Owned

I've only had one flight tonight, but it was a real Duesy.

Got called not quite three hours into my shift to go to Window Rock (RQE), then to PHX. Looking at the forecasted winds aloft, and the fact that we had a stop before PHX, I elected to throw on about four hundred extra pounds of fuel, a decision that proved a good one.

We got to RQE quickly, with the only unusual part of the flight being that we landed opposite of how we usually do (on 20 instead of 2). I elected to ride into the hospital, since there wasn't a whole lot to do at the airport at ten-thirty at night, it was cold, and I hadn't been to the Ft Defiance hospital yet.

On the way to the Hospital. Merle isn't grumpy, that's just the way he looks.

I saw the patient after we got to the ER. They got drunk (reallllllly drunk, a BAC of something like .358) and decided to cross the street. At the same time a car was approaching. I can't help but wonder if the liquor led the patient to believe they had some mad car dodging skills or something. Long story short: I've seen how drunken street crossing turns out; not well, not well at all.

I have no idea what happened to the car, as it was a hit and run. But the patient was busted up pretty good with broken legs, head wounds, road rash, etc. Their ID wasn't even known until someone came up with his wallet. They got straight owned.

Once the patient was loaded into the plane, we set off on what has to be the longest flight to PHX I've had yet. It's normally like a fifty-minute flight, tonight it was an hour and a half, and going higher only made it worse, so it was either get there faster and use a lot more fuel or get there slower with a lower burn. While there was an eighty-five knot headwind, at least there wasn't any turbulence, and the sooner the better, so we elected to stay lower at the expense of fuel burn.

Of all the places this patient could have gone, I was glad it was PHX. I have been craving Mexican food for like a week now and finally was able to hook that up. Plus, I really like the lounge at Cutter PHX.

I sit in a lazy boy and drink coffee while watching tv in surround sound. What's not to like?

On the way back we had a monster tailwind. The wind coming back from FLG yesterday was nothing: we hit three-hundred-and-fifty knots in level flight tonight coming home at FL200 (note: I couldn't get a usable pic, otherwise I would have). That means we had a tail wind of almost one-hundred knots, and we had it almost the entire way home. Normally it's about an hour flight from PHX to Chinle, tonight it was not quite forty minutes.

Upon arrival we found that the rain and such that was forecasted had arrived, albeit late. So I got to fuel, play musical parking spots with two aircraft, and put medical oxygen in the plane in the rain.

Ok, maybe not all of it was done in the rain

Today marks the beginning of a new month, and it'll be interesting to see how busy it is compared with the last two months. Also, this makes two blogs in twelve hours, I think thats a new record for me as well.