Category: Air Force

Tales from the Inside: Week 7

In the fifth week of basic there was something called BEAST week. It was the Basic Expeditionary Airmen Skills Training course. I did not go. At the time the doctors though I had stress fractures in my tibias. An MRI showed that I did not. I simply had the worst inflammation/shin splints that the doc had ever seen. I gently reminded him that my feet were flatter than a level surface. Unfortunately I did not get these results until the middle of BEAST (I didn’t go and was staying with a sixth week flight at the time). Fortunately all I really missed was an excessive amount of time in the sweltering heat in MOPP 4.

Thankfully this time I was able to participate in the field training. Double thankfully no MOPP gear was involved.

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Tales from the Inside: Week 6

Sometimes a week will come to an end and I’ll try to remember what I did that week and I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast 15 minutes earlier. And that’s just in average every day life. In a training environment like this that effect is amplified. This was definitely one of those weeks.

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Tales from the Inside: Week 5

Week five started off with another long weekend. That’s probably been the most disconcerting part of training here: we get weekends and holidays ‘off’. We’re still here, we’re not allowed to really go anywhere, but no one is making us do anything. So Monday was a day off. Can’t say I did much, which was nice.

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Tales from the Inside: Week 4

My mother will always remember our family trip to Arizona in ’96 for, among various other reasons, my reaction when we first walked out of the airport and I saw for the first time in my life a saguaro cactus.

“They are real…” my 13 year old mind exclaimed.

Of course I had seen them in cartoons, TV shows, pictures in books, but that was the first time I had ever seen one. That was only minutes into our trip, yet to this day she has said that single remark made the entire trip worth it. Continue reading “Tales from the Inside: Week 4”

Tales from the Inside: Week 0/1

For those that don’t know I am currently attending the Air Force Total Force Officer Training course on my way to becoming a Second Lieutenant. This was originally an email sent to a handfull of people who I felt might be intereted in my activities.  Why is this such a big deal you ask? Well asside from the obvious, and baring any catastrophic dismemberments, it will mark the culmination of a journey I began 17 years ago when I first arrieved at WPI.

So without any further delay I present for your reading enjoyment Tales From the Inside: The Jounrey’s End

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Recovery

As much as I love traveling, there’s no question that it can wear you out. Especially when you’re packed so tight into a C130 that a commercial coach seat feels like more room than you know what to do with. Add to that the fact that you were traveling for nigh on 20 hours and even without a time change there’s some not insignificant turboprop lag.

The hardest part is just keeping yourself going knowing that, while it would be so easy to just lay down and close your eyes, it’ll just make it that much harder. So you get up, you walk around, you drink a glass of water.

It’s not quite tired. It’s not quite fatigue. It’s that haze where you know there are things you need to do, but you’re just not going to do them. It’ll be okay, there’s always tomorrow. And if that ever starts to bother you don’t worry, tomorrow there will still be tomorrow.

But still you push, and you get a thing or two done.

And then you reward yourself.

With tacos.