The morning went surprisingly well, as we only had one Soldier sleep in (luckily my text message woke her up in time to still make the bus on time). We nearly had another BM award nominee when we had to return to the hotel to retrieve someone else’s laptop. Then the bus and truck drivers took us to Lackland Air Force Base; too bad that wasn’t the airfield from which we were flying out. OK, so maybe things didn’t go THAT well after all.
We eventually did make it to Kelly Field and found our plane. Mr. Alexander and 1SG Worley gave their briefing on the results of the command climate survey, and a load crew was dispatched to “palletize” our equipment and luggage. Instead of leaving before 0900 (what the flight crew was hoping for) it was well after 1000 when we finally lifted off.
So here we are, crammed into “jump” seats like sardines still in the net. We’re facing each other, and someone should get a picture of our boots … there isn’t any space at all from boot to boot down the aisle. Some are snoozing, I’m being a geek on my computer, and we even have some crochet-ing going on. We’re quite the bunch. :+)
Since we took off later and the flight was longer than anticipated, touch-down was a bit after 2pm local time instead of noon. We dismounted the plane and walked into … 95 degree temperatures. However, this time I didn’t even break a sweat. After some brief negotiations the forklift driver who unloaded our pallets of gear agreed to drive them over to the band hall for us (saving an hour or more of equipment movement). Everything was unloaded and staged in the band hall within about the next hour, at which point we were dismissed.
It was REALLY nice to be home with everyone at last, and there were surprises for me every time I turned around. Ceana had weeded the whole yard, Kaeli made special cookies, we played games and had a grand time all together. Hopefully getting back to “real life” won’t take away very much of that special time together.
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