It's culling time

I think it's overdue to cull a few sports from the Winter Olympics and replace them with much more awesome ones.

First on my list, and the rest of the world's I'm sure, except for maybe Canada: Curling. It's people shoving rocks down a lane while two glorified janitors do their best for all the public facilities scouts in the stands with the tens of other fans. It's frozen lawn bowling. I'm sorry, but if I can play the sport absolutely shit-faced, it probably shouldn't be in the Olympics.

What is should be replaced with: Expand the ice of the curling rink at least 200 yards. Replace the guy who "delivers" the stone with a mortar. The team now becomes weapon crew. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you crew-served curling. Two teams play, 5 "stones" per round, best of 3 rounds wins. Ok, maybe 5 to make it more interesting. There, I've just saved the world thousands of hours of tedious "delivering", and what has taken 12 days in the Olympics (seriously, from the 16th to the 28th) will take maybe 3 with a new level of awesomeness. (explosives are optional.)

Curling: now awesome.

Second: Men's figure skating. Because it's just so damned gay. The fruity costumes, the effeminate men, the fact that gays-on-ice is a sport, etc. Homosexual men would call this gay. Well, maybe not the flamers, but enough otherwise. Seriously, it's a competition to see who can out-gay who.

So very, very gay.

What is should be replaced with: Give Shaun White a set of ice skates, some serious rocket boosters, and maybe a ramp or two. Whatever he comes up with is the replacement.


Third: Woman's figure skating. It's old and worn out, like the Miss USA Pageant.

What it should be replaced with: Naked woman's figure skating. No, scratch that, woman's naked lesbian figure skating. Butch figure skaters would be banned, of course.

This - clothing = awseome. This - clothing, times 2 = record viewership.

(note: I plagiarized these pics from various sources. I'm lazy like that.)

Ha

Occasionally we get a psych patient, and early this morning we had a lively one.

Usually I don't go into the sending facility with the crew to get patients, but it was cold as crap, and I didn't feel like freezing my ass off for an hour. So, in the ambulance I went, and into the ER, where I made my way past a res dog who decided they belonged in the ER, and I met our patient.

At least the dog was well behaved.

I don't really spend any time with the psych patients, as they usually are walk-on's (they walk themselves up, we don't have to load them). As they're walking on, I'm generally buckling my shoulder straps and getting ready to start. So to see one up and walking was interesting, but no where near as interesting as listening to him.

He was brought in after being found wandering a res town, pants-less, and talking on cell phone. Except that he didn't have a cell phone, but oddly enough he did have a hands free piece and a USB phone charger in his pocket.

While we were prepping to leave, he started to wander around looking for his wife. Come to find out he actually was married, but his wife was not there. However, everytime we would start to walk out, he would say, "Look, there's my wife, right there, she's coming!" But there was no one there. Dude was seriously hallucinating.

The rest of the flight to Las Cruces was without incident, but of course since we only take psych patients into LRU, I'm always going to associate that place with crazies.

Maybe next time we get a psych patient I'll go in with the crew just to see what brand of crazy we're transporting that day.

Good Weekend

Been a good weekend.

Stacey came down on Friday night with the kids. It was nice to spend some time with them, watch movies on the couch, etc. Now it'll only be a few days till I see them again instead of the week and a half it would've been if they hadn't made the trip.

Things have been a bit busy, but not too bad, averaging a flight a night. I'm hoping I get the chance to get to Albuquerque again soon so I can hit up Frontier for dinner.

I'll be in Chinle till Wednesday, then on to Kayenta for a week. I have the last 5 days of the month off and plan to do some bbq'ing. I'm reaaally hoping I don't have to dig out the bbq, but if I do it's all good: by the power of Grayskull, I WILL be using my grill come hell or high water. Or more snow.

Dynamic in nature

A lot of people dont realize just how much crap changes in aviation.

Not just rules and regs, or weather, but the whole burrito. One minute your holding a carne asada, next minute it's chicken, mojado style. Give it five more minutes and it might even turn into a taco. Or a churro, wich would be pretty awesome, cause churro's are the shit.

Today was a good example. I lfet Chinle last night for ABQ. After hitting up Frontier (seriously, that place is awesome), we returned to Chinle only to find the fog had rolled in, so to Blanding we went. So I got the spend the night at home, my crew in a hotel. Overnights happen, and you can't be shocked or pissy when they do, no matter what was waiting on you at home.

This afternoon we got the airport (the "o-port" as K calls it) at 1500. At 1515 we were alerted to a pending flight to RQE, but 5 minutes later we were told that flight was cancelled and they wewre grounding the patient to Chinle. 1530: another aircraft with a maintenance issue came in. 1600: we were told to swap aircraft so the pilot that just came in could return to ALS with a good plane. 1620: a call came in for a flight to RQE, then to PHX. 1630: we were told to swap planes again, back to the ship we were originally in. 1645: the pending flight was cancelled due to weather and there was talk about switching aircraft once again (both pilots and my med crew were glaring at the people doing the talking at this point).

At 1700 we left to go to the police station so one of my medics could get some fingerprint cards. I didn't ask why, he didn't tell. 1730: we were told we had a pending flight to FMN, to pick up a patient out of Shiprock, and take them to PHX. 1740: it's now FMN to TUS. 1800: we launch for Farmington.

There's a good chance that we may get weathered out of Chinle again, and I don't have a lot of time to screw around; I started at 1500 today, and that only gives me till 0500 to do whatever they want me to do.

We'll see what happens I suppose.

(p.s. - for the uninitiated, those three letter abbreviations are ICAO airport codes (I just omitted the "K" as is standard practice in domestic operations), and if you want to look them up, I suggest this site.)

Odd job

Sometimes I have these random surreal moments at work.

It usually happens when I realize that something just 7 or 8 years ago would be seen as odd or completely out of left field is completely normal for me now.

Sitting here in the cold, locked foyer of Atlantic Aviation in Farmington I had one of these thoughts.

Here I am, at 0100, in the rain,not knowing when I'll get home, getting ready to take some patient somewhere.

Our first flight tonight was easy enough, pick up a patient in Farmington, drop them in Albuquerque. After the drop off, we (my crew and I) ate at Frontier. It was my first time there, and I don't really know how to describe it, except as maybe...ecclectic?

We can't get back into our point of origin, Kayena, as the weather moved in just after we left. I literally have no idea when I will get back to K-Town.

Since we were already weathered out, dispatch gave us another flight: back to Farmington, then on to Las Cruces.

And now here I am, sitting on a cold floor, in the middle of the night, at a closed FBO. I don't know when ill be back to the crew quarters, where I'll spend the night (well day I guess, since I'm working nights this week), what state my next meal will be in, or where I'll even be once the sun saturates the darkness with light.

And this is what has come to pass as normal. Or at least not be seen as abnormal.

A Busy Few Days

The last three days have been a bit busy.

Well, I guess the first day (Tuesday the 2nd, I had the 6 days before that off) wasn't really busy: I just got called 2 hours early (at 0500) to come to work, and got to spend the morning in Flagstaff, even found a new place to hit up for food. Oh yeah, and I picked up Assasin's Creed 2 at Walmart (I got totally hooked on Assasin's Creed on my days off, so I had to get the sequel). Then I napped for most of the day when I got back. Come to think if it, Tuesday was pretty kick ass.

The next morning I got another early call out (at 0530). I noticed I had a work EMail waiting for me on my Blackberry. Apparently the FAA needed to observe one of our check airman while they gave a check ride. And lucky me, I just happened to be in my early grace period, so I was selected. Oh well, part of the job. The rest of the day was a little crazy: We took a patient to Farmington from Chinle (with an additional nurse, it was nice to see a new face onboard who wasn't a patient), but on the return Chinle had become fogged in, so we diverted to Window Rock. After an hour or so on the ground it started to snow and the visibility was starting to drop. Not wanting to get stuck there, we headed to Gallup. Of course, 30 minutes later when we got int he Gallup area, the weather had turned to crap there. After shooting an approach to minimums, we got the plane int he hangar (so the snow wouldn't pile up on it), and went to have lunch. During lunch the weather really shit the bed, so we got stuck in Gallup for a few hours. But that's ok, since there's Walmart and we have a crew quarters there with internet and satellite tv, and a crew van to get around. Finally the weather cleared and we made it back to Chinle. I had planned to go home that night since I didn't have to be on duty in Kayenta till 1800 the next day, but the checkride I now had the next morning meant that plan was scrubbed.

The next morning, after a night of pre-checkride nightmares (I always get them right before a checkride), I got out to the plane, topped it off, and away to SLC we (the check airman and I) went. Shot a couple of practice approaches into Ogden just to make sure all was good, then landed at SLC and waited for the FAA rep to show. When he did, we went through the ground portion, then to the flying (3.9 hours, most of it in Evanston, WY). All went well, I am good for another 6 months, my check airman for another 24.

Afterwords we went to the best damn Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake: the Red Iguana. They had the most awesome chile colorado I've ever had, and what had to be the hottest Serrano peppers in the world. Don't get me wrong, I like hot stuff, and I've eaten roasted Serrano's before. But holy shit this one little pepper, roasted, brought me to tears and nausea. I wish I could have had a drink, as they had some interesting looking ones (Jamaica margarita, pepino cucumber margarita, jalapeno margarita, cherry daiquiri, etc).

Kinda hoping I get another flight to SLC, during the day of course, just so I can hit up Red Iguana again.

Been a while

So I totally blew off the whole posting twice a week thing. But I have excuses, and half-assed decent ones too.

To to catch up from the last time I wrote:

I had a flight a few days after my last post. The patient was sedated with a heavy dose of sedative in Alamosa. He woke up halfway through the flight (20 minutes before landing) and started getting combative. So they gave him a maintenance dose of sedative. Then another one. Finally, to be able to off-load him (He would've been violent at this point if it weren't for the restraints since the sedatives weren't working), we had to give him a paralytic and intubate him. Except the usual dose of paralytic agent didn't last too long, and they had to give him a second, and a third. Finally, paralyzed and leting a machine breath for him, we got him into the ambulance. We literally pushed enough pharmaceuticals to bring down a horse. I never thought I'd meet the person that makes Keith Richards look like a little girl that couldn't hold his liquor.

While there in Alamosa I ran a few errands: Autozone (oil and filters for the cars), liquor run (I could open a small bar at this point), a Walmart run to get all kinds of crap, and finally picked up a big order of Thai food to take home.

Then I had days off. Since I hadn't been home in a week, I spent most of my time doing crap around the house: changing the kitchen faucet, shower head replacement, shoveled some snow off the carport, securing threshold pieces, hanging pictures, etc, etc. We also cooked a bunch (lemon chicken soup, roasted red wine chicken, caramelized rum bananas), and baked a shit ton of cookies (mostly oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip). And I got to spend some money at True Value, even got to buy a shiny new radial saw. Well, a yellow one at least (it's a DeWalt). I have a honey-do or two left, but got most of what I needed to get done, done.

shoveling snow off the carport

I got to spend some quality time with the PS3. I found Assassin's Creed at Walmart for $20, and totally got hooked on it. Took me four days, but I managed to complete it. Now I have Assassin's Creed II and I have to wait till my next days off to play it.

Also had a chance to go sledding with the kids. There's an awesome hill in Blanding that was still covered in about three feet of snow, and I think it's our new sledding spot. There's pics on Facebook from it, and I think Stacey uploaded a video on her FB page.

Sledding with Keira

Me eating crap

Cassie eating crap

I left home about 6 hours earlier than I needed to, to head to Chinle to start work cause I didn't really feel like dragging my ass out of bed at 0400. As it turns out it was kinda a good move, since I got a call at 0500 to start early. Then I napped most of the day away.

And that pretty much brings us up to date, and I'll try to make a semi-conscious attempt to post a bit more often, we'll see what happens.