This week so far...

Well, I'm still sick a bit. It would've helped if I had remembered my jacket when I was called for an ELT in Petaluma. I mean it, I wasn't responding to a page, THEY CALLED ME DIRECTLY, isn't that neat? Here's what happened...

I'm on the crapper (YES, I WAS TAKING A SHIT, OK!). I plug my phone into the charger I brought in with me. I figure I'll read text messages and what not, maybe get the news, etc, from my phone. SO, I see I just missed a numeric page from an Incident Commander in Southern Cali. that I've worked with a few times. I then get an alpha page that says, "Michael, please contact me ASAP." I figure I ticked him off about something and he needs to talk to me. So I call the Major, and he says, "You're near Petaluma, right?" I get all warm and fuzzy because I know there's a mission now (it wasn't the shit), and I got called personally instead of the standard procedure in California, which is a page being sent out to everyone from SF to the northern and eastern borders of the state (about 1/3rd of the state roughly).

This means we're making an impact and are being noticed. This guy runs all of California's Ground Operations programs for CAP. If I want to get more funding for my ground ops, this is the kind of person to make a friend out of. After putting together 2 teams, I set out for our base in Novato. We had one team member in Petaluma that could get a strong signal from that area, and we couldn't get anything in Novato, so we headed to Petaluma to do a ramp check of all planes/hangars. We DF'ed the signal to the SAME PLACE Greg and I found an ELT at Jan. 12th, 2004. I swear I want to beat that mechanic's ass for getting me out of my house, getting me rained on, just to DF a signal that was activated by someone IN THE COCKPIT... the switch was flipped to the ON position, instead of ARMED or OFF. dickhead...

Anyway, we shut it down, but I was soaked by the end of the night. I had forgotten my jacket at home and on the runway I was drenched when the sky opened up on us. You can only hide under wings for so long. So, that's find #6, 3 for 2004(matching my total for 9 months of 2003 of 3), and our squadron's 3rd mission in 1 month. Not a bad start to 2004. However it should be noted that I got sick that night and missed another day of work and school.