Land of Contrast

[I wrote this yesterday, but just now found access to wireless internet].


I sit here typing quietly while the girls nap in our hotel room at the Navy Lodge in Oahu.  Chris is out surfing and I am enjoying a few moments of solitude in this dim room.  I feel a deep sense of maternal pleasure as I watch my girls sleep after the long and grueling travel day we experienced yesterday. 


Yesterday morning we woke at 5am to get ourselves to the passenger terminal at Travis AFB in time for the 6:55am role call.  We have never traveled space-available before and we were a bit nervous about how it would go.  Thankfully, there were enough spaces for us to get on the first departing flight to Hawaii and we were surprised by how smoothly the check-in process went.  No long lines, no invasive pat-downs in security, no remote economy parking...shoot, the “airport” was practically in our back yard.  It felt exciting as we took a small bus out to the flight line at Travis and walked up the step metal stairs onto the KC-10 aircraft that would take us to Hawaii for free.  Ironically, I never got a chance to step foot on an aircraft during my active duty time as a nurse, and it felt like the adventure that I had originally signed up for when I joined the Air Force over 7 years ago was finally happening.
  

There were only 10 seats available for passengers on the flight, so there were only 6 other people besides us on the flight, not including the crew members.  In addition to us passengers and the crew, our plane also carried over twenty thousand pounds of fuel.  KC-10 airplanes are designed to refuel smaller aircraft in the air during long missions, since these aircraft do not have fuel tanks large enough to sustain them during long flights. 

As we were getting the girls settled in their seats, the Master Sergeant who was part of the crew stood in front of us and announced that this was going to be a long flight.  He said that the flight to Hawaii usually takes about 5-6 hours, but our flight would take about 10 hours.

Wait.  Stop.  Did he say 10 hours?  

Suddenly my excitement dwindled into a deep sense of dread and I thought “What have we just gotten ourselves into?”  Long flights are hard for me.  Long flights with two children under the age of 5 are what I tend to equate with the word hellish.  Suddenly, I was wishing we’d shoveled out the $2,000+ for commercial airfare.  As the plane took flight I felt like I was being held captive.  No way out.  Nowhere to go.

A few hours into the flight the crew asked us if we wanted to go down to the lower cockpit in the back of the plane and watch the refueling process.  Heck yes!  I’ve seen pictures of this taking place in flight, but never witnessed it with my own eyes.

Chris and Tess went down first, as there was only room for two people at a time.  I got to go down when they came back up.  I walked down a steep and narrow set of stairs to get to the tiny cockpit in the caboose of the plane.  A senior airman sat in the middle seat with a massive panel of switches and meters before him.  He seemed nonchalant and smelled like body odor.  I took the seat to his left and put on a thick set of earphones.  Less than one foot in front of me was the glass windshield that separated us from the thousands of feet of distance that separated us from the remote depths of the Pacific Ocean.  

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small A-10 fighter jet came up behind us, ready to receive its ration of fuel.  A large, solid hose extended out from the rear of the plane like a big penis (for lack of a better analogy) and hooked into a receptor on the nose of the little A-10.  As the two planes hooked together, a small meter on the dashboard ignited with the words “connect.”  Fuel gushed into the little fighter jet, and when it had received its ration, the phallic fuel pump would retract again until the next plane’s turn.

Chris took this photo with his iPhone.

I could see the fighter pilot flying the plane behind us, in his helmet and air-mask, just like in TopGun.  A-10 aircraft, aka warthogs, are tank killers.  I could see the missiles attached to each wing and the machine gun in the front.  They are small, with only enough space for the pilot himself, and have very small fuel tanks.  They are also very slow, which is why it took us almost ten hours to get to Hawaii yesterday.  Our plane was escorting four A-10s, refueling them several times as they made their trek across the Pacific, eventually bound for Japan.  

As I sat in the cockpit, watching all of this go down, I was struck by the contrast of my existence yesterday.  There I was, watching two planes connect in mid air, flying at over two hundred miles an hour at crazy altitudes somewhere over the Pacific, and just hours before, I was sound asleep in my bed in Vacaville.  

Yesterday was a hard and long day.  Lucy slept for only one of the nine hours we were in flight, and at many points I wanted to scream, or worse.  I wondered if we were crazy, signing up for this with our girls along for the ride. But we made it, and it was truly an adventure!  And it seems that is how adventures are...exciting...with a lot of unexpected curves in the road.

This morning we woke up early with the girls and went out for coffee and breakfast.  As we drove around this island, sipping our hot coffee and taking in the sights, I was mindful of the contrast between yesterday and today.  Yesterday...a touch of hell...and today...a touch of paradise.

But so far, that’s how Hawaii seems to me.  A land of contrast.  It is all at once barren and lush, water and fire, with jagged edges and soft sand...so many conflicting things intertwined into a single existence.  


Perhaps that’s what makes it so beautiful.