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Mason reporting in here. Haven't posted much since pilot training finished because life has been pretty boring. At ENJJPT, there's a lot of BIT (Break In Training) students waiting around here for their follow-on training to open up. The fighters in particular are really backed up. The guy in our class who got an F-16 has no dates for training and is expecting to be here for at least a year before he moves on to the next phase of training. For everyone stuck in that spot, we're supposed to get a certain amount of currency rides in a T-38 here at Sheppard to make sure we don't get too out of it. Unfortunately for me, since there's so many fighter guys waiting around, they get the focus for the BIT currency program. If we weren't at ENJJPT where everything is based on fighter pilots, it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But since we are here, anyone who isn't going to a fighter basically gets put on the back burner and we're not actually in the BIT program. We're free to go in and fish around for open seats in the T-38, T-6, or T-37, but it requires a lot of lucky timing or getting good connections in those flights. So because I hate sitting around all day waiting for something to possibly open up, I just don't go in that often. I probably go in once every 2-3 days just to check my email and take care of paperwork stuff.

But last week, I got to go to water survival training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida. It was only three days long (plus 2 travel days). I was hoping it would be nice hot weather for jumping into the ocean, but of course we had a cold spell go through right for our three days. They wouldn't let us do the water activities unless it was over like 36 degrees windchill or something but we were pretty much right at that limit a lot so we only spent a little time waiting for the temp to rise in the morning. I think they said the water temp was actually like 55 degrees. To keep toasty, we wore wet suits and these big yellow survival suits that looked like a firefighter uniform. And on top of that, we wore a parachute harness with a life preserver attached. It was pretty uncomfortable but it wasn't too bad for staying warm in the water.

Most of the training was pretty much all about getting comfortable with the sort of equipment we would have with us if we actually did eject (or jump out the door for all the non-ejector folk) over the ocean. This was my first time swimming in salt water so I was pretty surprised how gross that was. Getting water in your mouth at Lake Michigan is kind of icky but sea water is way worse. We got to practice getting out from be entangled in a parachute canopy in the water, setting up 20-man life rafts, 1-man life rafts, going through our post-ejection checklists, and what to do if you're getting dragged through the water by your parachute. The two coolest parts were parasailing and the helo-rescue.

For parasailing, we launched off one of their bigger ships and then were towed until about 300-500 feet, then released. The fall down was pretty short (at least for me) so I barely got through my checklist before hitting the water. And then we had to inflate our raft and basically just hang out in it for an hour or so to get a feel for how life alone in the water is. For anyone going, I highly recommend packing some sort of beef jerky or sausage sticks for lunch that day. It's basically already water-proofed and is pretty tasty. My poptarts stayed dry in a plastic bag, but they got mushed up pretty bad in the whole parasailing process. They took us out in a larger portion of the bay for all this, but we could still see land and since there were so many of us, you didn't really feel too isolated. The instructors told us a lot of stories of all the sharks and other sealife they get out there, but I didn't see anything. Apparantely, it's a lot worse in the summer. I actually felt pretty comfortable bobbing around in the water, but I guess I would have felt differently if a shark bumped into the bottom of my raft (as they've had happen before).

The other really fun part was practicing getting rescued by a helicopter. They demonstrated how to vector the helicopter in to your spot and giving signals. Then we all got dumped in the water in a long line and one by one, the helicopter would hover overhead, drop down a line, we would hook ourselves up, and then it would lift us out of the water and drop us back in. The water spray from the prop was pretty intense since it feels like a lot of little ice pellets hitting your face, but apparantely there's other helicopters that are a lot worse than what we had (HH-60). Plus there wasn't really any waves so that made it a lot easier.
(This wasn't actually us, but same idea)
A couple guys there got waterproof cameras so I'll get some actual pictures up eventually. There were about 45 people in our class there, a little more than half were officers. About 15 were pilots, the rest of the officers were navigators and electronic weapons officers. Of those 15, there was only one fighter pilot and three bomber pilots (including me). I got to meet four B-52 EWOs who will probably be in my class at Barksdale. My point in saying all those numbers is just that it's interesting to get out of the ENJJPT world and see what the real ratios are with all the heavy pilots out there and the amount of aircrew walking around in flight suits who aren't pilots (EWOs, Navs, crew chiefs, flight nurses, etc).

While I was away, Ellen was pumpin it up at the gym everyday. I came home and our refrigerator was full of numbered healthy food. She's starting to get anxious about having to leave her kids at school and start another job search. Standardized test season seems to be year-round in Texas so she's getting ready to administer those. And today, she's having another cookie-making marathon for the Around The World party that ENJJPT holds each year with food from all over. We're not really sure what an "American cookie" is supposed to be but I'm sure everyone will eat them anyways.

Next up for me- land survival / SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) training at Fairchild AFB, Washington. I leave around the 19th and get back mid-March.