards I said good bye to everyone, knowing that I may not see them again. That’s the most difficult part of meeting new people in this environment, saying what could turn out to be the last good bye.

So here I am, in the plane looking down at the patchwork farms, breathing recycled air ;-) shooting back towards the midwest. School is over, now lets start the next chapter.

Hood River, OR

Hood River, OR is a small town about an hour east of Portland. The town has a huge windsurfing community and caters to skiers looking to get up to Mt. Hood, which is always within clear view from the town. Additionally, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens are both within site and the Columbia River separates Hood River and Bingen on the Washington side.

The landscape here is absolutely beautiful. Nearly the entire drive down I-84 runs parallel with the river as it snakes through the Columbia River Gorge. The nearer hills extend out, transitioning into the mountains in the distance. There are waterfalls nearly every few miles and the aspen trees shoot straight out of the ground into the sky, which has been blue nearly the whole time I've been here.

The people are all very laid back and extremely active. I was out driving yesterday morning and saw dozens of bikers, runners and walkers. Groups of cyclists riding passed families with strollers. I haven't seen so many people taking part in so much physical activity in a long time.

To cater to all the outside activity there are dozens of stores that sell outdoor gear. The 5 block downtown has at least 3 bike shops, and 4 outdoor gear stores. It's like I've died and gone to heaven. As long as I make it back from the sand alive I may try to get a job here, so lets just call it a little bit of heaven on earth.

Firsts and Lasts

Life’s experiences are started with firsts and ended with lasts. The first day of college and the last day, the first relationship and that most important last one. Everything in between seems to flow together like water. Days passing in between that first and that last without even a second thought about their importance.

For me the first of anything is a time of excitement peppered with a little fear. It’s the unknown that’s invokes most of the the two emotions. Of course my most recent experience was with my trip down to Savannah, TN.

I wasn’t sure about moving, even temporarily, to a small town in central TN. The drive down was a mixture of fear and curiosity. I think I’ve compared it to college in an earlier post. That first day when you’re not quite sure what to expect but you’re eager to find out. That’s how it was. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Savannah, but I was ready and willing to go down there and experience something that I hadn’t experienced. Although the fear wasn’t overwhelming, it was there nonetheless.

As the days flowed, life went right along. I became more comfortable with my surroundings and the people who occupied it. I was actually growing to enjoy the place that I was so skeptical of at first. Sadly though, to bring back a nerdy quote from the last episode of StarTrek: TNG, “All good things must come to an end.”

I never would have imagined that I would actually have the desire to stay but sure enough I did. It was the people, those very people that I thought would be horribly unaccpeting of an outsider, that made the experience what it was. That first day was a mixture of excitement and fear and the last drive out was a mixture of sadness and some remembrance.

Trying to pull together all the good memories and the good experiences. Wishing to stop time and live them over and over again. The people I’d met and befriended and those that I met and only knew for a brief moment. It was as overwhelming as that first day, the first time I drove down.

I always wish we could have a playlist of life, like a playlist of songs, that I can put on replay. All the great experiences of my life on infinite loop. Of course I’d get tired of them eventually, but then I’d put the playlist on pause and go off and download new experiences.

Since I can’t do that, I’m now off for another first. On the plane to Hood River, OR, I realize that the first and last is important but no more so than those days inbetween that we often forget and at the end finally try to remember.

One Step Away

This has been a big week for my training. I passed my 6th sim run on Monday at 7AM after having a delayed flight to Nashville from STL then having to drive 2.5 hours to Savannah from there. I got back to the apartment around 12:30, then woke up and went in. I was a bit short with the instructor when he was hammering me with questions but it was probably more funny than anything. Needless to say, I was relieved after I finished and passed.

The following day we had a written exam for which the only option was to pass. I was hitting the books pretty hard throughout Monday night since I was a bit unnerved by the thought of failing a written exam and then getting the boot from the program. Fortunately all the questions on the exam were the questions we were quizzing each other with prior to starting. When I started to get rolling through the questions the weight quickly lifted. When I found out that I had passed I immediately began preparing for the next obstacle, my FAA Private Pilots Knowledge Exam.

I had been looking over the materials for this exam for sometime up this point. However, I hadn't thrown myself completely into it until after my Tuesday written exam though. This one was a bit worriesome too because you only get 2 chances and then you have to wait a month to retake it. On top of the FAA exam, I also had my 7th simulation today.

It was the same as 6 but there is less and less hand holding. Well I rocked the hell out of SIM7... There's an emergency procedure called a GPS failure where the aircraft loses its ability to know where its at. So the operator needs to cross reference the real-time video with the satellite imagery on the map and fly the bird home. It took me about 5 minutes to cover 30 nautical miles... I felt pretty good about myself... But of course after this I still had the FAA exam to bring me back down to earth.

The FAA exam is pretty much an exercise in memorization. There is a pool of 4000 questions from which 61 are taken. So as long as you memorize all 4000 you're good, but if you don't you only need to score a 70% to pass anyway. Most of the people around here took the week long class, I had 1 night of full out self study. The exam took me 25 minutes out of the 2.5 hours you're allowed. My score was 87%... I knew I was going to pass, but I thought it would be more of a problem than that.

So now there is one more step before we go up to Bingen, WA, SIM8. There is no instructor assistance, which I guess I haven't needed for a while and any comments are usually more irratating than anything. But it's still the last simulation we get here before flying the real thing. One thing I need to remember is that this is just training, the real thing starts when I step off the plane in the sand. That's when the fun really starts, this is just the preparty.

Visiting Home

I just got to my house in Saint Louis from the airport and for some reason it doesn't really feel like home. I was worried at first that coming home would be difficult because I've really started to feel at home in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. I'm very bad with change and it takes me a while to become accustom to something but on the flip side it's difficult for me to unadjust after I've already adjusted.

I'm not sure how to describe this feeling. When I travelled through Europe and came home after 2 weeks I was ecstatic. After 2 weeks in South Korea the only thing I wanted was to come home. Now that I think about it, most of the extented travels I've had I've wanted nothing else but to come home.

The difference here is that I prepared my mind for the worst. The worst being that I wouldn't see my house for the remainder of the year. Plus having someone else living in my house while I'm gone is difficult to imagine. I've lived a lone for nearly 2 years now and having someone else here kind of freaks me out.

I probably just need to get some sleep and when I wake up tomorrow morning the birds will be chirping and the sun shining. But right now I'm feeling a bit sad to be here and want to go back to Savannah.