Air Force Tradition

The Mess here is a really neat place steeped with tradition.  The building it's in is WW2 era and has a neat old feel to it.   It consists of 2 parts, both the place we eat every day on the top floor, and down below a bar and lounge type set-up with couches, tables and ping pong.   Every Friday the Air Force has beer-calls, which is a chance to get together and have a few drinks at the end of the week.  They say a lot of the old traditions are dying out in the Air Force,  however the Commanding Officer of the flight school here is a fan and trying to resurrect them.  This past Friday it was a special one called the Bengal Beer-Call.  I'm not exactly sure what the origins of it are, but it was a Friday night I will not soon forget.  With all the negative publicity surrounding hazings (rightfully so), it wasn't really that.  In a nutshell, it was an initiation welcome night sort of thing for us new arrivals to the school.

It was set up council meeting style, with a "mayor" sitting up at the front of the room with 4 goons/enforcers to his left and right and a big Bengal tiger head hanging above him.  His "excellency" was seated in the fancy yet intentionally cheesy tiger apolstered ejection seat that I described in the last post, wore his flight suit and a big goofy Canadian flag top-hat.  He had a gavel that he wasn't afraid to make a ruckus with and a set of mandatory rules: He could be referred to only as your worship, your highness etc. and made it very clear that any other nomenclature used would be severely punished.  The punishment?  A disgusting mix of various hard alchols from the shot glasses literally covering the large table in front of him, administered by his assembly of goons.  

The proceedings started by introducing all of us poor sods and  sitting us up in front of everybody.  Two guys from my class were 10 minutes late which is a big no-no when the Commanding Officer is there waiting.  They were punished "accordingly".  Next came the introduction of the beer girl, who as luck would have it was one of the guys from the course ahead of us, dressed in fishnet stockings, and a mini skirt.  He/she was our server for the night.  Following our introduction came the confessions, stories and "instant- justice" portion of the evening.  It was a chance for any and all to get up and tell goofy stories.  Following each, the story teller and characters would take a shot.  Before drinking however the words "Primarus Fuga" had to be bellowed and if they weren't the goons were right there to administer.  As you can well imagine the stories became more and more outlandish the higher the blood alchol levels rose.  One guy was "instant justiced" by another guy for cutting him off in the traffic pattern that day.  The late comer from my class provided an explanation/confession for his tardiness.  He explained that it was his childhood dream to be a pilot and since arriving here in Southport he has been stressed to the max.  Unfortunately for my star struck colleague, this nervousness has impaired his ability to go to the bathroom.  I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say he was stuck in the bathroom, enjoying the fruits of his x-lax consumption and as a result couldn't make the meeting on-time.  He told the story well, and the whole room including the CO howled.  Of course things continued to go downhill as the night went on.  The next day there were the telltale signs of people having had way too much to drink.  Again, I'll leave it to your imagination.  Suffice it to say, it looked like Picasso had been by doing abstract art in the snowbank.

All in all it was a lot of fun.  If you didn't want to drink you didn't have to, the punishment could be passed to someone else.  And, after a while I discovered there were shot glasses of Kool-Aid at one end of the table, so the 150lb lightweights like myself had an out if we wanted it.   

Now it's back to the books (aerodynamic theory), emergency procedures and  simulator tomorrow.

TGIF

I don't mean to focus on the weather again, but man is it cold here.  The minute I stepped out the door this morning my nose hair thermometer instantly indicated it was a LOT below zero and combined with the wind (15 knots) it was really uncomfortable.   The first stage is a cold face and then about 45 seconds later you have a cold, numb and stinging face.  It was kind of funny walking back from class this morning there was a car parked out in front or the building.  It's bumper was loaded with icicles and the licence plate numbers were hidden from frost except for the tagline "Friendly Manitoba" part.  If I were Premier of this province the licence plates would say "Frigid Manitoba".

I'm really glad it's Friday!  It was a very hectic week with a lot of information being thrown at us.  One guy likened it to "Drinking from a fire hose".  We had our first test this morning on Aircraft Operating Instructions.  It was nice getting the first one out of the way and shedding the first test jitters! 

 It amazes me the minute details about the airplane we are expected to know, right down literally to the particle level.  The Grobe is made up of carbon fibre fabric all fiber glass together.  This gives the shell steel like strength qualities at half the weight.  To make one Grob requires 400 sq. yards, enough carbon fibre to wrap the entire building that I am attending class in and 1.5 million dollars.   Of course that was not testable material, but something I found interesting.    

The calibre of instruction here really is second to none.  We have one instructor who gracefully dances for us with his arms out as if he were an airplane, to explain and clarify teaching points.  He's known as Dr Feaver because his last name is Feaver and his Dad really is a doctor.  This guy is like an airplane doctor though.  He looks like a cross between Fred Flinstone and JohnF Kennedy and talks similarly to Margie in Fargo.  He's a local and a real character.  He talks about pistons like they are people, describes oil filters like livers, and throttle mixture controls as if they are human lungs.  He's full of funny stories and expressions like if you don't do this or that correctly in an airplane you could find yourself "running out of "airspeed, altitude and ideas all at the same time".  He is obsessed with flying and builds both real and model airplanes in his garage then sells the plans which creates himself.  He was a mechanic for 16 years and is brilliant at teaching all the aircraft systems.

In education there are all sorts of flowery sayings.  One of them is "Education is not the filling of a bucket, but rather the lighting of a fire".  I'm no poet, but I'm guessing that fire is like lighting a passion for learning in students.  Here, the fire is constantly being held under our butts.  I never thought I could push my own information intake levels this high, or see other people push themselves to learn this much in a short period of time.  There is a constant fear of falling behind and that fear allows people to miraculously force more into the brain even if it's 12 o'clock at night.  The school here really is like a pilot factory.  People wake up, study, eat, go to class, eat, study some more, go to sleep, then repeat it the next day.  The level of focus is incredible. 

I am going to stop here for today.  I'm hoping to get some pictures up soon.  Tonight we will be initiated by the class who came through before us.  We were told not to worry and that we "wouldn't be made to eat sh#t or anything".  It's a tradition in the Airforce to do it though and I'm not 100% sure what it will involve.  As I was walking past the student lounge today though I could smell beer and saw our initiators setting up an old aircraft ejection seat with tacky leopard apolstery on it and a stuffed tiger head above it.  Your guess is a good as mine, but the smell of beer, I suspect, was an hors d'oeuvre of what's to come.  Thanks for reading.  

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto...

It feels like I came to Winnipeg and am visiting Canada.  My flight in was complete with views from the airplane of shinny games and outdoor rinks and we've got pond hockey planned for the weekend.   I woke up this morning and heard what I thought was the shower running next door to me.  Upon exiting the building to scurry over for breakfast I quickly realized it was the wind howling and not a shower I could hear.   The 50 minute drive to Portage from Winnipeg was like a drive on a frozen lake and it makes sense the wind can get going the way it does.

Today was mainly admin. and paper work.  We were issued lap tops with the learning material and program all laid out on it.  It's amazing how well thought out it all is and coming from an education background it's impressive to see how well set up the 3 week ground school is and how the interactive diagrams all are designed.  Today it was propellors, engines, oil systems, flight instruments (attitude indicator, airspeed indicator etc).  It all comes at us pretty quick.  I talked to a guy at dinner who is a course ahead of me.  He has a weather test tomorrow and doesn't expect to sleep more than 2 hours tonight.  Yikes!!  Time to study.  

I saw a quote the other day about the blog craze that said,  "Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few".  It sort of rang true and now here I sit with so little to say to a  few of you.  So thanks for reading this.  I think I am the least prolific letter writer in the history of the world and this is my attempt to keep anyone interested up to date with what is going on.  It's less of a slap in the face than the impersonal group e-mail and allows for a little more creative flexibility than facebook.  The above quote reminded of the word "megalomaniac" as well, which is somebody suffering from delusions of grandeur.  Blogs seem to me to be a little of that as well.  Am I really worthy or polluting cyber-space with my ramblings?  Anyways, if you've read this far you must be semi-convinced that I am, and I do hope you enjoy and or find interesting the things I post.