Recharge

Well, it's been a little more than a week since my last post, but it certainly has not been uneventful. I was reminded last week why I volunteered to come out here again.

As you know from my (few) previous posts, this trip has not been as busy as the last for me. In my first 1 1/2 months out here I flew a grand total of 2 medevacs, neither of which were tremendously exciting. It was causing the time to drag by excruciatingly slowly and making me wonder what the great appeal of this mission was for me two years ago. That all changed in one night.

I was just finishing up for the day and about to go to bed when we got the call: An Iraqi Policeman had been critically injured and needed to be taken to a higher-level of care urgently. My co-pilot grabbed his gear and ran out to get the aircraft started while I waited for the rest of the information on the patient. I finished checking my NVGs (night-vision goggles - see this outstanding video explaining their functionality: http://www.hulu.com/watch/10361/saturday-night-live-george-bush-cold-open-2) and ran out to the aircraft. We flew over to the hospital pad, loaded the patient and an attendant and headed out into the open desert. This was the rush I've been missing for two years! I wish I could describe it. I've felt it before on Guam, when we rescued a guy one night that had had a bit too much liquid encouragement and decided to go for a little swim, but my chances are so much better out here. It makes me a little sad to be leaving Guam and the squadron that has given me the opportunities I've had. Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited to go back to Florida and teach new guys which way is up in a helo, but I'm going to miss the SAR/Medevac missions. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing on this planet that compares. It's why I chose to fly helicopters. Hopefully I'll find myself back in a SAR bird at some point.

Besides the medevac I've done quite a bit of flying this week, mostly passenger transfers from point A to point B. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't fun. I find myself up there constantly looking around and saying "Is this real? Do they actually pay me to do this?" Not that there isn't a downside. While I've had some of the best experiences of my life in the MH-60S, it's a fair statement to make that I've also had some experiences that I don't ever want to repeat. The kind that, even years later, make me occasionally wake up in the middle of the night just to stop the replay in my head. Opposition in all things, right? I'll also sometimes start feeling picked on because of the other less glamorous (read: "fun") portions of my job, like when I get stuck for weeks trying to finalize one report or another, but then something like that medevac pops up and suddenly the other stuff is a lot more tolerable.