Hurricane Hunters
Greetings to everyone.
Today, Rebecca had a friend fly in to spend the weekend. The friend served with Rebecca when she was in England; it was fun to meet so old a friend. We showed Meagan around and introduced her to Tatonuts, a wonderful donut shop in Ocean Springs.
Meagan and Xavier got on wonderfully. Meagan even gave Rebecca and me a date night. Xavier did not care we were gone; that's how much Xavier got on with Meagan (who likely sealed the deal when she walked Xavier next door to Souvenir City and bought him a little helicopter!)
One of the things we got to do when Meagan was here was get a tour of the Keesler Weather Station. Meagan knew one of the weathermen there and, as it turned out, so did Rebecca. Rebecca did not know he was working there. All three of them served together back in the 1990s.
The weather station sits right on Keesler's runway, and right outside it park the Hurricane Hunter fleet of C-130s. We got the tour and learned about the aircraft duties. We see these aircraft taking off and landing all the time, but here we got much closer to them.
The navy was also running nighttime airfield landing practices. We had a small jet practice its approach. It did everything but land; as it nearly touched down, it sped up and off the runway. Xavier was thrilled by the sound and roar of its engines as it sped passed us a few hundred feet away! He squealed with glee and pointed excitedly at the plane as it tore back into the sky. This was much different than a couple of years ago when we watched the Thunderbirds air show in Wyoming; there Xavier did not like the noise at all.
Some helicopters were also doing practice night landings on the pads across from the C-130 line. These Xavier liked watching these also, by not so much as the jet. The helicopters were much more quiet and harder to see in the darkness.
While we stood outside looking at the C-130 fleet and watching the other aircraft make practice runs, dozens (in fact hundreds) of little creatures were landing on us: termites! This is the time of year when they swarm, and they swarmed! It was because dozens of termites a minute were landing on us that we went back into the weather station to finish the visit.