Yes, I am an airman. I'm not a soldier, I'm not a troop, I am an Airman. A Senior Airman to be exact. Thats E-4 for all the people who've spent enough time in the Big Machine to know what all that means,

I first visited the recruiters office in the summer of 02. I went on to meps, and was held up for a while, because I had to get a waiver for my bad knee. (Had knee surgery back when I was seventeen.) I got the greenlight, and left for basic training in June of 2003.

Basic was weird. It wasn't physically demanding. The absolute truth is you can do a lot more then you think you can when you have scary people yelling at you, making you do it. Fear is a strong motivator. I'm pretty certain that if I had a choice between stop running, and drop dead on the track, I'd have probably dropped dead. It wasn't that much of a mental challenge, once you figured out the head games involved, the tests aren't that challenging. It was mostly an emotional challenge. Getting over the frustration of knowing that what you do will never be good enough. Getting over you're own paranoia. Repressing all your nervous tendencies, (I had about a million, and I only knew about half of them) and getting the rest of the flight your side. My most memorable moment is still the first time I called my mom. Well, that and the time a kid passed out in the latrine from heat exhaustion and busted his head wide open while I happened to be standing dorm guard duty. I thought he was dead, for sure. There was also the guy who'd pray at the top of his lungs in his sleep, and the suicidal kid. (He graduated and became a Security Forces troop, figure that one out.)

After basic came two months of Electronics principles at Keesler AFB Mississippi. The weekdays were the suck, nothing like marching in 100+ temps in 90+ humidity in dress blues while carrying your airforce trenchcoat (I can't even remember the official name. To me, its a trench coat) because someone had decided that it rained enough to make it an item required for carry. The weekends were pretty nifty though, I'd walk down to the beech at night and walk along the coast. When the pictures from Hurricane Katrina came out, I recognized alot of destroyed stuff. I'm going to have to go down thier someday just to see what the place looks like now.

After two months of EP, I caught a plane and went to Vandenberg AFB in California for my real techschool, Airlaunched Missile Maintenance. I'm a southern boy, spent my whole childhood in Kentucky and Tennessee, and had only heard various rumors about California. Turns out that California does have a backwoods area, it just happens to be where they stuck the Air Force base. I also discovered that satellites getting launched into orbit make a heck of a racket, especially when you're sleeping. I went to Los Angeles a few times, and was probably lucky not to have gotten shot/stabbed/robbed/raped, etc and so forth.

After graduating ALMM school, I came to Barksdale AFB LA. I'm still here. I darted out for a quick 2 month class in electronic check out equipment at Vandenberg, but so far I've spent all time at Barksdale working on cruise missiles. From April of 04 to now. I've volunteered multiple times for multiple TDYs to such exotic places as Anderson AFB Guam, Diego Garcia BIOT, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I've never been selected. I did get selected for a Diego Garcia TDY, but then the TDY was first postponed, and then cancelled. Right now my dream sheet says "Conus, anywhere" and "OCONUS: anywhere." According to the chain, the only slots that are going to open up anytime soon are permanent change of station slots to Minot. North Dakota! I'm really hoping I don't get orders to Minot, I don't do good in cold climates.

So yeah I'm a Senior Airman, Missile and Space Systems Electronics Maintenane Journeyman at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.