Last week, I was listening to the latest episode of The Fighter Pilot Podcast, and the guest was Major Brian “Punchy” Shul, USAF (Retired). Major Shul is best know for his Blackbird Speedcheck story from his time as an SR-71 pilot.
Major Shul’s life story is far more interesting than that one anecdote, however, and I encourage everyone to listen to the podcast. One thing that really struck me though (maybe because I was chugging through a sixteen mile run while listening) was something that was said about training and flying during the Cold War. Essentially, the idea that no one (or at least one one sane) wanted to be in an actual hot war, but if one was going to happen, then they wanted to be the top team.
Kind of like being the backup quarterback for a football team. You don’t want to go in, because it means something bad has happened, but if something bad does happen, you want to be ready.
I think that really spoke to me because in less than two weeks, I’ll be off with Adventure Girl to spend a long weekend sleeping in tents and learning how to better find lost people and crashed airplanes as part of a ground search team. And the question at the back of my mind is, why?
Why deal with the heat and humidity and sleep outside in August? Why practice skills that I hope to never need to use for real?
Simple, really. Because when a call does come in, and the command team is figuring out who they want on a ground team, I want my name to be the first one on the list, and not just because they sorted their spreadsheet alphabetically by first name. Emergency services is definitely what I signed up with the CAP to do (well, that and I was going to be there anyway because of Adventure Girl, and it gives me an excuse to hang around airplanes).