Visitors

This post should have been made awhile ago...

One of our highlights this month was having Ross and Amber visit us for a few days. We didn't offer them too much excitement, but it was fun to hang out, relax, and laugh with good friends.

They got to take part in family day here for Matt's flight class, so we all got to see him fly. It seems like a lot of the people Matt and I had met when we got down here all happened to be in Matt's class, so we got to hang out with them and their families too that day.

Matt flying in:

Getting out / ready to fuel up:
I got to go up in the air traffic control tower and give Matt permission for take-off over the radio.
Scary -- can you imagine the two of us flying? At least the pilot in command sits on the right :)
Had to get a shot in the aviators...
Ross and Amber were troopers -- they survived two nights of a faulty air mattress and made the mighty trek back to Iowa in one LONG day.... (thanks, guys!)

We've had a few other but not so welcome guests lately too. If any of you were in the suites freshman year at ISU, you may remember some really annoying and unnecessary fire alarms going off intermittently throughout the night over the course of a week or two.... We'd all have to get up, pull our coats on, and make the trip down the stairs, outside, and wait unknowingly until we got the go-ahead to go back to sleep. That's what this week's tornado sirens have reminded me of. There have been a few of them, accompanied by heavy storms / rain. Fortunately nothing has come too close to us, but a tornado did touch down at one of the airfields on post. We've had some broken sleep and I've found myself fairly accustomed to grabbing a comforter, some pillows, the laptop, and heading to the bathroom with the dogs. One morning we had the whole family in the bathtub and our little make-shift bed was surprisingly comfortable. We wait for the "nee-ner-nee-ner" siren as I call it (tone on post to let us know we're clear), and head back to bed. Anyways, unlike Ross & Amber, these visitors have overstayed their welcome!

Spring Break

I live here?

No, but I live about 3 hours from here which blows my mind. I've never gotten to go on one of those "typical" spring break trips to the warm sunny beach. Sure, I've traveled a lot, but never for that spring break get-away down south. Fortunately, my good buddy, Kels, and her family let me tag along with them for a day or so this week in Golf Shores, AL.

The beach was great of course, but one of my hightlights from the trip was one of those things that I think everyone secretly wants to try.

Kels' dad says, "it's kind of like fishing."
So true -- you walk around somewhat discouraged, swinging the detector from side to side without a sound. As soon as you hear that buzz tone though, you're hooked! After two nights of treasure hunting, Kels found a dime which doesn't quite make up the $2.50 they spent on the shovel :)
I found a few bottle caps...

Buzz Snip Chop Dip Bark

Buzz:
Every few weeks I look at Matt and tell him, "Man, your hair sure is getting shaggy." I can usually detect when it's time for a haircut when I start seeing the stragglers that our quickly aging clippers missed from the last go around. A few days later, we finally get around to the actual buzz. It's become quite routine -- sideburns, neck, short 1 on sides, short 4 on top, short 2 to blend, vacuum, done. NOTE -- Step Vacuum may be the most difficult to pull off because it requires either sneaking around when Chaz isn't paying attention or going through a "teaching session" on barking.

Snip:
Many of you know that I'm a bit partial on where I get my hair cut, and haven't strayed away from Cedar Falls / Waterloo even since moving to Alabama. To prolong the inevitable, I decided to snip away at my own bangs this weekend. No pictures for proof, but I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. At this rate, I just may be able to make it until we're back in Iowa in July.

Chop:
Joe & Les introduced us to fondue a couple years ago. Even though it takes quite a bit of prep-work, we don't do it nearly enough. After a lot of chopping yesterday, we had some friends over to give it a try. We tried to narrow it down a bit to

~zucchini
~broccoli
~yellow squash
~chicken
~beef
~pork

Dip:
After all of the chopping and sauce-making, it's pure enjoyment :) We started off with bread dipped in the pesto cheese fondue. we made 3 sauces -- terriyaki, roasted red pepper and sun dried tomato, & cracked black pepper. Our favorite combo by far was the beef in the cracked black pepper.

After the fondue, we watched one of Rob Bell's (a favorite of ours, author of Velvet Elvis and Sex God) Nooma videos. We have a few of them, but would love to have them all some day. You can watch a small segment on Dust (the one we watched last night).

Unfortunately last night, we didn't get to see it (some of you may have), but Matt's dad got inducted into the Iowa Basketball Hall of Fame! We miss out on a lot of fun things not living in Iowa anymore... Fortunately, we do still get visits from family and friends. That brings us to

Bark:
It's a struggle each time "new people" come in and out of the house because Chaz takes awhile to warm up to them. We're glad though that Matt's uncle and aunt, Roger & Joyce, came to visit us today on their way back from Florida. We drove them out to see some Blackhawks and gave them a short tour of post. Next week will bring even more visitors -- we're excited!

Friday Night Entertainment

Kaeda's new favorite game (she's really not that much of a barker most of the time)



In the video, Chaz pretends that he's too good for it, but don't let him fool you. He joins in more often than not.

Kaeda looks like a giant in this picture, but she's still our cute little lap dog when she will stay still enough for it...
We had a fun weekend -- got to relax Friday, meet some neighbors Saturday, and hang out with some friends for lunch today after church.

Did everyone remember to change their clocks? We will have a built-in reminder since they decided to shorten our wedding night two years ago...

"Tail Clear Right..."

"Lane is clear. Tail clear left. Before Take-off check:

RPM -- 100%
Systems -- Check.
Avionics -- As Required.
Crew, passengers, mission equipment -- Check.

We have priority over lanes 2 and 3, we have priority for takeoff. *key radio* 'Taking off lane 1, standard auto.' Clear right and above. Clear left and above."

I must have said all of that a dozen times today, with minor variations depending on the maneuver. Saying all of that isn't very tough though. In fact, I could probably have it all memorized in less than a minute if I didn't already know it. The problem is that while I am saying it, I'm supposed to be flying still. And we're not talking about cruise altitude, cruise airspeed -- no no -- we are talking about hovering, turning, and talking.

Flight school is fairly unique in that it waits for no one. A week ago I took my first flight. I'm pretty sure I would have died or, at a minimum, destroyed the $1.3 million aircraft had it not been for my Instructor Pilot (IP) and his eleven-thousand some flight hours. Before getting on the controls I found myself thinking -- "I drove a stick-shift for years, how hard can this really be?" Ah, how humbling that first day was.

You see, my IP is smart. He also has a sense of self-preservation. That's why when he passed me the controls for the first time, he didn't just update his will and then pass me the controls. No, he passed them to me one at a time to let me get a feel for them. "You have the pedals, I have the cyclic and collective," I remember hearing him say. Then he took them all back, and passed me a different set, and so on down the line. Finally he was ready to practice his 3-foot 30 degree bank angle recovery ability, so he gave them all to me. And I hovered. I hovered beautifully actually. And as the 3rd second ticked off the clock I started thinking that people were talking it up to be too difficult. But before I could finish the thought I was pitching and rolling all over the place, making horrible over corrections constantly. I guess my IP wanted me to see day 2 though because each time I thought we were headed for the deck he would snap it back to a steady 3-foot hover. It was almost as if there was a button on his side that he was pushing....a hover button...

By the end of my first week I would say I found the hover button. I'm not going to try to tell you that I was rock-solid in my hovering ability, but I was functional with the hovering and was doing all of the hover-taxi work myself. My pedal turns are pretty shaky still (I like to yank up on the collective...there's something about turning where I feel like I'm going to hit the ground?), but all in all I am picking it up pretty quickly. Of anything I've ever learned how to do, hovering a helicopter has been the most difficult by far. It was such an information and sensory overload on the body...I can't really describe what it feels like trying to make the proper corrections. I'm now in my second week, and today I got a good chance to practice hovering while talking. It definitely added another dimension to the already difficult task, but I got better as the day went on. I have my solo ride in a week or less, so it's a good thing that I'm picking it up. The solo ride is my first flight without an IP in the helicopter at the other set of controls -- just me and my stick buddy out flying around.

I'm getting paid to fly a helicopter. This will probably be my response for the rest of my life when I'm asked "How was flight school?" I think that being an aviator is the best job in the Army (sorry Ben), but I think that statement above leaves out a big chunk of the story. While I am really glad that I am learning how to fly, I would never call flight school fun. Every day consists of 3-4 hours of academics, 6-7 hours in transportation to or at the flight line, and 2-3 hours of studying and memorization. It doesn't help that flying is extremely stressful. Getting paid to fly sounds like it would be great -- and don't get me wrong, it is -- but it is definitely not enjoyable. You see, the whole time I'm flying I am being critiqued and graded by my IP. There are also about a thousand things to do while flying other than flying. Radio calls to make, safety callouts to make, procedures to follow, fuel checks to do, tons of stuff. Constantly. The whole time. Not to mention the daily oral exams where we have to stand up and recite our memorized limits and emergency procedures in front of the flight commander, all the IPs, and the rest of the students. It all adds up to a very challenging and difficult learning process. Leave it up to the Army to turn something fun like flying into something stressful and difficult.

I do really enjoy the fact that flight school is challenging me. In a lot of ways it's the most challenging thing I've ever done. Weekly tests, daily oral exams, and constant flying improvements to make are pushing me to my limit -- and I love it. So where did I get time to write this blog post you ask? Well, we had a test in academics today and a test at the flight line. Plus our flight commander forgot to give us stuff to memorize for tomorrow....so rather than work ahead like a good student would, I'm pretty much taking the evening off.

It's probably the most overused cliche in the Army, but I can't help but post this picture to describe flight school:

Mini Updates

We're learning that Alabama weather changes quickly. Yesterday there were tornado watches, and today it snowed. It didn't stick, but it was really coming down - that's a first for us since being here.

Matt moved a tree yesterday -- it was blocking one of the roads on post after the wind/rain, and he and another guy moved it aside. I reminded Matt that it wasn't his first time moving a tree -- Ross/Amber, you remember our camping adventure, right? :)

My excitement for the day was finding out that Chaz passed obedience class. I was surprised -- he has consistently been the trouble-maker of the class. He barks / whines nervously, and is the only "student" that gets told to be quiet by our instructor. I'd never been in those shoes before, and it was kind of enlightening. I think deep down teachers kind of like the trouble-makers, right?

Matt and I are reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne as a part of our small group. We've only read the first 3 chapters, but it's pretty good so far -- talks about what it would look like to really love like Jesus. We've been reading it on the way to and from church since it's a half hour drive. Matt also likes to read it before he goes to sleep -- one of the only things that gets him to stop thinking about chapters 5 & 9 from the TH-67 Operator's Supplement. That, and it helps him stop spinning and feeling like he's still flying.

I'm surprised that I haven't learned my EP's (Emergency Procedures) and Limits by now. I quiz Matt a lot, so I'm glad it's sticking for one of us! Friday he told me he found the "hover" button on the helicopter (there is no button -- that's what the pilot's for...). Sounds like he is learning fast and loving it!