15 March 1996
Day five of the American Hostage crisis.
Four days so far of seeing the tops of clouds, being cold, seeing garden spots of the Mediterranean in the rain or at night. I had to wash out a pair of socks and underwear to get through today (Can I bitch any more? Haha!)
We’re already hearing our fate once we get back to Ramstein – we’ve flown five days already so we shouldn’t expect much work when we get back. Saturday will be Alert crew and Sunday will be Duty Crew. Monday will be our first time off, but all of that will be taken up by sleep as I have the 7 PM Sunday night to 7 AM Monday morning shift as Duty Officer. At about 1530 Monday afternoon, we go into Crew Rest to fly Tuesday morning. This is an exhausting schedule!
Today was a reverse of yesterday‘s mission, with much less excitement. The ride out to the airplane was just as entertaining – I’ve decided that I need to figure a way to turn driving around Naples into a computer video game. I’ll make a fortune! It was a beautiful morning, and everyone was out in force – lots of beautiful women all hurrying to work.
The first stop in our odyssey was Olbia, Sardinia. Winds were forecast light and variable – halfway across to Sardinia. We had a 50 kt headwind that would persist all day. We got to Olbia, and the airport was below minimums, so they wouldn’t let us land - another big deviation from the weather brief we had just received not three hours earlier!
We sat up in a holding pattern over the smell Smeralda TACAN and practice drilling holes in the sky for about half an hour, checked the forecast again, and press on down to Sigonella.
At Sigonella, we downloaded our Oblia cargo and uploaded cargo and pax (a Navy Commander and his family going Space-A to Germany for vacation) and anticipated an early return to Ramstein.
It was not to be. Roma Control gave us a slot time for takeoff of 1356 Zulu, which meant we had to sit and wait an additional hour and 20 minutes before they could work us into their traffic flow control. Back to Wendy’s and another two cups of cappuccino!
Once we did takeoff, the flight looked pretty short – 3-1/2 hours up to Ramstein, clear weather all the way, cleared as filed. Naturally, it didn’t stay that way. For some reason the station controller decided to deviated us off our flight plan an extra 15 minutes to detour us across Alghero, which is the west of Corsica, then back to the east onto our planed route up to Nice, Dijon and Lyon. The Alps were spectacular again, especially in the fading sunlight washing east across it craggy peaks and ridges.
Boy was I happy to touchdown in Germany again and put an end to our five days on the road. I really looked forward to a couple of German beers, some deep sleep, and clean laundry.
When we got back to Sembach, a bunch of us showered and went down to the Club for a couple of cold ones. Naturally, the stories were flying, especially about our guy and his mis-directions. With each beer, things got louder and more heated - each person trying to out-embellish the other. Aldo and I started talking to Dale about his decision to leave the Reserves after the ORI in October. One thing led to another till we were all yelling at each other – Dale blaming us for Enzo Grilli still being in the unit after he (Dale) had busted him on a check ride, Aldo blaming Dale for all future deaths from 737 crashes due to unknown causes (Dale works for the FAA), and… me calling Dale a “quitter” because he was using Enzo as his excuse for leaving the unit. It all got to the point of absurdity as evidenced by this snippet of educated conversation:
“Well, f*ck you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, F*ck you!!”
“No, F*ck YOU!” <Beer gives you suck a wonderful vocabulary! Hahaha!>
… and I grew tired of it all, so I called it a night and went back to my room through bitter cold to welcome a VERY deep sleep.
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