Weekend stuff...

Well, lets start with Friday. Tessi came over. I felt bad, I couldn't drag myself away from work until LATE, got home about 9pm. It probably didn't help things much, seeing as my bonus is all but in the shitter. I don't think I'll be getting a $100K month, so my bonus that I've always gotten, is GONE as far as I'm concerned. So much for putting in the OT and getting a return from it. This time I don't get SHIT for a return. Fuck. So much for my plans...

Well, anyway, it was nice to see Tessi. She's a sweetie, and I hope she comes over more often. I made mudslides, they were YUMMY. We went to bed around midnight. That was STILL too late for me... I was SO sleepy Saturday morning.

Saturday, time to go to work... Off to the airfield (30 minutes late), and I find that we're fogged in and play off my lateness as, "I was here, just not at the plane, because the clouds were too low... Yeah, thats it..." Anyway, we take off at about 8:30am, and at 8:45 I have the controls with a 4 person crew in my plane. I was a little freaked by that. I mean, the group commander, and 2 CFI's watching my every move on a trip to Ukiah from Petaluma. AND, Jon let ME land the C-206. WOW, and I got a 7 out of 10 for my landing too =) Not bad since even mission pilots with hundreds of hours have trouble with 1/2 loaded 206's, let alone my FULLY loaded C-206 and the pressure of having NEVER landed one of those before on my own!

We get our assignments, get our flight suits on, and fuel and man our plane. Just Jon and myself assigned "high bird" duty. So, instead of flying at 800 feet above the ground, we're flying at 11,000 feet, and thats fucking HIGH! It's funny, we were call sign "High Bird", and our flight # was 420... funny huh?? lol =) Well, we start to have some problems as time goes on, namely hypoxia.

When you become hypoxic, you're not getting enough oxygen at high altitude. After 3.5 hours at 11,000 feet, we were sleepy, yawning, and turning BLUE/PURPLE. We thankfully were relieved after keeping track of 17 aircraft, and 2 ground teams on this rescue mission. We never found the lost airplane, but we were complimented by EVERYONE that we were controlling, and even by the ground base. I had control of the plane, and Jon kept on top of communications. He did a GREAT job. I wasn't bad either! I mean, I kept a perfect LOS from base, around the mountain, and over to the search grids. I think they might put us in for an award we did so well, who knows? It's not that important, afterall. I mean we didn't find the missing plane. After 4 hours we were RTB and 30 minutes later, we were on the ground. NICE!

After lunch made us feel SICK, we went up on mission #2, flying at 5,500 feet on a contour search of the mountains in a search grid. I had the plane from take off (and a GOOD take off at that) to the point that we were forced to RTB. We both got sick and I lost lunch out the window. YUCK. Disgusting. We had to abort. I gave Jon the plane, and he made the call for RTB and we landed in 15 minutes. I cleaned the outside of the plane, and Jon ended up getting the shits! Maybe I was lucky that I got rid of my lunch, versus keeping it down and having the shits like Jon.

After a brief flight with Jeff (a Marin Sheriff's SAR pilot that's also a member of my Squadron) to Santa Rosa, drop off Jon, and a last leg of flight from there to Petaluma where my truck was, the day was OVER. Exhausting day, 6 hours flying, couple hours standby/eating/cleaning/brief and debriefing... Nice to be HOME, enjoy a Corona and my 2 favorite people in the world.

Sunday was good too. I had never seen nipple rings up close, and I mean from like, 5 feet away, but I have now! Pretty nice fringe benefit to a day out of the house in great weather with your best friend. Stace and I went to Pacifica to get some of her things from her parents house. Stace's friends roommate loves Metallica! SO, we had good music in the background, too.

Jessie didn't want to leave the house, or so she said the night before. It turns out she wanted to go out, but didn't come up with any ideas until AFTER I made plans. Does anyone think that not communicating such things are my fault, or the fault of the person that didn't say anything? Better yet, how about NOBODY'S FAULT, just bad timing for her thinking of something AFTER I make plans to do something else. All I know is I hate getting TEN text messages during an afternoon out. Thats annoying no matter WHO they come from. I'll be home when I'm ready to come home. 3 TM's thats ok, 5 is excessive, trying to have an argument via TM's is retarded, and 10 TM's is just annoying! 1 Message to say hello, drive safe. 1 to ask if I got there ok, and 1 to ask when I'm going to be home. 3 messages spaced over 8 hours is ok in my eyes. I HAD 3 JUST FROM WHEN WE LEFT PACIFICA.

After a day down south we grabbed McDonald's, headed home, and to bed soon after. BUSY weekend, but fun. I missed Jess a lot. I was hoping to see her more yesterday, but she wasn't up to going out and seeing Stacey's sister. She's not our favorite person, but I didn't let it keep me from enjoying my day.

That's it, that's my weekend. Tessi visit, 6 hours flight time, 5.2 hours logged, hypoxia, vomit, beer, friends, driving, meet new people, see pierced nips, listen to Metallica, get stuff moved back to Rohnert Park. Busy enough for you? It was for me.