I am just making this up... we don't do this.

Back here to water the plants

If "Every Marine is a rifleman first!" then, "Every Airman is a power point briefer first!"

I just spent the last few weeks at some predeployment training for Afghanistan. The first half was some sort of torture... it was a week of see above.



Luckily, the last week and a half were more like this! There was also some incredibly tits driving! It was probably the most useful non-flying training related training I have ever had.

Yesterday I got to fly a very well known pilot around. This guy has been flying longer than anyone else yet alive...

Some pics...

I pretty much don't come to Montana except to bring in my mail, water my plants, and play guess what's that in the fridge. So for lack of anything interesting to say, I'll just put up some pictures.



A few volcanoes...

Seattle and most of Elliot Bay.



I was in my parent's garage the day I left. I found this clock on a shelf under some old pictures. It was the clock my grand mother had in her living room for the entire time I knew her. The pendulum in the bottom makes a significant ticking sound and every 15 minutes it chimes out the standard melody for 15 past, 30 past, 45 past and the full hour tune... with clanging for each hour of the day. I have always been a fan of this clock but of course was never aloud to touch it. After about three hours of fiddling with it I got it fully working and up on the wall of the room I used to live in at my folk's house. The clock is now filling the whole upstairs of my parents house ticking and bonging! My dad figures he will wake up in the middle of the night thinking he is still in high school and living at home... I have a feeling that the pendulum on that clock was stopped before the flight attendant gave her shpeal on seat belts and exits.

I took a few other pictures but not many... as it turns out I kept my camera in my pocket most of this trip. I have a picture of a bridge in the rain, some dead pheasants, and a blurry picture of my mother as I was trying to fight fire with fire by taking her picture while she tried to take pictures of me.

I took my mistriss on a trip to Las Vegas.

The reason I put it that way is because my name is painted on aircraft 11, yet I never take her anywhere. She is to heavy, always broken, and in general a party pooper... now 72! That chick is aways up for a road trip! I feel like we had a real connection on the trip to Tucson and you know... one thing leads to another... 11 is layed up right now in a million pieces anyways, so I went to the Phased Maintenance Hanger and told her I would be away on a business trip for a month. After reassuring her that I would miss her cute electrical shorts in the instrument lights and her unique control shake i told her i was going to Cleveland and probably wouldn't get the chance to call. Then it was off to Vegas in 72, "the other woman!"

(To any girls reading this... THAT WAS ALL MADE UP!... well, my name really is on 11 and I do feel weird that I never get to fly her... but the above paragraph is totally a joke and bears no relation to any previous interaction of mine with women or anyway i would behave in the future.)

*Also... most of the pictures are more impressive if you expand them to full size.*

ok... maybe not this one, but at least we are off!


Either there was a gigantic bug way the fuck up hear, or mustard condiment packets are self-aware and have a space program. Both are impressive... and neither was fun to look at for the rest of the day.


The Bonneville Salt Flats. Pretty much exactly how you would expect them. They are a lot easier to get to than I would have guessed. Actually they are right off the highway a few hours west of Salt Lake City.


This is where we spent our first night. It is effectively an abandoned WWII airfield. As we were getting closer the flight engineer said. "man, this looks a lot like the movie "Con-Air."" I said, "naa... half the air fields in the west look like this. it is just another dilapidated airfield..."


Son of a bitch... he was right! The plane is still here... abandoned. The inside was stripped and placed on a bus chassy. You drive it with a big steering wheel. It never actually flew in the movie. This airfield has actually been in quite a few movies. It was Area-51 in Independence day, as well as a bunch of others... the old guy in the fuel truck told me, but I forgot.


As it turns out this nearly abandoned airfield was where they did the training for dropping the first nuclear bombs. The whole place is being reclaimed by the desert, but there is a little display with a replica of Little Boy with a bunch of signatures on it...

It seems that the most impressive scenes that you want to show people can never be captured well on camera. Or maybe I just can't do it to my own satisfaction. Just imagine this picture as if it was incredibly awesome.


68-10772 is a bitch again. Transmission troubles force us down in the middle of the bomb range. We made a fire, played like damsels in distress, and waited to be rescued. 72 does this a lot to me...


So we hear that the pool parties at the Venetian are "off the hook." So we go there. The idea seemed to be that we pay them $20 to be on the other side of a curtain that was exactly like the side we were on only the other side was cooler because we payed $20 to be there. There were no honeys of floozies on either side. (The 60 Deg F and the 20 knot wind may have been a factor... but it seemed like pool weather to us from Montana.) Either way we had a drink at the bar instead of going in. Those are $8 beers we have in front of us... Looks like they got our money anyways. Vegas wins this round! "Eddie" is checking on some MILFs and "Snowday" is watching a sparrow eat his almond.

A helicopter tour of the strip is way cheaper if you bring your own helicopter... actually everything in Vegas is cheaper if you bring your own... the booze, the women... in fact, you are probably better off with what you have where you are. Don't go to Vegas with it, that would be pointless!


Because of the darkness the camera had a hard time taking clean pictures... but it still pretty much looks just like this even with out the shaking. We walked around down there quite bit. Hours and hours actually. I swear there are Mario Brothers style warp pipes down there. You will walk into one casino, then after a half hour trying to find the door back out, you will emerge from an entirely different casino half a mile away and on the other side of the street. Lots of walking... As far as I can tell, Casinos are built like lobster-traps. There is a huge obvious way in, but there seems to be absolutely no way out.


The reason this picture is in here is because of the conversation I had wile taking it:
Ogre: Hey, why are you guys sitting out here on the curb?
Notorious: They evacuated us, they found a suspicious package in at the front desk. They wont let anyone inside.
Ogre: That's no good. I need to get inside. I lost that big briefcase I had with all the mission paperwork... I need to go look for it...
(don't worry, his briefcase was found...)

We went out for Halloween. I taped some garbage bags together in the shape of a big condom and went as a gigantic dick. Just before we went home I sold my costume to this drunk British guy for $15... It didn't fit him very well... and he tore it putting it on. I still kept his money even though i sold him a condom that broke. I guess it wasn't a costume at all...

The most visually insane award goes to the Montigo Bay Casino in Wendover, NV. Absolutely everything in here is either glowing or reflective! Even the carpet!

THE PETTING ZOO!

There is a place at Nellis AFB called the petting zoo. It is basically a huge yard with a bunch of captured foreign equipment. The theory behind it is if you are more familiar with your enemy's equipment, you will better be able to defeat it. Whether that is true or not, it is a hell of an interesting place to play around. Sort of junkyard combined with museum.

Shitload of captured armor.

Holy Fuck! I am in a HIND... I never thought I would ever sit in one of these!!!


Russian labels with notes pasted over them. This may be a preview of the next year of my life.


"Snowday" getting familiar with an SA-7... sort of like playing with your nightmares...


I can't add to this picture with a caption.

Nellis Air Force Base gets full points for awesomeness. The Bomb Range also equally pimp. Las Vegas itself... Well, I'll just put it this way, you should never stay there long enough to do your laundry 3 times.

I am back

OK I have shitloads of insane stories from basicly a month in Las Vegas... and the trip down and back...

I landed in time mesured in hours ago comeing back. Two of my friends just got back from Iraq for a year... There may have been some beers drank tonight.

Stories will follow.

-Nick

Business Trip

I will be out of contact for a wile as I have some official stuff to do down in Vegas. I will most likely be reveiwing some documents... etc.

Keep your wardrobes free from female influence!

I suppose there may be some trade offs...

Just some pictures before the snows come.

Montana is seeming particularly picturesk to me now that I will be leaving soon. These are all from the last week.







Snow creeping it's way out of the front range of the Rockies...


This is just a gratuitus picture of gauges and toggle switches. Eventually I hope my car looks like this on the inside!

Switches Bitches!

If I had written the lyrics for "The Sound of Music" it would have went like this: "Gray toggle switches and blue satin sashes..." Indeed, the only things cooler than toggle switches are guarded toggle switches. This seems to be a trend. Also, this was a wile ago, she will even do this on good tires now! (Ladies, feel free to be impressed.)

They always are.

The alternate caption was, "How I may have lost some of my security deposit."

Apparently I have a very restful mind.

This next picture is quite blasphemous given the nature and sacredness of the men's restroom, but the information prior to the pic explains how something like this could happen. I am sure that after going in there a few times, most men would have a favorite urinal to stand in front of. The picture and caption were sent in my astute blog reader Sam.

"Edge Designs is an all-women run company that designs interior office
space. They had a recent opportunity to do an office project in NYC.


The client allowed the women of this company a free hand in all design
aspects. The client was a company that was also run by all women
execs.............


The result.........well.....We all know that men never talk, never look at
each other....and never laugh much in the restroom.... The men's room is a
serious and quiet place.......But now...with the addition of one mural on
the wall......lets just say the men's restroom is a place of laughter and
smiles..."

I have a growing interested in the Mi-17...

This guy took my idea exactly for what to do with some small jet engines... I will have to build one of these soon. It has to be the best way fly possible. Sort of an ultralight jet!

THE MI-17


She aint a looker...



...but I am pretty sure she knows how to get kinky!



The top two are Afghan, the bottom one is Polish.

This looks like a good idea!

The engine is available for delivery, call today for more details.

This has so much potential it is insane! Look at the size of it! I could put two of them in a back pack... then.... (maniacal laughter)

The party gods sometimes have a divine task.

And sometimes that task is to build a party ark.

A guy in my building just graduated from collage. He decided to celebrate by getting a keg and having a party on the roof of the building. (It is always a good idea to mix beer and four story buildings!) I was hoping for impressive results. Unfortunately old man winter had other plans. The Temperature dropped into the thirties... and if you have ever met girls... they stop having fun standing around on roofs at 48 Deg F... You can see the problem. Well, I was standing around talking and I noticed that fewer and fewer people were out on the roof. "Where is everyone going?" I asked myself.

!I found them! There ended up being over 40 people in my apartment at one time during the night. (Some of you know how truly impressive this is!)


Damn... the bathroom is popular. (Check out the excellent guy to girl ratio!)


This is probably why everyone was in here...


A table-less beer pong game even developed in the hallway. There was mopping the next day... (Only one guy in the whole building owns a mop!)


Eventually I just went to bed around 2:30am... From what I hear, most people were gone around 4:30am.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
IN OTHER NEWS

The Fiat caught a case of Entropy. (As it turns out, I was able to decrease the entropy with wire cutters and heat.)



Also... Yes... I know... I don't need any more texts or phone calls... or notes on my windshield... I got it... "Fuck Off!"

Fiat cleans up!

By far, one of my best race days ever. I cleaned the clocks of several mustangs and a GTO, but I definitely had the track on my side. There was hardly a straight 40 yards in the whole thing... The big heavy cars were cramped by their own weight and horsepower.


The bonus of the day, two practically free, barely used tires! I think if I put a sheet over them they might be considered an end table... The best thing about having extra tires around the house is that now I can abuse the shit out of the ones I have on there and still have back-ups! I smell a lot of burning rubber in the near future.



This pic is for Amateur-Sophist, You see the bracket off the tube... it now pushes the tube into the engine block and seems to have stopped the leak. I think I am finally ready to wash the engine compartment, though that might just provoke another leak to start, she might take it as if I was getting to complacent.