Friday Night Drive

The Friday night drive home from base is never fun. For some reason I still can't properly understand, the A11 backs up to London (or at least it feels that way) and my normal 30 minute drive usually takes about 50 minutes any given Friday night.


Additionally, the radio on Friday nights is just abysmal. I have four stations I listen to regularly here (with BBC Radio 1 being my favorite.) But all of them seem to pick their worst pre-club dance mixes for the Friday drive home. Now you know me. I love to shake my tail feather. But I can't stomach a solid hour of dance music. I need something I can sing along to while I wasting time sitting still.


And the last two weeks have been hot in England. And I know our hot doesn't compare to a lot of hots. I get it. But we have no respite. There's no A/C at home, no A/C at work, and no A/C in the car. So you go from hot to hot. When I picked up Caleb from daycare today, he told me, "I no wanna go in the car! It's hot!" Can't say that I blame him. Even with the windows down, it's just uncomfortable.


So sitting in our hot car in standstill traffic on the A11 tonight should have soured my already inexplicable bad mood from this week. But there was a slight breeze, and the radio mix was slightly better than normal on Friday nights. And yeah it was hot, but that means the sun is out, and having sun for the three day weekend is nice.


I was looking out my window at the breeze blowing through the long, dry grass, thinking, "I'm gonna miss this country," when I heard the jets. I looked up and saw one of our KC-135s flying overhead, coming in for a landing at RAF Mildenhall behind us.



I can't really explain it, but I had this huge surge of appreciation well up as I watched the plane descend. And I thought, "This is my life. Stuck in traffic on the A11 watching one of our planes fly over the English countryside."

That might sound a bit tedious, but at that moment I felt proud to even have a tiny part to play in the mission of our base. I'm so grateful to have had the chance to spend the last three and a half years in England, particularly in the Suffolk/Norfolk area. It's cool to be a part of a wing that can trace it's history back to a bomber group from the same region.

Somehow in that hot car, after a long week, in the miserable traffic, on a long Friday drive home, a simple jet overhead reminded me of a few things I am really grateful for.