I've spent this past weekend making myself scarce, tiptoeing around the house like a little mouse, and providing delicious sustenance, while Jordan and his formation flying partner studied non-stop in our living room. Most of their studying consisted of reciting radio communications, and practicing briefs (which sound like completely different languages to me) and chair flying. Chair flying is basically what it sounds like. Jordan and his partner took chairs from our dining room, and were pretending to fly as they moved the chairs around in their simulated formation flights, all while practicing reciting their radio communication, and imagining and acting out all their hand signals and flight procedures for their upcoming 8 flights together.
Jordan's formation partner has, unbelievably, had an even crazier fight to get to this point in flight school than even Jordan has. After finishing TBS in Virginia, he was sent to Infantry Officer Course (IOC), an EXTREMELY vigorous 3 month course, and then subsequently deployed to Afghanistan as an Infantry Officer for 9 months. During that time, he witnessed the many atrocities that this war entails and furthermore, was away from his wife during the entire term of her pregnancy with their first born child. Thankfully the baby was late, and he returned home 12 days before the birth of their son! However, his deployment left an everlasting impression on him and his future career decisions. While always being a die-hard jet guy, his priorities have shifted because of his experiences while overseas, and his first choice is now C-130s. And when asked over a beautiful dinner, if I do say so myself, of balsamic dijon glazed salmon, grilled lemon asparagus and zucchini, and a strawberry honey balsamic salad, if he would do that Infantry Officer deployment experience again, even after everything he witnessed and the experiences that he missed out on with his wife's pregnancy, he said yes, I would do it again. I am just personally thankful Jordan didn't have to do a ground deployment, although he said he would have wanted to as well!
Jordan and I often have the conversation about how funny it is, for as much as I experience and know about during his ongoing training and flight schedules, I only see the preparation that goes into his flights while on the ground, and can't even begin to imagine what his experiences must be like while actually flying in the skies above Corpus. So again, while I have been quietly giggling to myself while watching these two grown 27-year-old men, chair flying around our living room, it is hard to imagine them formation flying in the sky during the day while I am at work. I have seen the formation flights in the skies above base as I drive around on a daily basis, and have been in awe of their precision and accuracy, and have always dreaded the day when it was Jordan's turn to begin forms. Obviously the guys are not flying within 12" wing to wing like the blue angels, but they are flying in very close proximity-only 4 feet from wing tip to wing tip, and at this stage of flight school, with the limited number of hours and months of experience these pilots have accumulated, it is both awesome, and a testament to their ability and hard-core training!
Jordan, who is lead pilot for their first formation flights, and his wingman, personally would like to put a disclaimer in for the following pictures, that this formation flying will definitely look so much "cooler" once they are in the air...so I will have to update this post with more pictures once they get actual photos of their formation flights. Until then, you can giggle with me as these big-bad-marines chair-fly in our living room!
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| Notice the serious concentration and acting skills here: hands on the stick, other hand on the radio controls, foot on the rudder pedals! |
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