Sigonella and Al Udied

Wine, pizza, brushetta , cheese, beer, whiskey, blood, and vomit. Gross huh? I know it is, but that sums up our Friday night we spent at Sigonella Naval Air Station. Wine: We were in Sicily (Italy technically, but Sicilians don't like main land Italians and Italians view Sicilians as a lower class....we have an Italian pilot in the 74 FS so I know). Anyhow, we were in Italy and what do you do in Italy, you have some Italian wine. What else? Pizza of course, appetizers, and tiramisu. So, we landed there at Sigonella and it was a Zoo. Airplanes everywhere (you know Libya is not very far from Sicily.......you connect the dots). I literally parked with less than 5 feet of wing spacing between my A-10 and the one next to me. Not comfortable, but whatever. The Squadron Commander was there to take our pictures. I've not scene it, but evidently Rachel has a shot of me right after I landed there. As I'm taking my helmet off, I notice my left earplug goes flying down by my leg. Whatever I think; I'll grab it once I get out. So as I get out, I notice I can't find my earplug. Not good. Most people just fly with the yellow foamy earplugs. No big deal; just grab another one. Technically, when I pilot "FOD's" (Foreign Object Debris), the jet isn't supposed to fly until the object is found. I'm here to tell you, when you have to get your airplanes to the war zone, the last thing you're going to do is ground your own airplane due to a damn foamy ear plug! Too bad mine wasn't foamy; mine was a custom made earplug to help me keep my hearing. This equaled a quick "well shit" from me. The crappy part of all this is that even though I dropped it, it's not really my responsibility to get it. That's where the crew chief comes in. I feel like it's my job to find it, but he won't let me. Seriously. Making it even worse was the fact that the guy who was upside down in an A-10 cockpit with his feet dangling in the air was my neighbor in Valdosta. Holy shit. For the next 3 hours, Aaron had to bend his body at weird angles, struggle with screw drivers and other tools, and work in a cramped space in now darkness to find my earplug and keep this jet going downrange. He found it......and he told me he drinks Miller Light! Rachel, please take Aaron a 24 pack of Miller Light once he gets home. So, the earplug was found by the crew chief, but while he was busy picking up after my buffoonery, I was at a little Italian place with 12 fighter pilots eating and drinking the above items. Many of said pilots had taken a "Go Pill" in order to stay awake since we were trying to adjust our sleeping patterns as well. With the above items and Go Pills, a drunken and bit obnoxious night usually follows. It did. Compounding the issue is the mental knowledge that you're about to spend 7 months or so with no alcohol whatsoever. Another thing that "pushes" pilots towards partying. By the end of the night, I was cleaning up a guys bloody nose (he got it from miscalculating the distance from his hand to his face with his glass of Guinness...no kidding, there was a perfect nose indentation in the glass from where it broke through) and another guy was vomiting the brushetta out he had ordered 2 hours earlier. I personally choose to indulge, but not nearly to this level. I'm getting to old in life, plus I have a kid on the way so I can't be doing that stuff anymore! So, the next day, we walked around Sigonella. We had 2 down days here due to tanker planning, so we went bowling and watched a movie on the seconds day. We had to get up at 0245 (you notice lots of weird hours here) in order to make our flight to Al Udied Air Base, Qatar the next morning. Ciao!