Saturday, February 14, 2009

10 Things I Learned This Week

I had the pleasure (?) of participating in a mobility exercise this past week which consisted of trying to operate aircraft in a fictitious location while getting attacked in various and sundry ways. It was educational for me in many ways, ways I'd like to share with you right now:

1. You can drink coffee all day. I figure Rick knows this already, but it was news to me.

2. MREs, which stands for "Meals Ready to Eat," have come a long, long way. I had a Veggie Burger in tomato sauce on Thursday that was not half bad. I'm not real sure what vegetable is square, brown, and tastes like a hamburger, though.

3. Coffee left cooking at the bottom of the pot will keep you extra awake when you drink it.

4. When it's cold outside and you go pee in a porta john, the steam that comes up is pee, too.

5. Wearing chemical protection suits for 3 hours is no, I repeat no, fun.

6. You get used to body odor after 3 days and become blissfully unaware. Others, however, still remain painfully aware.

7. No one should have to get up at 4 a.m...ever.

8. It's possible to be so tired that you can't get to sleep, though it may have something to do with drinking coffee at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

9. 9-year-old boys think these mobility exercises are the coolest thing in the world. My youngest boy asked me if I got to carry a weapon. I told him that the next time I was going to requisition a grenade launcher and carry it like Arnold did in Terminator 2.

10. A burger king Angry Whopper has got it all over a Veggie Burger (and with only 800 more calories!).

4 comments:

Chuck said...

Ah, memories of mobility exercises. When I was on Okinawa, we would drive over to the heavy side of the base. Get up to a C-130, load our bags, get onboard...and then find out if we were actually going somewhere.

After that first experience, I always made sure my mobility bag was packed correctly.

I agree with you on the chemical suits. I remember being assigned to hard broke. ANY jet that was not FMC was towed to us to work on. We got hit for chemical attack during an engine swap. That was definitely not fun.

I remember once, during an simulated air raid, to Eagles streaking low over our positions: it is still one of the most impressive displays of power that I saw.

Fun times (and...btw...various ground equipment makes MRE heat up really nice. Do they still put in the mini tabasco bottle? I use to collect those for Cindy.)

Rick said...

#1 - yes, I knew this. And am surprised you did not.

#3 - correction: "Coffee left cooking at the bottom of the pot will keep you extra awake when you CHEW it."

But you survived, which I believe was mostly the point. Good job, sir.

Martha said...

Did you ever make Ranger Cookies with the MRE? Jim made one of those for me one time. Talk about strong. We took an MRE to a white elephant gift swap one year at Christmas and it was a big hit!

Todd R. Vick said...

#4) Steaming pee? You really do learn something new every day.