Unconscionable

No matter how high you go in the AF, apparently one E-6 still can still stand in your way if you manage to piss her off enough.

TSgt M.S. of the 479th OSS at Moody AFB, GA, told one of her supervisors that I wasn't cleared to fly, and thereby managed to thwart every attempt I've made to get a T-38 ride up here. This despite the fact that I am medically cleared to fly. I have the form 1042 with me. I've left copies of it at the ops/scheduling desks in the two T-38 squadrons here. I've been carrying it around with me all week.

Did TSgt M.S. ever actually ask me whether or not I was cleared to fly as a passenger? No.

Did this stop TSgt M.S. from telling the guy who could have approved my flight that I wasn't cleared to fly? No.

So now I get to sit here in this damn hotel room listening to the freaking Jerry Springer show going on in room 223 behind me, and being awakened by the screaming child they have in that room that they successfully ignored from 0100 until about 0310 this morning, when I finally called the hotel desk and said if they didn't do something about it I was going to call the base cops. Shock! The child was quiet not but ten minutes later.

Oh well. I sent a very pointed letter to TSgt M.S.'s uberboss just a moment ago. She won't get into any trouble, but she isn't getting the flowers I was going to send her to apologize for whatever it was I did to get on her shit list, either. Of course, I doubt I'll get myself a T-38 ride, either, but what can you do? This is the way the Air Force works, or more precisely doesn't work.

Now all I've got is this horrible nostalgia for my own pilot training days. Was it wrong to want to relive that a little? It was fun. It makes me remember why I liked flying so much, now that my life has devolved into an endless series of questions about what I'm supposed to do next. When I was in the hospital on Monday morning getting my temporarily flight clearance (I can't pilot a plane, but I can ride along as a passenger; all you have to be able to do for that is clear your ears), the flight doc who had signed off on my disqualification told me that as long as AFPC (AF Personnel Center) didn't formally change my AFSC (AF Service Code, which is to say "job") out of the 11XXX category (pilots), they could actually go back and return me to flight status.

I didn't need to hear that. I especially didn't need to hear that and then come up here and watch those T-6's flying around and think, man, if I could just get a job instructing in those, that's all I really wanted anyway.

I just want to curl up in a little ball on the bed here and cry. Maybe I will.