Oops, I did it again...

The second to last C-17 until the end of December flew out on Friday. It was a sad moment since there will be no more freshies and very little package mail if any until they return next month. The flight crew posed, played and took "Ninja" pictures in front of the plane prior to their departure. It was a riot for all of them and the B-shift guys who working that day were taking turns as well. What a fun way to finish things up and head home! Goodbye for now ninjas, we'll miss you all....

Today I was out at station two in another condition one then two then one then two then three day. The day started off just fine with our usual morning truck checks. The unusual part was the nasty blowing snow and wind. Just as I had attempted to begin the truck check on Red 5 I opened the rear compartment door while holding on to it in order to check the CAF system. Although I was holding on tightly as I knew the wind was strong, the wind pulled it, along with me, off to the side just a little bit and popped the top and bottom hinges of the door leaving only the center hinge intact. Fortunately I maintained my hold and was able to keep it in line and reclose and attach the latch again. It's an odd break as it's not at the hinge but in the center of the metal itself and a clean break in the exact same spot on both! Lucky me, huh? Right away I let my Lt. and then Capt. know about it expecting the badness to begin. A little later on, my two Lt.s pulled me into the office and let me know that the Chief had just called and was really upset and wanted to talk to me first thing in the morning. Just what I needed to hear. Nevertheless, I maintained my cool and again went through the whole series of events with calm composure. I was sure that it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting the next morning and not looking forward to it. After about an hour they pulled me back in and told me they had just been messing with me and Chief hadn't called at all, although she did know about the accident. Who knows, it could still blow up in all of our faces in the morning.

With the weather none of the scheduled flights were coming or going and so it was a day of study and puttering. As the weather cleared up around dinner time we learned that there would be one flight only leaving here headed for Christchurch. We all grabbed a rig and began to warm them up, recheck them, and drive them around to help in breaking up the snow and packing it down a bit. As I was now afraid of Red 5 which had the wounded hinges I took Red 2, the other of the two newer rigs. Things were going along just swimmingly when on my third loop around all of a sudden the rig wouldn't move. I thought it was slippping on the ice or stuck in some slippery snow. I got out and moved the snow out from around the mattracks to try again. There wasn't that much snow around them and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I checked to make sure I was in 4x4-low, saw that I was and then realized that the mattrack that had been in circling the drain for the last week or so had torn and was nearly completely torn in half. As you can imagine, I was thrilled... I seem to have the touch of sh@& today with these rigs! The only fortunate thing was that they'd been on the slow road to the boneyard before my little jaunt and that it died in between two buildings rather than in the middle of a roadway. The heavy shop was contacted and is out here now to tow it back into town to place new mattracks on it and return it to service asap.

The other benefit to the weather was that no meals were brought out to the runway galley and so we scrounged grilled cheese for lunch and frozen mini pizza's for dinner. Hah, indeed I do jest as it wasn't the healthiest day of meals. To be quite honest though, they were pretty tasty little snacky meals and I had a nice cold glass of real milk to go along with it! Yummy goodness!! it looks like another storm is blowing our way and so it could possibly continue. I just want to sleep and get home in time for Waffle World at Sunday Brunch. In the meantime, I think I'll watch another episode of "24" with a handful of salt water taffy and a cold diet coke. I need to try and get away, very far away, from today's unintentional path of destruction!