North to Alaska

Today I thought I'd try something new. Instead of blogging about planning to travel I thought I'd blog about actual travel. Fascinating I know! So most of you know by now that I am heading to Alaska. In fact I'm writing this from the boom pod of a KC135 right now (I'm a bit bored). How all this started is the active duty at Fairchild was tasked with five people for a Red Flag Exercise. They could only send three people and asked the Guard if we could help with the other two. My boss quickly volunteered to cover it and found four people (none of them being me) willing to go. As the trip got closer and closer the volunteers seemed to fade away and dwindled down to one (still not me). Here is where I came in. Since it looks really bad when a unit volunteers to pick up a manning shortfall and then can't cover it, I made the mistake of saying "well if no one else can go I will cancel my vacation and cover it for you." Oops! At this point the search for a volunteer screeched to a halt and I magically became the only possible option. Surprise surprise. So here I am.
Now this is not all bad because I've always wanted to visit Alaska and getting paid to go is a very affordable way to do it. This deployment however became a very big pain in the butt very quickly. For starters I only found out I was going six days before I was told I was supposed to get there. This instigated the scramble to get me orders in time for the trip. Then the date changed, re-changed, unchanged, re-changed some more and finally settled on today two days ago. Then the show-up time drama began. No one could seem to figure out when our plane would leave. Finally yesterday afternoon someone just randomly decided 07:00 was a good time to show up. So at 06:45 Cheryl dropped me off at Fairchild and the entertaining wait began. We all sat around for about three hours pretending to pretend we were busy. Then at 10:00 we loaded up a bus drove out to a KC135 and took off around 11:00.
Fortunately I really don't mind flying on a KC135. For starters there is no TSA. You bring your checked luggage to a pallet and pile it on. Once you get to your destination they unload the pallet and off you go. They is generally no limit to the number of bags and they are all checked for free. What a bargain. Carry-on is even better. The basic rule is if you can carry it up the stairs without getting a hernia and it contains no weapons or dangerous chemicals you are probably good to go. This trip people seem to have brought a large number of fishing poles. Some with tackle attached.
The not so good thing is the seating. The standard "jump" seat in a KC135 is basically a poorly designed fold up camp chair. Then they take about fifty of these camp chairs, attach them in a long row and then bolt them to the curved side of the airplane. About half of them have a bar right under the crack of your butt and due to the curve of the jet fuselage there is absolutely no back support. It's neat. So those who have some good KC135 experience and enough rank to not be shy about moving around scramble for the few good seats as soon at the plane is done taking off. That’s what brought me to the boom pod.
For those of you not familiar with the KC135, it is basically a craptastic 1960's era flying gas can. Its main purpose in life is to perform IFR's (In Flight Refueling). Its secondary mission is cargo movement. Passenger movement and comfort is not high on its list (hence the satanic camp chair seating). To perform its primary mission the KC135 uses a "boom." The boom is really just an extendable fuel straw stuck inside a metal tube with wings that is attached to the bottom of the tail of the jet. When a plane needing fuel comes along, he lines up right behind and below the KC135 (within 15-20 feet….it's crazy close). The fuel straw is then flown by a "boomer" with a computer game style joystick. He lines it up, extends the straw, attaches it to the customer's fuel port, and pumps gas like mad. To do this the boomer lays down in the "boom pod" which is in the very bottom back part of the fuselage right below the tail. He has a nice cushioned contoured pad to lay on with a bank of nice clear windows to look out of. There are also two cozy comfortable cushioned pads for two other people to join the boomer for training or naps. When no in flight refueling is going on it's a darn cozy place to hang out. I spent the first couple hours laying on one of the pads taking a pile of pictures of British Columbia and Southern Alaska from 35,000 feet before the clouds rolled in and I got bored. That led me to this. But now I feel us beginning to descend so I better get strapped back into my camp chair and get ready to land. Fun. If the rest of this trip is not a big nasty pile of boredom I'll let you know how it goes. Until then good by, see ya...or whatever it is they say up here in Alaska.