One of the major perks of being a military wife overseas is being to hop on military planes from different bases in the Pacific Region. I decided when Dennis was going TDY to Guam that I would not buy a plane ticket and try to hop down there for free. That's right, FREE! If you are a military dependent you can take a cargo or tanker plane wherever you heart desires for no charge. But before you get too jealous there are risks like getting stuck on a remote island because your plane had to divert or the flight you were planning to take gets canceled last minute forcing you to wait another day or maybe weeks until there is another one. So when me and another wife saw that the Tankers that were going to bring our guys down to Guam were coming up to Misawa we were super excited! We were thinking....how easy it would be for us to get down to Guam and actually fly right next to our guys the whole time. Well, like most hops the plan ended up changing a little bit. We found out the day before we were planning to leave that the planes were not going to come to Misawa anymore but were being diverted to Yokota (A base down near Tokyo). If I haven't told you yet, it snows A LOT in Misawa. It is really hard for bigger planes to land in the conditions here so some of the times they will go to another base down south instead. At first when I saw this news I was kinda of bummed thinking maybe I wouldn't be able to go to Guam but then I thought twice and I called Corban, the other wife who was planning to go, and told her we should get on the bullet train today and head down to Yokota. So last minute we packed, while I just did laundry and repacked since I already had most tropical clothing out already, and we headed to the Misawa Train Station. Getting down to Tokyo is not too bad since there is a bullet train that only takes about 3 hours to get down to Tokyo station. The only bad part is that the train costs about $150 one way. Japan is not a cheap country to travel around. The only hard part of the journey was getting to tokyo station and trying to figure out how to get to Yokota. We thankfully got on all the right subways but we were definitely a little crowed with people and us with our big bags.
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| Letting me talk to Den while he is flying :) |
The next morning Corban and I wake up early to get to the roll call for Guam. When they list seats online it is never guaranteed. So we were praying that we could still get on the flight. It actually worked out perfectly when we got to the terminal because there was no one else trying to get on the flight. I knew that Dennis was going to re-fuel with tanker #1 so I asked to be on that tanker and the request was granted. They bused us out to the KC-135 and we got to meet the crew who were so awesome. It took a while to take off since we were waiting on the F-16s up in Misawa. They had some bad weather up there (typical) but once we got up in the air we were ready for take off. The crew let us sit up in the cock pit for take-off and it was incredible view with Mount Fuji to our left as were taking off. Once we got up in the air it wasn't long until we got to see the guys flying next to us. The "Boom" operater let us come to his back area to watch the re-fueling. The Boom is the stick the fighters attach to re-fuel mid air. We laid down and got to look out this little window where we could see the boys pull up to the boom. So when it was Dennis' turn to re-fuel he said he could see me through the window and when he was pulling away took off his mask and blew me a kiss. The Boom operator was also all about me talking on the radio to Dennis. Which I loved but I think Dennis probably found a little more embarrassing when I told him "I loved him" over the frequency. This was one of the most memorable experiences of my life and I loved getting to see a little bit of what Dennis does in the air. I couldn't be more proud of him. Let's just say this was one of the biggest perks of being an Air Force Wife :)
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Den re-fueling!
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| Taking off in the cockpit |
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