A trip to Kansas and Lance's Track Select

Since Lance finished his last part of training early, he had a lot of free time these last 2 weeks, so last weekend we took a trip to Wichita! On the way there we stopped in Pond Creek to try some of their infamously good barbecue; it definitely lived up to the hype, I told Lance I'd make the 45 minute trek just for the potato salad!

Wichita was surprisingly really cool.  Like in Dallas, we did a lot of research on where to stay so that we would be close by to a lot of things to do- in Wichita that meant staying in "Old Town"- which sort of reminded me of Old Town Sacramento, with bricked streets, etc.  There were a lot of neat shops and a particularly cool theater that served a full menu of items and brought them right to our seats as we watched a movie! Saturday was a great highlight of our trip; we visited the Tanganyika Wildlife Park just outside of town.  It was unlike any zoo I've ever been though, we could get SO close to the animals! They even had an island where you could play with lemurs!  My favorite part was meeting Henry, the Indian Rhino:


We went out for dinner Saturday night at a restaurant near a large plaza area where there was live entertainment, they ALSO gave out FREE ice cream! Needless to say that sealed our approval of Wichita!

Wednesday was an exciting day.  Lance has now finished Phases 1 and 2 of UPT and his instructor pilots put together a nice ceremony to announce what planes each student would be flying next.  For some people this is a very stressful occasion and it can drastically alter the trajectory of their careers, it was sad to see some of our friends not getting what they had hoped for.  Thankfully Lance is set on flying heavier aircraft, and that track is less competitive than the fighter/bomber so there were no surprises for us!

There were all sorts of other activities going on that day, I for one had been going on and on for weeks about how excited I was to fly a simulator!  I think Lance was hoping it would be an eye opening experience for me about how difficult it is to fly a plane- but I didn't think it was so hard at all! I got to fly loops, barrel rolls, and 'buzz' the command tower on base- and the instructor pilot said I was awesome.



I'm still looking for a job and have a hard time not getting discouraged every time I get a call back after a great interview saying that I'm not going to be here long enough to be worth hiring.  Happily, though, we'll be on to new places in a few months- knock on wood but it can't be toooo much worse than Enid, America.
Lance's new classes seem to be going well, it helps that he already has the fundamentals down.  We got together at the home of one of his new classmates from Whiting Field last weekend for a class party and had a lot of fun! Its nicer now that I know more people and they know me, despite me arriving so late in the game here at Vance.  Lance's class sure is filled with a lot of characters! 

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