Scary Moments

Before I get into the meat of this post, I just want to exclaim happily that I can, in fact, post pictures! The little "add image" icon is present and accounted for on my "new post" screen. That's exciting.

Tonight I had to plug the rotor blade tie-downs into the rotor blades... This is not usually a big deal at all; it involves standing on the tail section of the helicopter (which stands about 15' or so off the ground) and reaching up to plug a little adapter into the blade. Tonight the ship was booking through the water at perhaps 18 mph or so, it was starting to rain, and the boat was rocking a few degrees in each direction. It was a little on the uncomfortable side, although it could have been much worse.

After I climbed down from the tail, I started to reflect on the scariest moments I've lived through. I'm not really afraid of much... I don't like pain too well, and I have this irrational fear of the river grass in the Ichetucknee (see the pictures in my Ichetucknee post for a look at the terrifying stuff I'm talking about), but heights and bridges and all that other normal stuff don't really faze me.

It was interesting to think on the moments that have really sort of made my blood run cold...

When I was a little kid, my brother woke up one morning and couldn't walk. That was pretty scary. It turned out that his lymph nodes were swollen from a plethora of mosquito bites on his legs. Still scary, though.

When I was in high school, my dad threatened to throw me out of the house. I was mostly really really angry, but I was pretty scared, too. I didn't get thrown out.

Just after 9/11, I gave blood and came up positive for this pretty intense disease that there was virtually no chance of me having, but this woman from the Florida health department told me not to worry, it could be a false positive for other things, like lupus. I was a little perturbed, to say the least. There wasn't actually anything wrong with me. To this day I think my bag o' blood got mixed up with someone else's. Good stuff.

In boot camp, I had to be qualified in water survival. The last stage of qualification was rescuing drowning victims. This huge guy pulled me under the water and I freaked out. I had to try again, and I freaked out a second, and then a third time. I ended up getting through it, but I think this experience ranks at number two in my scary moments list.

On December 11, 2006, I was flying to a little base in Iraq, and the other aircraft in my section had a hard landing. I had to look at the thing for a few seconds to understand what I was seeing: a CH-53 on its side. The moment I realized what had happened and I made the decision to run like hell over to that plane is the single scariest moment of my life. I know it probably doesn't compare to the moments experienced by the aircrew on that plane, but running over there and not knowing whether my friends--guys I had helped to train--were alive or dead, is not something I ever want to have to do again.

Plugging blade ropes in so-so weather doesn't really compare.

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I guess everyone who reads this thing and noticed the update was expecting something like, "So we're officially deployed now..." It's true. We pulled out of San Diego yesterday at 11:00am, and are steaming our way to our first port. So I'm looking forward to hanging out with Gunny Del Rio for a couple of days, and being on land. We're supposed to hit 9' swells tonight, and I don't think that's anywhere near the worst it could be, but it will definitely be the worst up to this point.

The water is so, so blue. And I keep getting tricked by the shadows of clouds on the horizon that look like land. I know we're somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and there's no land for miles, but I still keep getting tricked.

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Thanks to Becca and Michael for letting me hang out at their place for my last night, and for letting me use their kitchen, and for hosting my little send-off party... Thanks to Mali and Corey (I hope I spelled that right) for coming by to say hello--and goodbye... And thanks to Molly for hanging out with us, even though you were exhausted. You guys rock, and I had a great time.