"Ensign Swiggart, Call OPS immediately, you just won a free trip"

One of the many things that often grips a Student Naval Aviator with pure fear has nothing to do with aerobatics, the emergency landing pattern or even the 4000 foot per minute descent rate found in a spin. It is the missed call from "Phone Watch," the Officer of the Deck or basically any unknown number with the area code and same first three digits shared by all numbers on base.

The reason that a mere missed call brings such apprehension to our collective hearts is that we have 45 minutes to return the call, no matter what. Not only that but usually... almost always, the nature of the call is to give us the news that we are a) on duty the next day b) have been randomly given a watch c) been re-scheduled for something, usually adding an event with little advanced warning, similar to what happened to me the first day I got back or d) like what happened on Thursday afternoon and be given 16 hours notice that one is being sent 630 miles away to Las Cruces, New Mexico for up to a month.

I had returned from another weather cancelled flight, which I was pretty bummed about because unlike the two prior (the ones right after my 12-day weather cancelled mini-vacation) I was actually really confident in everything I had to know and looking forward to a great flight. I got back to my apartment and crashed on the couch watching who knows what on while eating whatever food was left in my apartment (cheese and crackers followed by an open-face peanut butter sandwich and nutella and crackers for desert)... which coincidentally was exactly all that was left. After my lunch/snack I remembered with mild concern that it'd been an hour since I'd checked my phone. So I pulled it out of my backpack (I never keep it in my flight suit, lest I forget to take it out and end up having it go off on me mid-flight) and glanced at the screen to see that I had 4 ...FOUR (FOUR!!!) missed calls from the base.

I decided to check the messages before I blindly called the number back (from a movie I like: "if you're about to walk into a $#%&-storm, it helps to know which way the wind is blowing." or something like that). I only got as far as the first message which was the title of this entry minus the part about the free trip... just call immediately. I looked at the time of the call and saw that I was only a half-hour behind so I called and got a secretary who knew exactly who I was (bad sign) and put me through to a LT.

However, the news was pretty good and I didn't get in trouble for missing any of the calls. He then told me that I was on the list for going on the Detachment to Las Cruces I could take 35lbs with me and be ready to meet at 0700 in the morning.

So I got my things together, filled my car with gas, covered it, paid February's rent, packed and had a few drinks with some friends and the next morning my roommate drove me to the base at 6:30am and I met with about 4 other kids in the TC-12 (cargo plane trainer... please dear lord, don't let me fly one of those) hangar. At about 0800 the pilots showed up, we threw some gear and some T-34C parts into the back of the plane and took off for sunny Las Cruces, NM

Here is a picture of some of the nothingness that we flew over on my 3-hour flight out there:





We landed and even though I was a few hundred miles south, the country reminded me of the hiking trip I took to NM when I was a sophomore in high school. However, it was much more barren and obviously in the desert... In fact I felt like I was in a Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote cartoon more than anything else.

I'm all settled in a La Quinta chain hotel room, my roommate is a Marine and most of my friends are already out here, in fact we all went out to dinner at a Pizzaria Uno last night.
By the way... having travelled around a bit, it's really strange how homogenous some parts of our culture are, the Pizzaria Uno, from the inside, could have been found anywhere in the U.S. I find that sad, mainly because I'm thousands of miles from Connecticut, 630 miles from my apartment and in a place that should have a unique culture of its own due to the starkly beautiful mountains surrounding this town and the fact that I'm 30 miles from Mexico. However, the malls, the fast food joints and the strip mall-shopping plazas, whatever, that make up this quiet little town are such that could be found anywhere.

Anyways, I brief for my first flight at 1400 (2pm) and because all the flight rules are different, it's time to study. I'm pretty excited because I'm supposed to fly with a guy who loves to do aerobatics, and that the course rules have us flying between mountains at times.... sorry no pictures are allowed.