First Flight; Pinnacle 4

Finally! I had my first flight today since I've been in Korea! Last time I touched the controls was my night checkride in Alabama January 21st, so it was really nice to finally get into the air again. Matt flew first so I had to sit in the jump seat for 3 hours so by the time I started flying, I was tired, my ears hurt and I had a headache. But I promptly forgot about all that once I started flying! We did some landings, slopes, slingloads and then flew around the local area! I even got to do my first "dust landing", which isn't exactly what most would refer to as that. It's a little sandbar next to a river... the sand is so course we don't get much dust on approach, but it's a good place to learn the techniques. We switched pilots on a mountain called Pinnacle 4. I attached a few pics I took when I got out to "stretch". I was in a hurry so I just snapped a few to give an idea of what it looked like. As you can see, the nose is literally hanging off the edge that's almost straight down with only a few feet to spare on the rear tires! It's a pretty tight squeeze, but that's why we need a good crew with good crew coordination! I'll post more soon! Hope you like 'em!

Crashed

Oh my poor little car... I was heading back to work after lunch on the tiny 'rice paddy' road my apartment is located on (13ft to be exact). It's a "two-way" street with no center line so I guess that leads some people to believe that their half is located directly in the center of the road. A black Kia minivan (7ft wide) rounded a corner coming toward me. I had moved over quite a bit to go around him and as we got closer I noticed he hadn't moved over much. I was already driving in the bushes on my side of the road and as we passed I had to veer farther over to the right to keep from hitting him. I was looking at his car as we passed and didn't notice the 2ft high retaining wall on the other side of the bushes. As we passed, I nailed the wall with my right front tire. It tossed the right side of my car up over the wall and pushed the rear end of my car into his van.
So to make a long story short, the cops came, the tow truck came, and after standing in the rain for an hour we headed back to the police station. We had to talk for a little bit then headed to the Korean police station, argued through an interpreter for awhile, then back out to the accident scene. We argued for awhile about who's fault it was. The other guy was trying to get me to agree to total up the cost of both vehicle and split the cost 50/50. After he realized I wasn't going to go for that, he and the Korean cop decided to just drop it. No tickets, no reports. We just agreed to pay for our own damages. Pretty good outcome if you ask me. My car's all fixed... doesn't drive too straight anymore, but it's better than walking!

MTV Crew in Korea

I finally got to fly! Today was my first ride since I've been in country... I wasn't the pilot, of course, but at least I got to ride along. We had to head up to Seoul to pick up a group of VIP PAX (Passengers) and deliver them to Kunsan for a show they're doing. It's called Yo Momma... a competition to see who is the best trash talker, hosted by Wilmer Valderrama, aka, Fez from That 70's Show! Anyway we took them for a little ride today and had a great time! With all the cameras they had stuck in our faces we were the ones that felt like the celebrities!