-----

I went cross country the other weekend.  Had the opportunity to go to St Louis and see my Brother that is up there.  On the way up we had to stop at an airport just outside of memphis.  When we landed there was one of the greatest sights that I have ever seen. 

WHen I first got down here and right before I left AZ to come down here I was a little buggered.  My family was buying all of my toys off of me.  I was willingly selliing them to them but its still sad to see my toys no longer in my posetion.  As of about a week and a half ago I no longer feel the lose of my toys.  I feel that I have made a simple trade and the AF has given me a bigger better toy to borrow.

I know its nothing spectacular but it sure is fun to fly. 
------------------
A few weeks ago my parents came to take my last toy that I was willing to part with.  It was a Connely F1x Slalom ski.  I still cringe thingking about having to give that away.  Anyways they met me in Memphis, TN for the day and we just kind of toured Memphis.  We found a sports arena there that was pretty cool looking.

I guess my dad uses this as a refence when he is flying into the airport here.  There is a big statue in front that represented the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses
.

view from above the river, the winding road makes for fun driving

this looks much bigger in real life approx 5' drop

One of these days I am going to spend a few days hiking in that canyon.

---------

After I left Tucson, i went up and spent about a week in CO.  It was good to be back up there again, even for the brief time that I was up there.  the best part was that it snowed while I was there.  I went up and saw a friend (Shelley) up in Ft. Collins. 

I hadn't seen her for a long time so it was good to see her.  I also spent a lot of time in Bolder with Danny.  He and I went skiing one of the days that I was there.  It was a warm day up at copper but it was one of the better days that I have had.  A great day spent in the park, as is most days that I have spent skiing with Danny.  Unfortunately I dont have any picture from that.   I also went golfing with Christian.  It has been a while since I have been able to spend a good amount of time with Christian and it was good to reconnect with him. 

------

That brings me to about now.  I am currently down here at Columbus AFB, MS.  I have been down here for almost 2 months at pilot training.  I hit the flight line this last Wed. and got my Dollar ride on thurs.  For those that don't know what a dollar ride is, its your first ride in you trainer jet (for me its the T-37 aka Tweet) at pilot training.  The ride was great.  We went out to the operating area and just started to mess around with basic controling of the bird.  Nothing extremely spectacular, but the feeling of beeing up in the clouds can only be described as a feeling of complete freedom.  You look around and there are clouds below you, above you, and around you.  The only way to tell whether you are upside down or right side up is to find where the ground is, generally if its below you your right side up,  just be sure not to mix that up with the ground being behind you (your climbing straight up), or in front of you (your descending straight down).  If you look up and you see the ground rather than the sky than you know you are upside down.  We didn't do any rolls or anything but we had to make a few turns beyond ninety degrees to stay ing the area.  The thing that has suprised me the most about the tweety bird is how responsive the bird is to control inputs.  this makes the bird so nice to control.

I was supposed to fly this last Fri (10 Jun 05) but Arlene decided that she wanted to make her way up from Florida, and visit us, so all the jets got recalled and the 3rd go was canceled for the day.

Well that updates me up to 12 Jun 05.  I wil try to continue to update when possible and also try to add some pictures as well.

Around the 3^rd of Jan, I made a ski trip out to CO.  At first I was a little worried since they hadn’t had any snow for a little while.  Then when I showed up in CO the airlines decided to lose my luggage.  I came in on a mon, the airlines didn’t find and get me my luggage until wed morning around 0100 (1:00 am).  I was planning on skiing on Tuesday but obviously since I didn’t have any gear I couldn’t go.  At first I was a little bitter at the airlines about this.  Mind you it had been snowing in Boulder all day on Tuesday, so in my mind the resorts were getting hammered and I was just sitting on my rump waiting for the intelligent beings that work at the airlines to deliver my gear, which they told would be delivered in “an hour” for about 7-8 hours.  As I said my gear was finally delivered around 1:00am.  When we woke up on Wed to go skiing (after minimal amount of sleep since I was waiting for my skis) we decided to hit Vail since they had new snow.  We get up there expecting around a foot of new.  Low and behold what do we get, Knee deep powder and deeper.  We rode very hard that day taking drops left and right.  The largest that we took was a 35’ drop.  The best part about it is that it was completely none consequential.  We could huck our carcass off of anything and whether we landed it or not, it didn’t hurt.  On our final run down to the car, it was everything that I could do keep from collapsing since my legs my legs were so tired (remember that I am coming from around 2000ft in Tucson and I haven’t skied but once for this season).  The next day we woke up and went to Winter Park.  What do we discover when we get up there?????  Winter park had 12” of new snow on top of 12” from the previous day.  So once again the snow was soft.  Not as many cliffs at the Jane as there are at Vail so we just bumped it all day.  My Legs were in so much pain before we even made it to lunch.  But Danny and I pressed on and after a short intermission waiting for someone that we never ended up meeting up with.  The fact that I was dead tired didn’t stop me from throwing this: a little trick that I have been working on….

Danny and I finished out the day to the point that we, I think mainly me, could hardly stand. A Good end to two very good days. 

To top off my trip I was able to watch my little brother wrestle that Sat where he decided to take 3^rd at the tournament (I’m getting a little worried.  At the rate he is picking up wrestling he will be throwing me around like a chew toy soon).  Anyways it was a good end to a good trip.

I am trying to follow my Brothers thoughts that people would rather be instantly gratified by pictures rather than having to read a long drawn out description. I agree with the old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Well President Bush decided to drop on into Tuscon via Davis-Monthan. A small croud of us was allowed onto the tarmac near Air Force 1.

He was here promoting his Social Security Bill before he went on to CO to do the same thing. One of the guys that I work with was allowed to go out there as well.

<>Left: Rob Switzer, Right: Justin Gardner (me), Background: Air Force 1

I thought this next picture was really cool. What more secure place to fly into than a HOG's den.

So the other day I went up flying with a friend of mine from work.  I fly out of Tucson International Airport here in Tucson, and there is a Guard base located at the airport.  This guard base is an F-16 base.  The fact that they fly F-16’s makes it interesting to fly out of there.  This is namely because of the fact that my attention tends to be turned for a little bit to watch the F-16 come on in to land.

While flying around we went over to fly over the school that my friends dad works at

This picture was taken while we were in about a 60 degree bank over the school.

Well the other week we had a heritage conference here at Davis-Monthan AFB.  I had the distinct opportunity to meet and greet all the fliers as they showed up at the base with their Aircraft.  The first few guys that I got to meet were the F-16 East and West Demo teams, the F-15 East and West Demo teams, and the A-10 East Demo team (no West team since they are located here). 

This was a good time seeing the airframes that I will hopefully be flying someday show up, and being able to talk to the drivers about the airframes and the missions of each airframe.  As I was standing out on the flight line I noticed that a three ship was entering the pattern, but it wasn't an airframe that I initially recognized.  Once the three ship came into view a little better I noticed that they were three F-4 Phantoms.  This was great since it was the first fighter that I wanted to fly when I was a kid.

I have seen many F-4’s that are static displays but never have I seen one that is in working order, let alone one that just flew in.  Although this was entertaining, the best parts were still to come.  As I was walking out to meet the A-10 East demo team, I look up since I heard a prop rather than a turbine (I have a habit of doing that when I am on base to watch the planes break in the pattern while they are coming in for landing).  Low and behold what is breaking in the pattern, a P-51 Mustang.  This was awesome to see, watching this old war bird, that was the king of the skies for so many years, breaking in the pattern of a military base.  This first Mustang was one of four P-51’s that was brought in for the conference.  The Final airframes that were flown in were the most impressive to see.  It was late in the day and I knew that we still had three more aircraft.  I get the call telling me that they are inbound so I make my way out to the flight line.  The first of the three was an F-86 Saber

The pilot driving this aircraft was none other than Steve Hinton.  For those that don't know who Steve Hinton is, he is one of the most (if not the most) experienced Warbird Pilots in the world.  He's probably best known for being the Pilot of “Glacier Girl's” Madden flight after being restored.  Anyway Steve and I talked for a little bit after he told me that the other two planes would be in shortly.  About 10-15 minutes later we hear the planes entering the pattern, I look up (as I always do) to watch the birds break in the pattern,  and as I do I see nothing less than a P-51, following the wing of a P-38 (one of only a handful that still fly) entering in the Pattern.

As I watched them break in the pattern, I was in awe of these warbirds, watching them pull into Davis-Monthan was unbelievable.  After this I thought that the week/weekend was made, it couldn't have ended any better.  Was I ever wrong.  The next day I was showing some ROTC cadets from the University of Arizona around the base.  We were at the tower on base, getting a tour of the tower.  We walked out onto the catwalk on the tower as we walked around to the side that overlooked the airfield, a F-15 with a P-51 flying on his wing make a pass over the field, flying the heading of the runway.  Shortly after an A-10 with the P-38 on his wing make a pass directly over the tower, breaking away from each other and rolling out right after they pass the tower.  This was the beginning of what we saw all weekend long.  The fliers went from two-ships, to three-ships, finally ending in four-ships on the last day of the conference

Needless to say the week/weekend was very enjoyable.  I would drive around town, and was always seeing the new fighters, flying with their predecessors in formation.  Talk about honoring your heritage.

Well I learned a valuable lesson last night, or should I say this morning.  Me and some friends decided to go caving in this cave.  The funny thing is that none of us had ever been in there before.  It wasn't a hard cave to figure your way down, considering dumb luck was on our side.  When we decided to exit the cave and return from whence we came, then dumb luck left us.  We ended up missing the small turn that we needed to take to get out of this cave, and wandered around in three other caverns of this cave for about 2-3 hours.  After the first hour we were just trying to find our way back to the main cavern that we had originally left but once again no luck.  Finally after walking around and meticulously searching every nook and cranny in this cave, anything that we might be able to fit our body into we decided that the only other option was to sit and wait.  We were banking on the fact that a few people knew where we were at and we were hoping that they would realize that when we didn't show to work there was something wrong.  So we ended up stopping found a comfortable place to lay down (as comfortable as you can get in a cave), and went to sleep.  Surprisingly I was actually able to get a little sleep, not sure how much since we couldn't see anything, and no one had a watch.  Well after what seemed like maybe an hour or so of sitting there sleeping on and off (what I figured to be around 0300-0400), the girl that we were with decided that she really needed to go to the bathroom.  She didn't want to go somewhere that we might end up going through so we just told her to pick a an arm and go, I didn't matter anyway.  Well once she is done with whatever she needed to do she says that she thinks the arm that she was in wet somewhere.  So with nothing better to do (by this time we knew the cave almost well enough to walk around it with out flash lights, at least the part we were in) we decided to go down and see where that arm went.  Low and behold…. We had already been there before a few times.  But to the amusement of us all we decided to search this thing one last time.  Now mind you this is only about 40-50 yards from where we were sleeping if that.  We searched everything that we thought could be a possibility and found nothing.  As we were leaving the girl we were live looked up this slope and said hey we haven't been up there before but it doesn't even look like it leads anywhere.  She goes up anyway to see what she can find.  And what does she find… the entrance back into the main cavern that we had been looking for.  So we all (three of us by the way) begin to head back into the crack that we left the main cavern out of (this crack is barely large enough to shimmy through with out your chest catching).  I was the last one through since by this time the second kids head lamp had died and we didn't have anymore batteries and I need to light the way for him.  I look back and see a little nook that looked like dead ended, but it had a marking that we had been looking for all night long.  So I went in there.  About five-six feet off the ground is this rabbit hole that I thought would just send us into an over look of the main cavern but we decided that I should climb up it anyway, since we had exhausted all other options.  So I did, and not 20 feet from that rabbit hole was the entrance to the cave that we had been looking for.  Finally we get through everything and begin to head outside, remember I said that I thought that it was probably around 0300-0400,  well we walk outside and the sun is up.  We finally get back to the car and it was 0800, and we entered the cave around 1900 the night before.  That was a long time to spend in a cave, but I can now say that I have spent a night in a cave, with no sleeping bag, no bivy, no coat (since the cave was 72-73 degrees), I did have a long sleeve shirt.  Any ways the lesson that I learned from this little adventure is one that I feel all should know.  It is vital to our existence as human beings.  So with further delay here it is…..

If your lost and want to be found….DROP YOUR PANTS!!!!!!!!!

Its inevitable.  Once you drop your pants you will find the way.  Well I hope you will all take this valuable lesson and use it to your advantage.