In the Air Wing, we work two shifts on the boat: 0700-1900 and 1900-0700. I was originally day crew, but with Cpl W back in CONUS with his brother, I'm doing swing crew to cover some of his responsibilites in addition to my own. So I work 1000-2200. Which is kind of nice, because that fits my natural sleep schedule quite well.

Today I showed up at 0945 as usual, then was back in berthing by 1015 packing a day pack.

You see, we left two helicopters back at our base in Futemna while they underwent phase maintenance, which is easier to complete in our home hanger with an overhead crane that doesn't swing around with every wave. Right now the ship is still doing the "Oki 500", cruising around Okinawa in circles while we get the new elements of the MEU up to speed. So a stay-behind group is a doable proposition.

Anyway, one of the birds back there was done with phase and ready to start its functional check flights, and it needed the explosives installed that jettison it's exernal fuel tanks. We hadn't left anyone behind that had the required qualifications to install explosives, so an ordnace guy and myself were tasked with going back onshore to do the work.

It was too late to get us assigned on a regular Passenger, Mail, & Cargo run, so we kind of snuck aboard one of our helos that was also doing functional check flights, and it ran us out to Futenma and dropped us off, then took off to continue testing. If it's test was going poorly, we might have to stay overnight, thus the overnight bags. Ahh, to sleep in my comfortable barracks room, and go offbase and feast on sushi... far be it for me to wish ill upon an aircraft I was a passenger on, but if it was stuck overnight I'd be a happy camper.

Such was not to be. We did the ten-minute job to install the explosives on the one bird, then sat around for a few hours waiting on our ride to finish testing. It came back good, so the two of us helped load a huge pile of spare parts on it, then loaded up with about three other unofficial passengers. I'm not saying we don't have way to much paperwork of our own; but we Marines are all about mission accomplishment, and if we think the Navy is being an impediment, we'll find a way to go around them.

An hour before we launched back to the boat, I called Anthony's Pizza and got a pair of large pies delivered to the hangar.* They were still warm when I got on the boat, making me the hero of the shop. When we had just a few slices left, we were summoned to a training in the ready room (on the Naval Aviation Maintenance Discrepency Reporting Program, if anyone's curious. I got every question right, to no one's surprise, since I'm really good at reading painfully opaque texts and remembering the details.) We brought along the last few pizza slices to torment everyone else with. Ahh, the games you play on the boat!

* When my OIC heard me refer to a pair of a pizzas as "some pies", he cursed me out as a New Englander. A palpable hit!

Posted by: Boviate at 07:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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