I was on a remote tour in the military, a one year assignment to the Alaskan Aleutian Islands and it was time for my mid-tour leave. Mid-tour leave is voluntary but it seems that most married men will take this leave. My assignment began in September and it was now mid-March. My wedding anniversary was in April and I had yet to miss one. The one coming up was #10 and, at least to me, that is considered a special one. Mid-tour leaves are typically a month long, including travel time, so I didn’t want to waste any time.
Now traveling normally costs a lot of money. Thankfully though there is Space Available Travel for US military personnel. Or simply called Space-A. If there is room on a military flight, and the pilot feels like it, then they make seats available for travelers. No flight is guaranteed.
Now that you have the basics of how Space-A works, here is the rest of my story.
From the island of Shemya, Alaska I took the rotor plane to the mainland and Elmendorf AFB. I was heading down to Texas to see my wife in San Antonio where she was staying with at her aunt’s house along with our son. I was traveling light, only 1 medium-small bag, because that’s how you need to travel with Space-A. You never know what kind of plane will show up and the less baggage the better it could be for you. As it turns out, my medium-small was too big for my first ‘almost’ opportunity that came up.
After arriving on the even more freezing mainland, I’m glad they make us take our parka’s with us, and waiting for about an hour at the terminal, they came by and told us there is a flight for 1 person. Of course, I’m #2 on the list, but my bag was just slightly too big for this flight. As it just so happen, there was a pilot of an F-15 heading to San Antonio, but you had to have a very small bag to ride in the back. Now, I was willing to just leave my bag there and ‘hope’ that it was still there when I returned for an opportunity like that. However, as I mentioned, I was #2 on the list. The only way for me to get that flight would be for the first person to turn it down. Fat chance of that happening. He not only took the flight, he was overwhelmed with excitement. I can’t say that I blame him. Oh well!
About another hour later, another flight came up. Lots of seats but only going to Seattle. The rule for traveling Space-A is to keep moving. So I made the flight (being #1 on the list now) and went to Seattle (my only time ever in Seattle).
After checking the flight schedule in Seattle I saw that they had a flight going to Little Rock Arkansas. Now that’s a lot closer. I signed up for that one and they were accepting passengers. I was the only one signed up for that flight, so I got on. It turns out the the flight was a C-130 (a prop plane) and the cargo on the flight required for it to be cold, freezing cold. Again, I’m glad I had the parka. There were jump seats on the plane so it was near impossible to lay down and be comfortable. Of course I was so tired, I made it work. It was freezing and the parka did help some but I was still so very cold.
Many hours later.
As we neared Little Rock AFB I was asked if I wanted to come up front to see what it looked like. Oh yeah I did. It was early morning so all the lights in the city were on and it looked great. I had to go sit back down for the actual landing but I will always remember that sight. I’m sure the sight in the F-15 was much better, but que sera sera.
After landing (my only time ever in Little Rock), I headed for the Greyhound bus station. I’m not big on travel via bus for long distances but I had little choice at that time. It was a pretty uneventful bus ride and I finally made it to San Antonio. From the bus station I took a taxi to her aunt's house and finally got to see my wife and son after being gone for 6 months. I figured that my 1-month leave would go fast so I’d better make the most of it. And so, I did.
