"Walking Away From The Ledge” The Cut List: Vol. 20. These are the stories that didn’t make the cut to the final edit in my book. Some of these stories will jump around, but I’ll do my best not to leave you, the reader, guessing when and where they happened.
After another deployment, we PCS’d to Hawaii, and I moved over to Medevac. More details in the book, links below!
Pohakaloa Training Area (PTA) was located at the topmost portion of Saddle Road on the Big Island, which cuts the island in half from east to west. While it was at the highest point on Saddle Road, it was still at the lowest point between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. With Kona to the west, a very dry side of the island, and Hilo to the east, the leeward, or wetter, side of the island, the central location at 6,500 feet or so was exposed to the mix of those climates that would travel up each side to meet in the middle.
During the day, you could see clouds to the east and nothing but landscape and ocean in the distance to the west. Cloud formations would climb up the east, hit the dry air, swirl up and around, sometimes turn into a rain cloud that would sit right on top of us, or sometimes just clear out and evaporate. It was entertaining enough to watch what would happen due to the location. Often, we would see the clouds hover around 50 feet for most of the afternoon and then disappear.
The nights were always cool. Usually around 65 degrees, and the days, while I was there, never went above 80. We would fly range sweeps in the morning, and on the east side of the range, we typically flew right beside a cloud layer that ended right at the easternmost edge, while the west side was clear. It was a crazy thing to see and experience.
Finally, there was an inversion layer at 10,000 feet, where the air became abnormally dry. This is why Mauna Kea has a dozen-or-so telescopes on top of it. The only reason I mention it is that, at night, with next to no lights around, the stars were more beautiful and plentiful than almost anywhere else. It’s crazy that in the middle of nowhere, Iraq, where no light pollution is present, is the place where I have seen the most wonderful astral displays in the world.
This was my second time at PTA for a week, and it coincided with Halloween. We had a TV with cable out there, and since I had never seen the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, we watched a marathon of those. I only made it through three or four of them before I got tired of it. We get it, he haunts kids’ dreams, gets them to do stuff, gets killed himself somehow, comes back in another movie, done.
We flew up to Mauna Kea and took some great photos of the summit, featuring all the telescopes and other notable features. I took a stupid approach up the mountainside, trying to use the knowledge I had gained during our mountain training at Carson. Still, the winds weren’t flowing as I had expected, and it was an endurance trial in my patience getting to the top.
We had escape routes the entire time, but it was embarrassing for me to struggle the whole way up. Wind flows like water down and around mountains and mountain features. I planned to fly up the west side heading east, as that would place us flying into the wind. However, there are numerous Puu’s, small hills created from prior, minor eruptions (think of them like popped zits on a mountainside), around which the wind would flow differently.
This messed up my entire plan, so we flew from Puu to Puu, allowing the wind from each one to provide some ram-air effect into the engines, while keeping us in ground effect for hovering, thereby reducing the power required to hover higher. Once we reached the out-of-ground effect, we would proceed forward until the power started to decline and repeat the process. It turned out to be good training in manipulating terrain and wind to our advantage, but I decided next time I would do it differently, which I did, a couple of years later.
JRTC was as stupid as it always is. I had a reprieve midway through, though. One aircraft’s rear tire wouldn’t hold air, and replacing it in the field wasn’t an option due to the uneven surface, so we had to fly to North Fort Polk’s airfield to fix it, which I was familiar with from my last visit with the engine issue. I took a newer PI I had been flying with, along with two crew chiefs whom I liked most and who were the best at maintenance, and we flew over to North Fort.
As we were taxiing into parking, I told the PI his job was to get us pizza, one crew chief was to get with the unit there and get us the parts, the other was to find us showers so we could wash a week’s worth of stench off, I would Technical Inspect/Quality Control (TI/QC) the tire replacement while everything else was going on. The PI was on it, pizza was on the way, and it was a perfect family deal for all of us while one of the crew chiefs located the showers, and we all took turns making our way in to clean up.
The crew chief with the Medevac unit stationed there brought a complete, built-up wheel and tire; he even did the work for us so we could get cleaned up and relax, plus, he said he was bored and didn’t mind the work. I signed everything off, took the PI, and submitted a proper flight plan. Then, we just hung out for an hour or so, so we didn’t have to return to the “fight” too quickly.
Jumping ahead to 2018, in Thailand, on Pacific Pathways, the food was confusing at best. We were around for breakfast, which consisted of cold chicken nuggets, similar to McDonald’s McNuggets, cold fried eggs, rice, and, at least, they had coffee that tasted okay. Lunch at port was MREs; however, there were a couple of local joints to eat at, but we knew we would take our chances with food poisoning.
We found a coffee joint that also had air conditioning, so we would frequent that and hang out a little longer than necessary to cool off. Dinner was usually some shit back by the barracks, like breakfast. If it was supposed to be hot, it wasn’t. If it was supposed to taste good, it didn’t. The cycle continued for a week until we went to the training area.
A five-minute walk down the way, and there were local vendors selling food, drinks, haircuts, and other services, all under their tent areas or setups. It was a rather peculiar experience to get a haircut outside under a tarp. They did a great job, though! I can say I have had authentic Pad Thai cooked by a five-foot-tall Thai woman, and it has ruined me for Thai food. Everything else I have had stateside has paled in comparison. It was such a large portion for $3.00 that I would get it for lunch, eat half of it, and save the other half for dinner. It was all I ate most days, as I was already tired of MREs and whatever the chow hall had to offer.
Other than that, there was a huge mall that we were allowed to visit, where we could kick back and buy souvenirs. It was six stories tall, and each story had a theme: London, Tokyo, America, Thailand, and the like. I went to get away from everyone, grab a decent cup of coffee, and relax indoors in the air-conditioned environment. Everything there was a few bucks and tasted way better than anything else we had in the last few weeks, except Ms. Thai Lady’s Pad Thai, of course. Other than all that, I didn’t care for Thailand much and was happy to leave!
Want to know more about some of these situations? You’ll have to get the book “Walking Away From The Ledge" for more details (links below)! If this story hit home—or reminded you of your own service—drop a comment below or share it with someone who might need it.
https://books.by/w-brand-publishing/walking-away-from-the-ledge
