Pueblo

Fri Oct 19 relocated to Pueblo CO. Went with the plane, though it would have been a cool drive through the mountains. And actually there was enough stuff piled up in the jet, any other pilot would have said screw it and had us drive, but this guy's old school and packed us tight in there.

In pueblo, even though it was the end of the long days, I wasn't happy. Partly cause of the change in location, partly cause of the new people. Started having doubts about how I'd get along with them. First evening, the main topics of conversation were getting totally drunk, and whores in indonesia. One guy has "I dunno, about seven" fatherless children scattered around the country/world. What an asshole. If you wanna go screw around, fine, but fathering children everywhere is beyond my tolerance.

Anyways, the other stories weren't too bad at the time, but in the morning I felt really ill about them. I had a miss-saigon-esque dream. It was an american military kind of environment, and there was a big brothel. Japanese prostitues actually. And I cared a lot about one in particular. Wanted to 'rescue' her out of that kind of life. Meanwhile, another guy really wanted to use her as a prostitue, in an angry sort of way. Hard to describe. I don't remember a clear flow like in other dreams. I remember certain images in my mind, like rushing through the stairwell searching different floors/rooms for her. I remember asking the #2 prostitute if she'd seen her. Some other stuff was odd, like I was locked up awaiting a military trial of some kind. Some battling between troops (of various countries), I escaped, search for her, and for a couple precious objects (don't remember what, maybe a hair ribbon or something). Later, I'm the only one around, place is kindof a wasteland. But then I discovered a few people making a home of a wreckaged aircraft, including my family, and was happy to see them.

Like I said, was feeling pretty bad about things after waking up. Think I was worn out from too many long work days. But things got better again. The one guy I still don't think I'll like, but most other people are good, especially most of the pilots.

Still had some regular work to do during the days to wrap up the maintenance, and address other minor issues. Was also to go on flights as a radar operator (RO). But the first couple nights the weather was really turbulent so all flights were cancelled and I didn't have to go. It was crazy windy one night, could hear it through the closed windows, and look outside to see most of the deck chairs blown into the swimming pool.

Finally the weather was good and we flew again. Paul came to "train" me on the first one, but really there's not much to know. It's pretty simple. In the beginning it's kindof neat, but it gets boring pretty quick. I ended up with the 8pm-1am shift. The best shift is the 8am-1pm, the worst is the 2am-7am. I would've taken the best one, but there was some pilot training going on in that shift so not enough seats for paul to train me also.

So I'm back to returning to the hotel after 1am. But at least I can sleep in. Theoretically. A couple days I was able to relax during the day, but other days when there's been a problem it's been busy agian. Went to bed about 2:30am, got up by 9:00, worked on the problem all day and then go on my evening flight. It's like having two full-time jobs. But at least the flying job is slack. If you hadn't guessed, I'm writing most of these long blog posts while at work. Not like there's much other stuff to do up here.