Sheesh, kids these days...

Out and back…safe! Woo hoo!

I flew out on Friday morning. I usually try to grab the jump seat up front by the gunners. It’s a colder flight up there but I love the door gunner’s view out the window and I can watch the countryside go by for the trip. I dress warm because early morning flights can be 40 degrees and then the wind on top of that, so brr.

These door gunners are mostly kids (I am SO old) and barely out of their teens. The Blackhawk flights are really bus rides in the flying world; they’re regular and hence a bit boring for the crews. It’s a starting point in the aviation world for a lot of them. It’s a very necessary mission, but you can almost see the pilots groan when they land and there's 15 of us waiting to get on the two birds, some with huge duffle bags to move. It’s a bus ride.

So the bus flies along just above tree top level and I stare out the door watching the kids run out to wave at us. There are always kids on the ground waving. Kids the world over are the same. Adults will look up and stare at the miracle of something so ungainly flying, but the kids will unabashedly take off their jackets, swing them wild and wave their hearts out. The kid’s wave and the door gunners are supposed to wave back, that’s their secondary job. It’s an implied mission for them.

My gunner isn’t waving back, so I rap him on the shoulder and point down, do the wavy sign thing and he just smiles. The helicopter banks a little bit and I’m trying to look back and I think I see something flash by the window and I look up and there’s that gunner smiling and looking out the window to the back. I can see a group of kids running behind us, but I can’t see what they’re doing. In a second we’re past them. The door gunner reaches behind him and grabs something else, talks into the mike, the plane swerves and another package goes sailing out the door. All our necks crane back and watch the kids scramble after the falling object. I look behind the gunner and there’s a box of teddy bears, must be a dozen of them all wrapped tight in plastic. I look up at the gunner and he’s grinning like the 19 year old kid I know he is. I smile back and we both feel pretty good. I’ll even bet he’s got younger brothers and sisters at home… Sometimes it’s fun to be young, you know?

Check out this link: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34329

This picture has been making the rounds of the internet and finally made the front page of Stars & Stripes. It’s a great story about a great American. I think the link to Stars & Stripes is also worth saving, lots of good stories in there.

Quick post, more to come, thank you for visiting!