Aparently the cosmos come together and bestowed increadable weekends on everyone!
So two entries ago I envied a guy who was making his way by himself all the way to LA from the border of Canada and Montana. I think I am just about cured for a wile after my own cross country endevours.
I assigned myself a Personel Extraction mission. The intent of this mission was to go to Detroit by the fastest and most flexable means available. Find and assertain the health and well-being of objective personel and extricate them to Montana. If the situation dictates that this is not possible, facilitat their self-extraction as much as possible. As always, engage any targets of opportunity along your route of flight... and be back by tuesday.
Mission Sucsess Rate: Undetermined as of yet. Some objectives achieved, some failed, some still waiting for the new Sat photos. Mission has moved into the self-extraction phase.
I know it is a little cliche, but I am going to use the 0-10 scale for rating the many random events of the last six days.
Droping in on your parents in the middle of the week unexpected: 9
Your parents not getting home till 11:30 because they don't know you are there: 7
(I was happy to see that they don't always go to bed at 8:15 every night.)
Quasi low level ingress to the detroit area in questionable weather: 8.5
(the 8.5 is based on excitment not on ease or fun)
Detroit's weather in general: 1
Greek guys with connections: 9.5
A keg with good beer in it (Blue Moon): 8.5
Talking to girls who are not so gunshy from being hit on all the time so that they can still be nice to talk to: 9
Boobie owners playing with other boobie owners boobies: 9
(on the dance floor)
Greenfield Village and Henery Ford Meuseam: 10
Tom Hanks movie "The Terminal": 10.2
Detroit Radio stations: 9
50 knot headwind from Chicago on: 2
South Dakota Weather: 0.5
De-iceing a plane by yourself with a paper towel: 1
Dead Batteries because of South Dakota Weather: 1
Figureing out how to "Hand Prop" a modern airplane: 10
(this is what you see in the movies where a guy stands in front of an airplane and one guy yells "Contact!" and the other guy zings the propeller around. When the engine starts he hopefully jumps out of the way of the next blade of the propeller.)
Having a farmer with no fingers hold the "contact" switch while I zinged the prop around: 8
(Though quite ominous, it worked and I have all my digits... Don't worry, I was thinking about safty, I had tied the plane to the ground when I thought I was going to have to do it by myself... though I should have told him how to pull the trottle back to idle after the start. The farmer just jumped away from the plane. It was a good reaction on his part... glad I tied the thing to the ground though!)
Overall, excellent ways to spend 6 days.
7 comments:
targets of opportunity, indeed. but in the end, aren't they all targets of opportunity?
Oh yeah- looks like we missed this while you were here.
Also, watch out for this sit. you wouldn't want the man knowing all your stories from this weekend.
Well... To be honest, every post I write I consider the security implications of it. There is a lot of stuff that I don't write about because it could be combined with other open sorces for some very useful intelegence. I try to write things that would act more as a deterant!
High marks, Notorious. Fingers crossed for self-extraction. Hand Prop, in itself, seems like it was worth the trip.
Sam
Yes... Fingers crossed!
The hand proping was definatly a moment I will never forget. There really is nothing like standing several inches from a 6 foot propeller as it goes instantly from benign useless curvy metal to a whirling 180 horse face removing ginsu!
I was secretly hoping that you'd fulfill your primary objective, as it was complete madness. I applaud your continued ability to survive things that would have killed most people. What happened to that farmers fingers?
I was hoping for the primary objective also... Things still may work out.
As for the farmer's fingers, I don't know. Our conversation was quite brief. I can only assume that it wasn't from hand proping airplanes or I would have expected more of a warning from him. He looked completely shocked when it started. While I was leaning in the window to pull the throttle back myself, the prop blast was litterally blowing my clothes off! After I got it to idle, I picked up my clothes from the fence they had stuck in, shook the farmers hand and admited to him that that was my first jump start of an airplane. He told me he really hadn't known what to expect either. I then said thanks, untied the plane and rolled off down the runway.
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