Wednesday, June 4, 2008

No such thing as a free lunch?

So I got really lucky and flew twice yesterday...in an event called an "out and in." Basically we departed NAS Whiting Field, did formation work for two hours, and landed at the civilian airport in Monroeville, Alabama to grab some lunch. Then we did two more hours of formation stuff and went home. Anyway, the Monroeville airport awards free lunches with the purchase of at least 50 gallons of jet fuel. As it turns out, I needed 59 gallons…so I had lunch for free (apologies to my microeconomics professor as well as Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman)! After the meal we're back in our planes and I'm running through the startup checklist when my instructor says: "oh #%@^, look at that!" Naturally I’m thinking that I’ve done something wrong which resulted in my right wing spontaneously bursting into flames, but I look up to see an inbound flight of six Blackhawks in formation. Now keep in mind that Monroeville is a SMALL airport in the middle of nowhere, so to me it looks like the Army had decided to invade this remote area of Alabama! I mean, the food (although free) wasn't THAT good! Anyway, that was probably the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Needless to say, we proceeded to take off in formation just to show the Army up! Yeah, two tiny Navy trainers in formation versus six Blackhawks - WE GOT YOU!!!