Now that I’ve done my whining, I can blog about how awesome my job has been.

I felt like I was getting ready to jump.

Goldsboro revolves around Seymour Johnson* Air Force Base and likely wouldn’t exist without it. The proximity to the base also means that reporters at the News-Argus cover Air Force happenings as often as they cover the city, and that there are incentive flights where members of the media go up with airplanes.

Kenneth, the military reporter who was juggling city government, too before I showed up, was embedded on a tanker for 18 hours back and forth to Afghanistan, and every other member of the newsroom had been up, so when the Air Force

Thunderbirds came to town for the Wings Over Wayne Air Show, I went up in a KC-135 Stratotanker to fuel the jets.

We made it to Arkansas and back in four hours, and when we landed I interviewed a Thunderbird pilot who got his start at Seymour Johnson, but essentially I got paid for seven ours of flying and watching planes land.

*Being from Goldsboro and having the last name Johnson, I can honestly admit I never saw the hilarity of the base’s name until college.

I swear to God he was looking right at me.

The 916th ARW boom. That's where the fuel comes out.