Surprise! You're briefing NOW!!

Ok, so, last night when I got the schedule off ATIS, I was not even on there. So it was going to be a nice relaxing (and short!) day. We didn't have to report until 1430 either, so I slept in really late until about 1045-ish (I did NOT want to get out of bed today). Then, while I was in the bathroom getting ready I heard my phone 'message' alarm go off twice in about 4 minutes. Then a minute later Ryan banged on my door and said "Hey, you're flying a low level and your briefing starts now!"

To which I responded, "Are you serious?!?"
"Yeah I'm serious, they just called me!"

So I then quickly finished shaving and brushing my teeth, and then listened to the 2 messages while I got dressed and then called back one of them to let them know I was on my way. As I was finishing tying my boots Zach got to the house and announced that he was here to pick me up and provide door-to-door delivery in his car to save me the walk from the parking lot! So I had enough time to grab us each a soda and get a granola bar for myself as we ran out the door (that was only thing I ate all day until 1815 when I got home and had 15 mintues to eat before heading out for church). I got to the flight room and Bryan was finishing up the Form-70 for my flight and I had under 5 minutes to get a data card ready as well as review the entire hour-long low level route! Then I briefed it up with my Cpt Dixon and we went out the door! Thankfully this was my first of 2 so he demo-ed the first 3 legs of the route for me, and then I flew the rest. This was a great ride, too! We spent the whole thing only 1000' off the ground and navigated solely based on timing and our maps. The terrain we were flying over was really cool, and it was awesome seeing everything going by at 210 knots only 1000' up! It was an awesome ride, and praise the Lord it actually went pretty well!

But wait, my fun morning was not over yet! We got back and debriefed just in time for me to make it to formal brief (and the crowd goes wild...yay...), and guess who got stood up for the EP today after literally only 5 minutes between events? Yup, yours truly! Thankfully, this one actually went really well, and I handled the emergency correctly and was complimented at the completion of the event. It was no where near perfect, of course, but it went really well. Then I spent most of the rest of the afternoon talking with the guy who I'll be flying my cross country with this weekend. We came up with a few ideas and I called and checked them out this afternoon. So we're meeting tomorrow again to try to finalize the plans as much as possible. We were planning on Chicago initially, but then when I called they said they'd have no ramp room left, so we had to completely revamp our plans. We'll see where we actually end up going, the plans tend to constantly change up to the last minute. Either way it should be a fun weekend of flying! I'll get 5 Navigation sorties out of the way in just 3 days and will see some interesting areas of the country in the process.

Tonight I was able to make it church for the first time in a while (on a Wednesday, that is), which was a real blessing. Though, I did have to go in my flight suit. Can't say I minded too much, though, you know what they say: girls like a man in uniform! ;) Then this evening Ryan and I hit the gym for well over an hour of weights and elliptical work.

I also made my first omelettes tonight! I always have a ton of eggs as I can only find them in 12-packs and don't use them that much, so I figured that would be a great way to eat them. I made one for both Ryan and myself, and they turned out pretty well. I put pepperjack cheese and bannana peppers in mine, and then put hot salsa on top and it was actually pretty good for a first attempt!

Tomorrow I fly a day-night out and back. Bryan is heading down to Meridian at about the same time, so I think I'll meet up down there with him so the 4 of us can go grab dinner together before our night sortie back to Columbus. This should be a pretty fun ride too. It's VFR on the way there, and then IFR (of course) at night on the way back to shoot at least 3 approaches at Columbus.

The next day is then the beginning of our cross country through late afternoon Sunday. To top it all off I should be finishing my last 3 instrument events and then getting my instrument check by about midweek of next week. So things are going to get BUSY! I'm pretty confident about my instrument check. The Lord's really blessed me with some good instructors for the block and I've learned a lot of great techniques and have had a pretty good handle on things for a while now. Pretty much I just need to make sure I don't make that one dumb mistake that would cause an unsat. Besides that, I just need to bone up on my instrument 'general knowledge' and, Lord willing, I should do just fine. After that, I'll be able to focus on just finishing up the formation block, which I'm currently the farthest along in out of the whole flight. I'd love it if they got me through pretty quickly and I could possibly start looking at some T-1 stuff to give me a leg up on phase III. Oh well, we'll see how that works out.

DQ-out